Dragons and Princes - [COMPLETE]

4. Faeana

FAEANA

The smell of death was incredibly sharp, mingling with the smell of singed hair, of burned flesh and blood. The rain that had drowned the fires that spread through the woods had added a sweet, earthy smell that made Faeana want to wretch, and she took a breath through her mouth to steady her nerves. They were being watched. She could feel it, and she didn’t like it.

Faeana Dagur could still taste the stench, and it was bitter upon her tongue. They all knew that stench almost better than their own armored cats who were prancing quietly, keeping a perimeter and adding eyes to their own, ears more sensitive, a sense of smell more keen. Their frey cats felt the eyes as well, but even they could not determine where the enemy was. They knew only that they had to hurry before they were ambushed.

Fire had spilled onto the dead skin of bodies, and it smoldered in the rain. The blood was still hot in most of the corpses, and steam rose where it was splattered on the stones of the ruined cottage. The blood’s vapor was a precariously strong insult to their wounds. So many were lost on both sides, and they were lucky they were not among the dead because Marquis Morganthe’s army was farther south still.

The rain was a welcomed cold upon Faeana’s skin, and it beaded upon Fae’s gold and white fur beneath her silver armor. Yellow danced from the flames within the frey cat’s amber eyes and danced upon her armor, and her paws lifted from a puddle of red lit by a flash of lightning. She danced away, her tail low and close to her feet. Her ears were flat against her beautiful head, and her mournful gaze met the Freyja princess’s. Faeana saw herself with the second sight, haunted, pale, exhausted, but, as usual, holding herself poised. She was covered in the blood of her enemies. The blood of the Fenrir felt ready to dissolve the skin off of her hands if it hadn’t been for the rain diluting it.

The forest was still quiet, as though it knew it was not yet alone, and that heightened the Freyja’s agitation. Faeana’s war cat’s ears twitched, and she leapt toward the sound of a man’s desperate cry. In the second before Faeana could dart toward the sound, Fae came through the trees upon a sight that tore her with knowing and disbelief. Her brother’s armored cat stood still, its silver eyes vacant, staring up at the dark sky as though watching his soul depart. She found herself trembling as she approached their armored cats, whose fur, except for the coloration, imitated tiger fur. Fae stood in front of him for a moment, and then without looking at her other, she moved on, away from the clearing, revealing what Faeana did not want to find.

The sight there drove the princess to her knees. His fair hair, so like her own, was wet and limp about him, a few strands curled over his gray skin. His eyes, the same sapphire blue as hers, were nearly closed, unfocussed. He was Faeana Dagur’s younger brother, this boy, and he was dead. A black arrow had pierced his heart.

The Fenrir had taken another member of her family, just as promised by the stories, and his frey cat Jör lowered his mourning gaze and stared at her for a moment before his recognition of her faded and Jöra’s good-bye was whispered through Jör’s golden gaze. Jör’s chest rumbled with a growl, and he turned and walked away, to join other ostracized frey cats who’d lived beyond their other. Jöra’s armored cat shed its armor with its teeth and then vanished into the forest as a wild beast, an animal no longer one with the Freyja who’d once shared its mind.

Faeana stared at her brother’s lifelessness, pulling his blond hair from his young face gently, praying herself to wake, for his eyes to look up at her, praying for this to be a dream, for it to be anything other than what it was. . .

But this was no dream, it was a nightmare. There were only two left of the Dagurs, her father Eiran and herself. Tears threatened to shed with the rain, but Freyja did not cry, especially not when they were surrounded by death and danger. In the midst of sorrow she would not cry for her dead brother, not near her guards, not where the enemy could see her weakness. Not where her people would see that weakness. Oh, she wanted to. She wanted to shed her reserve and roar– to show a pain the Fenrir never hid, because secretly, sometimes she envied how the wolfmen were free of the restraint the Freyja were chained with.