PROLOGUE
He stood over the windswept balcony of his tower, watching with venomous eyes as the last bleeding-scarlet rays of the day were covered by an ocean of clouds that spread across the northernmost sky, transforming it into a sea of darkness, devoid of stars and moon.
The sound of rusted chains rattling as the portcullis was drawn upward felt like the sharp steel point of a crystal dagger being buried in the chest of someone in the act of revenge―relieving. Gates that hadn't been opened in hundreds of years flooded the night with the creak of iron hinges; the shadow stood right outside, among thorns and roses and weeds, above the crags and bluffs of his castle.
Its eyes saw through the falling night, through the ocean of clouds, where shimmering stars as bright as the sun burned defiantly, but tonight it was there to remind this world that even the lightest of days could be haunted by darkness. Its rags swept in the air as a dozen of guards rode forward in the company of barking beasts, looking the ocean of trees in front of them with foreboding. Some of them with the knowledge that they might not come back.
The quietness and solitude around the traitor left a flavor in her mouth that tasted of fear. The woodland was ominously quiet, and she could not remember for how many time her feet had been kissing these damp lands; the lavish lands she had grown so scared of, and that once had made her uneasy, were now her allies and protectors. She had never dared to enter, and tonight she made it with the purpose of never having to see them again. If she lived enough. If she made it out of this damn, everlasting woods.
A long time ago, she would have balked at the idea of running so far from home. Her feet weren't made to travel at such speed, and as lightly as she wished she could. When she descended the sloppy hills, crossed the pools of thorns and weeds, and the hard cold-stone of the crags scraped her skin viciously, she had thought there was nothing worse in the world. How wrong she'd been. From the towers, the hills had looked like a patchwork of different hues of green, which varied continuously by the shadows of passing clouds, but now, the humidity of her surroundings suffocated her. Her hair and clothes, slick with perspiration and blood, clung to her skin uncomfortably. Her neck itched for the colony of insects around her, and her feet were slippery due to the shallow forest pools she'd waded through. Sweat rolled down her in thick, salty beads. But she could not stop. She couldn't give herself such luxury, for they were not going to stop hunting her.
Hooves of hungry horses smashed against the old, yellow-brown leaves that covered the withered soil. The sounds of dead, weak trees, which creaked at every push the wind gave weren't an obstacle for their destriers. The air was getting colder by each weary step the woman gave, climbing through the thin layers of what hours before was a ritzy dress, and she could feel all that damned coldness as if it were scraping, tearing, and clawing at her own soul, purposely turning her burning heart into one of ice; like the gelid, hard eyes of her former husband.
"Shh, shh, please." She muttered to the mewling baby she held wounded in bloody blankets and rags, hoping the damn fabric kept the hellish cold away from her.
Her heart pounded as if a wild beast was imprisoned in a cage inside of her, anxious to get out. She reduced her running to a trot until she halted to rest against the damp trunk of a pinetree, dabbing her brow with a piece of her dress with her free hand, and noticed something she hadn't noticed before. The air around her was no more fathomed with the ghost of destriers behind her, but only the creak of old trees and her heart jackrabbiting inside of her.
The traitor had always loved the night, enjoyed it, and waited for it with utterly blissfulness in her heart. But tonight, as she looked into the moon hopefully, to only find a canopy of trees which wouldn't let moonlight illuminate the woodland with its reassuring presence, she felt cold fear sizzling down her spine.
YOU ARE READING
A Crown of Stardust
FantasyOtherwordly forces are slowly awakening in the Empire of the Five Oceans. In a long forgotten land where magic once existed, a new breed of warriors have been chosen to play by the rules of the stars. In the north, Athelessia Salvaeterria does wha...