The King is dead. The Queen is dead. The Prince is dead. Flee. Flee for your life. Before it is too late.
I dropped my dagger.
The room had revealed all. Blood. Rumpled silks and velvet. Clothes as black as pitch. Hilts of stone. Eyes of pooling black.
Before me had stood three men. White teeth had leered at me before—
Knives had been drawn. My mother had fallen in front of me. Blood had poured from her body. Too fast. Too free.
I vomited, dropping to my knees, my hands curling around my stomach. My throat burned and tears blurred my eyes.
One assassin stepped over her body, his weapon brandished.
"Very well, a princess to double the price" the assassin breathed and raised the knife above his head, the blade glittering through the moonlight.
A fraction. A slight movement is what saved my life. The knife had whistled past my head and buried itself into the stone, cracking open veins.
I ripped my dagger free of its sheath. I drew back my arm and brought the dagger down through the moonlight, burying it into the assassin's thigh. Blood exploded. He swore and cursed. His hand struck me a ringing blow to my head. Before I landed face-first in the pools of blood, I smelt a delicate scent of perfume before he reached down to my hand and pried it free of the hilt. His fingers had curled around the hilt of the dagger and, slowly drew the blade from his body in a wrenching movement.
A flash of a cloak.
Two men once here, now gone. They dropped from the window like cats, falling into the blackness of the night.
Too late. Too late.
The King lies dead. The Queen lies dead. Her child- her heir is dead.
For the Kingdom will mourn, but you will be hunted, hated, and your head will be placed on a gate.
Flee, my child. flee while your heart of fire beats alive.
Racking gasps filled my ears. Mother.
"Ariel..." she whispered. "Ariel. Where is my child? Where is he?"
The curtains flapped in the wind. Struggling through the blood and that pain, I stumbled to the window and peered over the balcony.
Ariel lay in the courtyard. His tiny body sprawled on the stone. I saw blossoms of blood seeping from behind his head, staining then cobbled stones.
A choking sob racked my body. If the guards came, I would die before their swords. I would be dead and would sleep with my loved Ones. Mother. Father.
"Mother." I knelt beside her.
"You must live. You have strength," she whispered. Her fingers reached up and touched my face. "Your mother and father loved you, my One. They always will, as we love you."
Tears dripped from my eye like droplets of rain pouring onto her face. Her fingers come away, wet with blood.
Her body had shuddered once, before her fingers slackened and the light died in her eyes.
My fingers had been slick and wet with blood. Waves of grief and pain had covered me.
"Mother! Father!" I had sobbed. "Oh, Ariel!"
Blood on stone. Blood on silk. Blood on skin. The sound of wood against stone.
"Elaena!"
I lifted my head.
YOU ARE READING
The Cursed Prince - Fire and Ice (Book One)
Fantasy"What she remembers can never be spoken... " A young prince is raised by a king. His adopted sister hides the dark secrets of her mind within her heart-one that is locked away-filled of secrets. But all secrets and promises made are shattered when t...
