❝ 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐒 𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐌𝐄,
𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄. ❞
Saskia Vrana knows what to do when the Nights of Smoke come: Close the windows and doors. Don't look out into the darkness. Sacrifice and pray. And never dare to leave the co...
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HOW THE SHADOWS FEAST ii. the tale of a lord and his horse called midnight
the first night
❅ ❅ ❅
AT SUNSET, SPURRING ON HIS BEAST, PRINCE ROGDAI of Mavropol with all impatient haste was riding. A splash of color with his exquisite furs and a strange ray of light with his gold-ornamented saber sheath in the forbidding landscape.
There was no more to catch the eye than snow glowing crimson, cliffs as sharp as wolves' teeth, and a sea of black-needled trees. All he and his entourage could hold onto was the lone path carved into the mountains—barely broad enough for their horses, covered in treacherous virgin snow, and caressed by an abyss as endless as the depths of the underworld.
It was a place where legends were born. Of bandits killing merchants. Of malicious creatures disorientating hapless wanderers. Of unfortunate youths dying in the wilderness' clasp. Of all too many people finding their last resting place on the river bed, slaughtered in the woods or smashed in the gorge of crevices.
"Lord, are you certain we should go on?" one of his men asked shily. "Shouldn't we rest for the night?"
He, Dmitri, and one of his comrades had already been daydreaming all their way here of their beautiful Svetlanas and Olgas awaiting them home and were now eager to wash away the cold by meeting their sweethearts in sleep.
"No. I want to arrive in Schwarzhain today," the prince answered.
What would have made another man's heart quiver, set that of the young prince aflame. The danger of his journey was just one of the challenges he was hungry to master, and what could be better motivation than the young bride who awaited him at the end of it?
They said the princess was as beautiful as she was wild. Rogdai smiled. I always liked to tame me a little beast.
"Night will fall soon. It will be dangerous to ride in the dark," Dmitri said, not quite brave enough to make it sound like the objection it was. "And it's solstice. Tonight, the dead travel fast."
"Then let us be faster than the night and her dead both."
The prince spurred his black mare Polnoch. Midnight.
Today may be midwinter—the time when death gods and souls roamed the earth—but so what? Wouldn't it make him seem even braver? Rogdai had always been someone who liked to beat the odds.
Whatever monsters might come, his flintlock would take them.
Neither of Rogdai's men seemed pleased with this decision.
Since they had left this small village called Lasow and with it their country three days ago, they had not met a single soul. Even the hot touch of this Lasowian peasant girl had become a faint memory, deprived of any warmth it could grant.
