Bed of Ashes

Chapter One: Cloak and Dagger (Abigail Stark)

Abigail Stark curled her fingers around the dull blade, digging the cutting edge into her flesh. It hardly pierced her skin, leaving a small incision that streaked across her upper palm. Blood ran down her fingers, drip, drip, drip-dropping down onto the earthen floor, painting the sparse tide of shadows a type of scarlet that always made Abigail's mind race with panic. A graying mist hung on the air, clinging to her lashes, slowly closing in on the battlefield of age-old oaks and day-old saplings. Abigail, her mind tentative to wrap around the idea of the ensuing fog, took her time prying her eyes from the minuscule pool of blood forming at her feet, before a row of strange markings carved into the stone-floor of the forest clearing.

Her heartbeat reverberated deep within her chest, quivering with the elasticity of a rubber band. Holding her hand out over the ornate sigils etched methodically into the limestone, Abigail fisted her fingers, squeezing the blood running from the small wound in her hand so that it dripped in single, segregated drops, splashing over the designs before her.

Her blood poured ephemerally, suddenly petering out when the stone-carved symbols began to glow. Golden light—like the radiating sheen of a saintly figure—spilled upward, defying gravity and wrapping around Abigail like a ribbon securing a present; like hands gripping her by the throat; like a blade tracing the circumference of her heart and her mind and her soul. Luminosity stretched the length of her body, dancing over the thickness of her skin, trailing a shiver in its wake.

Abigail fought to see through the harshness of the illumination that coated her as if she were wreathed in flame. Through the dancing rays of light—the light as bittersweet as a gun in the wrath of a plague, or a hope-laden kiss in the time of utter turmoil—Abigail could see a pair of eyes staring back at her, leering through the shifting mirage of beautifully crafted radiance.

A beast of snow-white fur watched her with scarlet eyes, raising Abigail's level of perturbation; it stalked her every move, peering deep into her soul, almost as if it knew every combination to every lock to every single door in Abigail's mind.

The nearly glass-like eyes of the advancing beast tore her walls down, entrancing her, plaguing her mind with insurmountable peaks of such indescribably prodigious infatuatation.

Another shiver passed down Abigail's spine, causing the fingers of her right hand, still tenaciously entangled around the blood-covered hilt of her blade, to tremble. Far below her thick skin, Abigail could feel her blood begin to conceal with panic, coagulating as her curse took effect.

To Abigail's surprise, a vibrant surge of bluish-black light scathed her body from above, wrapping around her like chains fettering her in place; at first glance, the skin of her arms shimmered faintly before attaining a series of matte-black symbols—they snaked thinly down her arms, braceleting her flesh with the indelibility of scars before blinking out altogether.

Fighting against the light that bound her, she held her breath until splotches of darkness crept up the corners of her vision, threatening to blind her; heart thumping weakly in her chest, Abigail attempted to convince herself she'd imagined the shadowy marks plastered to her limbs, but the ornate patterns woven into her skin, like clouds sewn into the sky, were seared into her mind, scorched across her sight.

The ground beneath her shattered with the fragility of glass, sending Abigail sprawling back in disarray, plummeting down by the smite of the heavens above. The white-lion, a monster of mist and snow, faded to ashes on the air. Her blond curls swirled around her head as gravity linked her to a ball and chain, crippling her attempts to fly away, and clung to her frame for the ride, gaining strength from the rejuvenating-power of her unmitigated screams.