The Cursed Prince - Fire and Ice (Book One)

Angels and Miracles

The lullaby drove me to a deep slumber, one not of nightmares and screams, but of peace and sleep.

When I cracked my eye open, caked with blood, to a gray mist curling around my face. I peeled back the door of vines and branches. The gray mist had covered the land. It was the morning dew that arose from the mud and fed the mold.  I turned back to Silverwing resting on the earth. I must find water. He nor I cannot live on berries alone.

I crawled to Silverwing. Come, you must rise. Once more, that is all I ask of you. His reins brushed against his cheek. I returned to the blackberry bushes snatched what berries remained ripe and fed them to the horse. Slowly, he arose and pasting more berry pulp on my wounds, I wrapped my cloak around my shoulders. Squelching through the mud, I lifted my once-white dress, weighed down by the oozing mud. I placed one foot in a stirrup and heaved myself up. My fingers touched the hidden bow. What use was it? I had never learnt to handle a bow, but the time would arise for when I would need it, like the dagger. The white bear's corpse lay in the mud, untouched and uneaten by the wild animals. "My gift to you, creatures of the night," I seethed.

My eye lifted to the sky. A deep crimson flame danced over the tree tops. A red sky in the morning, a Shepard's warning.

The trees were no less friendly around me. Again I saw the sight of white bones crawling out of the mud. Animal or human. I could bear the mystery no longer. Unsheathing my sword, I dug it tip-first into the mud and turned over a bone. A slender humerus bone. I knew that deer bones were shorter, broader, and more robust than human bones. I lifted the joint of the bone out of the mud. This was a human bone. Stomach roiling, I hurled the bone away and set Silverwing off in a trot.

Human bones here in the Dark Forest. Few souls dared enter the Dark Forest for fear of being ripped limb from limb within five feet. Jezreel had once told me when he had brought me a book, unfurling the parchment map. I had seen a spread of thick forest and asked what that forest was. Never enter the Dark Forest for you enter a cursed land with no return if you dare enter that accursed place. He had told me that Eden had once been prosperous, but the hearts of a people had indulged in their lusts and desires. The third king of Eden had driven the people from the northern lands to the edge of the Gray Mountains, where they were rooted. The land where they had once travelled, they had turned to a waste of rotting land: Their path of desolation stretched from the Lonely village, the lands of the Dark Forest, through the Gray Mountains to a hovel, a city where they were kept, away from the good of Eden.

Water. I must find water. My mouth was sickly sweet from the berries and my throat was raging with thirst. Water, water, water...

Silverwing lurched and the reins slipped free from my fingers and I dropped through the air. Am I flying? Free as a bird?

Crunch.

The last sight of the Dark Forest I laid my eye on was the fleeing haze of Silverwing into the blackness of the forest.

Swaying... Falling... Blood, I could taste blood. Am I wounded? Body hurts...Inner or outer wounds?.... Sleep... Blissful sleep...

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I awoke to the sound of weeping. Not a voice. A sound.

Stirring, I raised my head and blinked through the night. Rotting leaves covered my skin, sticky with blood.

A dark shadow was near a tree trunk. Silverwing? 

Had he come back? Had he returned?  I pushed myself to my feet with all the strength I had left, stumbled, and froze.

Not a horse, a human sat on the tree trunk, tall and slender.

I sucked in a breath. "If you are of human flesh, I advise you to leave." My voice quivered from fear and desperation to remain alive. My hand touched the hilt of my sword.