The Princess and the Warlock

Chapitre Trente-Cinq

Time, for a moment, was irrelevant to me.

I'd once known time normal, continual, fluid—but in the Wildwood, it passed in snatches, in marathons, in slow free-falls.

In this moment, I swore time decelerated to the pace of a turtle's crawl, my eyelashes slowly grazing my cheekbones before rising.

All of the guards were looking at the window in shock—no, at me in shock, for I had broken through the window. My body was thrumming with an energy that I likened to that of an exposed wire; if anyone were to touch me, a shock would be transferred to them. I was breathing much too fast to concentrate on anything other than Kaius' kneeling form, where he was gazing upon me with a strange expression on his face.

He blinked once, the pace matching the slowness of my world, but the blackness in his eyes faded not.

I was itchy, all over, feeling like there were bugs crawling along my feet. I glanced down to see if anything was crawling under my toes, only to find thousands and thousands of glass—shards, slivers, pieces and portions, and accompanying them were lines and lines and pools and pools of blood. My blood.

The pain was a severe tingle in my palms, and my eyes drifted there next.

Implanted in my right hand, a large shard of glass was sticking out from my skin, easily the size of the tip of a pen. My left was only covered and embedded with a fine dusting of crystal, making my skin glitter as the dull light caught it. And blood—so much blood was dripping down my wrists, down my forearms, and if my dress weren't dark, I imagine I'd see the crimson dotting the fabric as well.

Funny, that the shock was so intense that I didn't even feel it.

Kaius struggled to his feet, the first unsteady movement that I saw him make since his reveal behind the curtain. It was like his weight wasn't settling steadily on his legs, tanned chest huffing up and down. I saw his lips move, but no words pressed past my ears.

"Daughter." Father's voice broke through the soundproofing in my ears, as there glass inside there as well, keeping everything muffled. It felt like all of the sounds in the universe were on one side and I was on the other, sucked into a world where I couldn't hear anything but Father's voice. It was behind me, but it wasn't loud, nor harsh. Not how he usually spoke to me. No, this voice was different; sharp, communicative, strong. A king's voice. "Daughter, face me."

My body was slow to respond, for the shock it was feeling was the only thing it could come to terms with. But slowly, surely, I turned my head to look over my shoulder at the king, whose expression was wide with a half-concealed surprise and alarm. Alarm. It wasn't something I saw on his face often, and it was only when I was very little, when my mother was still alive.

Perhaps the only time I'd seen it was when Mother had her worst panic attack ever—she'd begun to scream the palace down, as if she were mad. I always wondered whether the alarm in his eyes was for her, or because others would finally know she was sick.

Instinctively, I took a step back, away from the broken window, away from Kaius, hearing the glass crunch underneath my feet. "I..." My voice didn't sound normal to my ears, wonky, as if I was hearing words under water. "I didn't mean—"

"Shall we dispatch him, Your Majesty?" a voice interrupted me, interrupted the princess. Or maybe I hadn't been talking at all. My head felt strange, my hands and feet pulsing with a throb that wasn't painful, not yet, but involving a deep pressure. Maybe this is a dream, I thought to myself, looking down at my torn palms, where the large piece of glass was still sticking out from my hand. "The warlock?"

The darkest hour in the night, I thought. The blood was pooling in my palms, slipping past my fingers. Heavily. My lover finds me in the most dim light.