Chapter 11
SHADOWS IN THE DARK
Awave of dread washed over me. What was that? A wolf? I’d never seen the beasts in the human realm, but knew enough to stay away. They roamed the edges of the wood, but stayed far from our homes. What was one doing here in the center of the king’s garden?
Rafia’s warning rang through me. I should not have come out to the gardens alone, and especially at night. Adrenaline spiked. My heart pounded in my throat and my eyes darted left and right.
I felt its eyes on me, the eyes of a dangerous predator—but where?
A heartbeat later, shining black eyes glistened in the light of the lantern like orbs of dark oil.
The gemstone light flickered along two rows of razor-sharp dagger-like teeth.
Not any kind of wolf I’d ever imagined. The creature seemed to be wreathed in shadow—one that swirled and distorted its features.
It was here a minute, then appeared yards away in a blink, the shadows twisting the creatures undulating shape.
It prowled only a few yards away.
With a sudden cold shock, I knew—I had no chance of survival.
Death gleamed in its inky black eyes.
I searched my surroundings for a weapon, but the king’s gardens were immaculate. Not a twig or branch out of place or in reach. I took the only option possible, and I turned my back on the dark creature and ran—all the while screaming as loud as I could.
“Help! Someone please help me!”
The grounds flew by, unfamiliar, dark, and haunting as I ran.
I couldn’t think, could hardly see, though the gemlights flew by in a blur.
The creature growled at my heels. It seemed to shift from one side to the other behind me with ease.
I ran through the tall apricot tree orchards through the lilacs and oregano, all the while feeling a huff of hot breath and snap of teeth at my back.
My skirt caught on every bramble and vine, tearing to shreds and cutting lines down my legs.
Straight ahead, a large oak loomed in the shadows. I sprinted and jumped, scrambling up its gnarly branches as high as I could manage. My fingernails broke and bled, bark digging into my hands. I tore up my knees as I grasped desperately for purchase.
If this thing could run like it had, it could climb. I had a feeling it’d been toying with me.
It enjoyed the hunt.
Another clicking sound alerted me to the beast’s prowling presence right below me. The cool gemstone light lit upon a dark undulating figure wreathed in black shadow. The beast lunged for my leg and I pulled back, but not quickly enough.
The beast’s claws ripped into my leg, shredding four lines down my shin. A shrill scream sliced through my throat as it pulled me down the trunk by my own leg. I grasped onto the branches, bark, twigs as they snapped beneath my grasping, desperate hands.
This was how I died.
A streak of white flew past, taking the beast with it in a whirl.
My leg sprang free from the monster as it tumbled and smashed through the gardens with this new wolf.
There were two of them? I gulped down breath after breath, adrenaline stealing away any pain from my leg for now.
All I could do was focus on getting up as high as I could in this tree.
The white and black beasts blurred in the flashes of gemstone light sending fierce shadows throughout the gardens as they brawled.
They crashed through the mandarin orchard, sending plump orange balls flying.
A scuffle, a blur of white fur and shadows.
Grass, herbs and branches shattered into splinters below.
Growls and yelps echoed through the grove. Gnashing and churning.
I gripped the tree, my other hand bunched in my dress and pressed onto my wound. Blood seeped through the cloth, but I held it fast. Someone would come. Someone must be hearing this din.
I focused on breathing in for four seconds, holding, then breathing out for four. The same I’d seen my mother do when anxiety threatened to take her over. I pulled in breath after breath, shaking and trembling. The pain in my leg throbbed sharply.
The beasts collided with the trunk of my tree and I yelped, holding onto the large branch beneath me with both arms. A growl. A snap of jaws and a final cry. Then the shadow beast scuttled away into the night.
The bright white wolf lay in the clearing beneath my tree—fur bathed in the cold gemstone light. He shook his mane, breathing raggedly, then his intelligent eyes found me.
Sharp, brilliant gold piercing eyes.
The eyes of the Elf King.
I gasped, hand flying to my mouth, when I lost balance. I grasped desperately for the branch—for any purchase, but I fell from the gnarly oak, scraping my palm and arms all the way down as I screamed.
In a flash of light, two arms held me fast against a warm chest.
“I have you.” Rumbled a deep voice.
My chin trembled, and I held back a flood of tears as the Elf King carried me from the rubble of the orchard.
I didn’t have the strength to understand how or why, but I just stared wide eyed as my blood dripped down the Elf King’s arms and down his fine clothes.
Scarlet jewels in the light of the silver moon.
I spasmed in pain and shock. The king strode through the wood easily, as if he hadn’t just been a wolf and fought off a raging shadow beast, then carried a trembling useless human who was bleeding all over him. As if the gardens around us weren’t shattered like a tossed salad.
The sounds of the night filled in the cracks of silence. I focused on the chirping crickets and bellowing frogs as I shook in tremors.
My vision swam as the Elf King bore me aloft.
I looked through bleary eyes at the dark gardens surrounding me, but saw nothing familiar in the twisting shapes.
My legs burned as though the creature’s claws had been dipped in fire.
I closed my eyes and focused on the smooth fabric of the king’s shirt.
The warmth of his chest bleeding into my shoulder, my side, my hip.
I leaned into him, breathed in his crisp pine and sage scent.
The ends of his light white hair tickled my cheek as a cool autumn breeze ruffled the torn skirt of my dinner dress.
Saphronia would not be pleased.
My chin trembled, and I couldn’t stop the shivers wracking my body. I was cold. So, so cold.
