The uncontrollable power lurking beneath Princess Alethia's skin can either be the savior of the Four Kingdoms or its destruction.
Princess Alethia was raised on three principles: (1) Mercy is for the weak, (2) Emotions are an unwanted distraction...
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The darkness entrapping her faded away as Alethia cracked open sore eyelids. A frenzy of red hair blurred her vision.
"She's awake!" Sephirah yelled, tucking her wild curls behind her ear, her golden eyes appearing in Alethia's sight. Alethia blinked, ignoring the muttered words filling the space surrounding them.
"Where is he?" Alethia croaked, her voice raspy as if she had been out of commission longer than the few moments it probably was.
"You should know, you are lying on the poor man," the prince's voice drawled too close for her liking.
Alethia's lips tightened as she rolled to the side, pressing her hands into the sand to sit up and peer down at her savior. Her heart plummeted.
Ren's braids spilled out into the sand like vines taking root while stray hairs clung to a sweaty brow. His recently tanned skin was now the color of stormy clouds, and his lips were smeared with blood. The motions of his chest with each breath were noticeably short.
She was the reason for this. Flashes of memories appeared in her mind unwillingly. Galen's prone figure as blood pooled out of him amongst chaos. Trees collapsing on the person she'd desperately tried to protect from her mother's evil ways; the same person who'd betrayed her for the barest hint of affection.
Everyone she chose to cherish was shoved down into the abyss, ripped away from her with the viciousness of a rampant lion.
The pieces of her ragged heart that remained, the pieces of humanity that stopped her from ravaging the world out of spite, those pieces hinged on the person lying on the ground. The last person she'd grown to trust, who helped her in spite of everything.
He was the only one left in this wretched world who understood her.
And she'd be damned if she let the reaper take him away.
"Alethia, he's dying," Sephirah rasped from Ren's other side, her golden eyes darting between the two of them.
"Is there a healer somewhere?" Aydin questioned, glancing around the crowd of Tartians. They shifted back, faces tight with disapproval.
Alethia's stormy eyes latched onto Naevia whose expression was shaped into the picture of neutrality. Fury exploded in her chest as she observed the woman she had come to respect through their training sessions together.
Naevia was the mastermind behind this entire deacle. As her anger simmered, she felt her hands shake with the desire to rip her sword from its sheath and begin slicing off heads.
"We have to do something," Sephirah pressed, jerking Alethia out of her raging thoughts.
"I can heal him," Alethia snapped, rubbing a finger over a rising, throbbing temple.
"What?" Aydin coughed, staring at her like she had grown two heads.
Alethia ignored him, refusing to repeat herself as she concentrated on Ren's face. His hands shook and his eyes rolled frantically behind their lids.
