Chapter Eleven
Dietan
“I’m an idiot.”
After my foot sinks into what feels like the fiftieth hole I’ve encountered, drenching me up to the knee in freezing mud, I’m ready to admit that I’ve made a mistake.
Why didn’t I listen to Aren? She warned me I’d find my death out here in the forest all alone.
But my pride wouldn’t let me give up. Desperation, too, if I’m being honest with myself.
Every inch of me is filthy, and the rain hasn’t relented. I’m starving and frozen half to death. I curse the heavens as I pull myself out of the hole and curse the barmaid as well. Damn her and her common sense.
Back home in Loegria, rain hardly lasts more than a few minutes at a time, the weather changing almost as quickly as a petulant child’s moods.
But it’s a whole different beast in Alarice—a merciless, endless downpour.
That the land hasn’t completely flooded by now seems a miracle.
After Aren pointed me in the right direction, I consulted the map a helpful townsperson drew for me the day before.
“It’s on the other side of the wood, just beyond the Halved Hill.
Her hut sits overlooking the gully—you can’t miss it. ”
“Can’t miss it, my ass,” I grumble to myself.
The forest feels unending, densely packed with great oak trees and firs, but it provides little cover.
I find shelter under the dripping canopy of a nearby tree and hunker down to gather my strength.
I hate the forest. I hate the trees. I hate the mud, and I hate the rain. I hate Evandale. I hate myself.
My teeth chatter as I fumble in my cloak for the map once more, but it, too, is covered in mud. I try to wipe it clean with trembling fingers, but I smear the ink, turning the rivers and borders into one great stain.
I crumple the map and toss it into a puddle. I groan, all caution about kingdom secrets and military espionage washed away by the storm. Surely everyone will start to wonder where I’ve gone.
My lie about a stomachache will only hold for a day or so. Loyal Jared even volunteered to create a distraction, though I cautioned him not to rush into a real proposal for my—and the kingdom’s—sake. Somehow, I don’t think he listened. Who’d have thought he’d fall so hard so fast?
Jared’s engagement celebrations will only keep everyone distracted for so long.
Soon, the people of Evandale will notice that no food enters my room, nor chamber pots leave it.
The maids will find my room empty, and then the townsfolk will come looking.
I shudder at the thought of them finding me lost and shivering in the woods, the truth of my mission exposed.
I’d die before I let that happen; although maybe then my father’s councilors can dig the Rings out of my corpse.
Come on, man. Get up. You can do this.
The sorceress’s cottage must be around here somewhere. Even though I can barely see through the rain, I’ve got to be heading in the right direction.
I haul myself to my feet, more mud than man, and trudge on, following the gentle downward slope of the forest floor. I tread carefully. One wrong step and I’ll end up in another mud hole—or worse, up to my neck in a sinkhole.
I don’t see any other creature, animal or human, as I walk. The only company I keep is picturing Aren trudging alongside me.
“I know, I know,” I say to my imaginary companion, whose condescending look is more than punishment enough. “I should have listened to you…”
My teeth chatter, and I might truly be going mad, especially if I’m comforting myself imagining Aren keeping me company.
The infuriating barmaid clearly finds me ridiculous, and I can’t disagree.
Most women would leap at the chance to comfort me in this state, but I can’t picture Aren giving me anything but lip. Maybe I’m dying of the chills.
I hear a second set of boots, then the snapping of twigs. I whirl around. But there’s nothing—only a thick mist rolling across the ground like a blanket, curling over tree roots and moss.
I must be hearing things. I try to shake it off, try to keep moving. I take another step, but there it is again—the sound of footsteps growing closer.
My heartbeat roars in my ears as I reach for the dagger I always keep on me. I peer into the thickening fog. I can barely see the trees around me now.
“Hello?” I call out. The mist seems to muffle my words.
The skin around the scars on my back tightens painfully. A distinct sense that I’m being watched raises every hair on my body.
Fear grips me, and I take off at a dead sprint, bolting through the trees, my lungs burning, my legs aching with the effort. Whatever is following me dogs my heels. I glance over my shoulder as the sound comes closer and closer, but all I see is fog.
Then I turn—and she’s in front of me.
Aren.
I must be hallucinating. The cold has made my fanciful thoughts appear real as day.
“Slow down, you dolt,” the vestige admonishes, panting heavy.
My gods, it even sounds like her.
The swirls of her breath curl around her face in the damp air, mesmerizing me further. She looks nothing short of ethereal in the fog. A sorceress, nay, enchantress, all her own.
“You just gonna stand there and look at me like a carp?” She then mumbles something about “idiot men” under her breath, and I begin to suspect this may be the actual Aren.
