Princess Cyra is recovering from a failed engagement, a lack of friends, and possibly inheriting a kingdom when she meets High Prince Halewijn, who is set on making her his bride. When it is revealed to her that he is actually her assailant's son, t...
Hovering above her was a pair of beautiful, pale green eyes... so close that she could touch them... Cyra reached out a hand to hold the faceless orbs, but they blinked away, leaving her in the dark.
Cold.
Her fingers felt around in the darkness. The air was frigid, and a shapeless mist hovered around her, somehow visible in the dark space.
"What are you doing here?" The disembodied voice echoed in her ears, and she struggled to come up with something to say. "What are you doing here?" Now there were many voices, saying those five words; some slowly, some whispering, others moaning.
"I... I don't know..." Cyra turned around and around, trying to find the source of the noise. Three steps forward into the darkness proved nothing. The voices still asked the same question. "I don't know. I don't know!" She began to run, trying to shake them off, the darkness, the noise. She stopped when she felt a hand on her shoulder and whipped around, facing the person.
Her blood ran ice cold. Those pale green eyes were attached to a face. One she knew well.
"Gunnar." He looked at her with a sad expression, clothed in the same black outfit he wore on his funeral pyre. His ink-black hair was pushed back behind a crown made of raven's feathers, and he wore a pelt of fox fur around his broad shoulders. Shocked into stillness, she fumbled for words to say but found her mouth had dried up.
"You can't be here, little bird... Go home." His voice, still the same one she knew, echoed like a powerful drum in her ears.
"Wai--" Cyra felt herself fall swiftly, tumbling through a dark and unforgiving sky.
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"... right into a goddamn trap." Alorha's voice trickled into her ears as she regained consciousness, her fingers, toes, and nose taking shape once more.
"My guards are hunting down the rest of the band as we speak. I should've made them scan the woods before we went out." Regret tinged Halewijn's words, and she could feel his anger from where she was. Cracking open one eye and then the other, Cyra took in her surroundings.
The ceiling, painted with the image of a ten-armed, dark-skinned goddess, glowed in the light of the fire burning in the hearth. Usasis, the champion-goddess of Beginnings and Conquests, looked down at her in triumph, holding the head of a dead demon in one left hand and the world in a right hand. The red tongue hanging from her mouth seemed to wag at her as the fire-light danced, which was the intention when the Healing Room was built. Whoever was sick would stare at the tongue in fascination, and the movement would scare off death, if only for a moment.
Cyra tried to sit up but found that any movement from her body would increase the pounding in her head. Groaning, she placed a palm on the sore spot, feeling a rough texture of a bandage against her fingertips. Halewijn's golden eyes appeared in her line of sight, a worried expression written across his features. He pressed a soft hand to her cheek and whispered his thanks to Usasis.