Cool air hit the right side of my body as the Elf King lowered me onto a soft surface. I reached out to him. “Don’t let g-go.” I croaked through desperate lips. Anxious for his warmth, for his safety.
The Elf King cursed under his breath, but said, voice like rolling thunder, “I’ll not leave you.”
He struck a match, and it was then that I saw through heavily lidded eyes that we were in my kitchen cottage. The king gathered some large logs and stacked them upon one another, attempting to light them on fire. He cursed again.
The sight of the king trying and failing at such a mundane task caused a giggle to escape through my chattering teeth. “Never lit a fire before, King?”
He continued to strike match after match. “Of course I have. These infernal things are broken.”
I tried to hide the smile that formed on my lips, not sure why the idea of the king never lighting a fire made me laugh. “Y-you need to light the kindling first.” I pointed to a bucket filled with small wood sticks and shavings. “Place that under your stack of logs.”
“I can light a fire, human.” The king growled and continued another moment lighting the logs in futility.
All humor was forgotten as the cold wracked my body.
I grabbed my shoulders and shook in the cold, air puffing from my purple lips.
The king shot one look at me through snow white lashes, then growled and grabbed a handful of kindling.
In moments, the shavings went up in flames, heating the larger logs above them.
It wouldn’t be long before the fire blazed in the hearth.
I could already feel my bones warming by the small flame.
“You need a healer.” Elden stood by the growing blaze; the sharp planes of his face softened by the warm glow. His fine shirt was torn, and my red blood splotched it like a spotted leaf.
“I s-should be fine once I warm up.”
“It tore into your leg.” Elden’s face twisted with anger. “In my gardens. Right under my nose. It is growing bolder.”
“What was it?” I pulled my knees up to my chest, but hissed. My left leg pulsed and quaked, blood oozing from the wound.
Elden’s eyes flew wide, and in an instant, he was on his knees before me. He tore his shirt off in one swift movement and pressed it into the wound.
I bit my lip to stop the scream that clawed up my throat at the raw impact. “Ow!”
Elden pulled his head back in surprise, almost dropping the shirt. “We need to stop the bleeding,” He said low, almost as if in apology.
“I know, but did you have to press so hard?” I tried and failed not to stare at the strong sharp planes of the king’s sculpted chest.
Confusion mingled with bewilderment in his expression. “And how else am I to stop the bleeding?”
I crossed my arms across my chest. “Well, you didn’t have to tear off your shirt like that.”
A slight smile teased the corner of his full lips. “Does the sight of my chest make you feel uncomfortable, Little Baker?”
I hmphed, “There is nothing you could do that would make me feel uncomfortable. As I told you before, you can control everything in my life, but not how I feel.”
“How interesting.” The Elf King’s eyes sparkled in the warm glow of the fire. “And if I were to touch your cheek ever so gently, like this?”
My stomach dropped, all pain in my leg forgotten, as the king raised one hand from where it pressed into my leg and brought it up, ever so slowly to cup the side of my face. “I see a pink blush spreading across your cheeks.”
Sweet Christmas.
Heat, not only spread across my cheeks, but through my neck and down my chest. The king’s eyes did not leave mine. Swirling galaxies of golden crystal shards. Curse my stupid attraction to this hateful elf.
I turned away and batted at his hand. “I feel nothing,” I lied. My heart raced as warmth continued to spread down to the tips of my toes which I curled.
“Nothing?” The Elf King’s hand stilled. “Are you sure, Little Baker?”
“Nothing.” I turned my gaze back to his and attempted to shoot my most fearsome scowl.
“But do you still feel the pain in your leg?”
“The what—?” I breathed, too afraid to move. Too afraid to break this strange connection with the Elf King.
“My distraction.” The king pulled back his hand, leaving a cool chill in its wake as a wicked smile slid across his face. “Is working.”
“Your distraction?” I folded my arms across my chest, heat blazing up from my neck and spreading across my cheeks. “I was not distracted for one second.”
The Elf King smiled, a rare side smile, yet his eyes continued to search mine, his eyebrows knit in concentration.
He opened his mouth as if to say something else.
I waited, barely breathing. Warmth spread throughout my kitchen as the stars winked outside the window in slow orbits.
I stared into the golden eyes of the king with a resolution not to get lost in their beauty.
Though his face held a certain softness, one that I didn’t think possible.
As if the white ice of his exterior held a molten core.
One of warmth and tenderness, if only I could crack through.
I hated him, and yet—he’d saved my life.
I felt a shift in my heart. A softening.
The Elf King worked his mouth, then cleared his throat and pulled back his gaze. It was as if I’d been doused with a bucket of ice water, to be without his gaze, as if that magic tether had snapped.
He held the cloth of his shirt firmly to my throbbing wound. “I must get help.”
Finding my voice again and wanting the king to tarry, I asked, “What was that creature?”
The Elf King pulled in a sharp breath and closed his eyes.
“It is a monster. It comes from the shadows. It has been a curse on these lands and,”—he swallowed, mouth twisting as if swallowing down a particularly nasty draught— “I must call the healer and hunt down the beast. Hold this here until I return.”
The king fled from the small cottage without a second glance, but I glimpsed his bare back as he ran.
Four long scratches marred his shoulder, fresh and bleeding freely.
But they were not the only scars. His back held several other scars from previous fights with the shadow beast. Long etches, and short, violent stabs of claw and teeth marred his body.
This was not the first time the Elf King had fought this foe. He may have won this battle, but if these scars were any indicator, he might not win this war.