“Aren? Is it really you?”
“Nice to make Your Highness’ acquaintance once more,” she says, the extra flourish in her curtsey accentuating her sarcasm.
This is definitely real Aren and not some figment of my hungry, delirious imagination.
“I should have listened to you and taken you with me,” I blurt.
“Ahh, you’ve met hindsight and how she’s a fickle maiden, huh?”
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you think?”
I was about to ask her if she was lost, too, when I realize. She’s here because she was looking for me. She was worried about me. Huh. “So why’d you come find me?”
“When you weren’t at the engagement announcement…” So Jared did go through with it. “I suspected you were woefully lost. I couldn’t very well lose the Crown Prince under my watch, could I? You know—country, duty, honor? I’m told those things matter.”
“I’m touched,” I say, pressing a hand to my heart. “You actually care.”
Aren lets out a huff that blows a stray piece of hair out of her face. Her usual annoyance is clouded with obvious concern, which makes my heart clench in my chest.
“We need to get you back so I can open the pub. People are going to want to celebrate the engagement.”
A pit opens in my stomach. But I haven’t yet found Veteria. Or better yet, she hasn’t found me. Aren’s words echo in my head again. It’s obvious the sorceress doesn’t want to be discovered. Any shred of hope I had vanishes on the back of the fog.
“Come now. Let’s get a move on,” Aren admonishes, but I can’t seem to move my feet. It’s not the mud keeping them mired but the disappointment.
“But I still need to see Veteria…” I trail off.
Aren stops and turns toward me, a look akin to pity overtaking her striking features. I must look pathetic.
“I told you—” she starts to say.
“She will only be found if she wants to be. I know,” I interrupt, feeling utterly sorry for myself and my doomed situation.
Aren stares unblinking at me until she throws her hands up in the air in frustration.
“Fine!” she says in a huff. “I’m not supposed to do this.” She wags a finger at me.
She twirls around, but the bottom of her skirt is so caked in heavy mud that the fabric tangles around her boots. “Veteria! We need your help!” she hollers at the wind. “He might be royalty, but he’s not entirely awful!”
What a ringing endorsement.
“Please!” she pleads with the gray sky.
“This is useless.” I brush past Aren and begin to walk toward what direction I believe will lead back to town when an old woman draped in animal pelts, her eyes as white as pearls, blocks my path.
She holds up her hand, and I’m suddenly thrown backward through the air.
I land flat on my back in the mud, and everything goes black.
…
The first thing I feel is pain. My body aches, my muscles stiff and sore. Light glows through my closed eyelids. As I wake, the pain sets in deeper, rousing me further. Slowly, I crack open my eyes and see a roaring fire. I’m lying on a warm cot, covered in soft furs.
“You’re alive,” a craggy voice says, and I nearly jump out of my own skin.
“Sadly,” says a familiar one.
The old woman from before, her hunched form barely distinguishable from a pile of furs, sits stooped near the fire.
Her milky-white eyes peer sightlessly at the flames.
Aren is next to her holding a mug of some steaming beverage.
Somehow, my clothes are clean and dry instead of wet and covered with mud.
Veteria is a small woman, which means that Aren helped disrobe me. I can’t help but blush at the thought.
“I don’t care for uninvited guests,” Veteria says, her head tipped to the side. “I don’t know your intentions.” She says the second part with an eye toward Aren, who shamefully stares into her mug like she’s being chastised by her mother.
“Madam, I mean you no harm, I assure you,” I say. I watch her carefully, wondering just how much she can see, whether she’s truly blind. She continues to stare, unblinking.
I take a moment to get my bearings. I’m in a one-room cabin, the fire the only source of light.
Rain batters the window behind heavy curtains drawn tight against the glass.
There are little tables covered in jars and pots.
Covered containers of fruits and vegetables line the shelves.
Dried herbs hang in bundles from the exposed wooden beams, and a leaning bookcase sags under a wealth of dusty tomes.
A fresh loaf of baked bread sits steaming on the table, hot out of a cast-iron skillet. My stomach growls, betraying my hunger.
It’s just the three of us except for a black-and-gray cat curled up at my feet.
It opens one orange eye, studies me, then closes it again and goes back to sleep.
I look again at the great variety of dried herbs.
They can’t all be local. Someone has spent a great deal of time gathering them and has the resources to procure rarities from afar.
Veteria puts another log into the flame and stirs the fire. Her silence has me on edge.
She finally speaks. “I have seen you in my visions. You are the cursed prince of Loegria. The one who is doomed to death, and all of Albion with him.”