Chapter 10 Scarlett
SCARLETT
When the fog rolls in the next night, I am ready.
My decision has been made, and now I must wait for the opportunity to present itself. The moment he appears, I will surprise him. At no point did the bars straighten themselves out. I can still break free, and the Headless Horseman will pay for his mistake.
The fog deepens, and from within it rises a full moon. The glowing orb casts a blue light onto the ground below. The mist snaps and flows like waves against a rocky shore. From its depths, a new scene is revealed. Two naked bodies are tangled together atop a blanket in my father’s stables.
Long pale fingers trace his heart-shaped birthmark, while his tan hands slide through silvery–blonde hair, resulting in a throaty sigh. It is Krane and I again, the age we were a month ago. Not this night, I think. I don’t know if I can bear watching it.
I grip the bars in my hands, the cold metal biting into me.
“My moon.” Krane smiles before taking the other me’s lips in a tender kiss.
It may only be a month ago, but the difference between the two of us is shocking. I looked so alive back then. My body had filled out in the form of full breasts and round hips. My pale skin was luminous, and my hair was thick and long. A far cry from the starving wraith I was now.
“My sun.” She breaks their kiss and rubs her forehead against his pink shoulder. “Seems as if you got too much of it today.”
Her lips find his birthmark and place a kiss atop it. It was the last sunny day I can recall Broken Cliff having. Since Krane was killed, we have lived in darkness. The sky blighted us in punishment for killing someone so wonderful.
While the love in her eyes is real, there is a trepidation in her movements.
Her smile is brittle as she stares up at him, and I know all too well what’s plaguing her.
My father had come to me shortly before I left to find Krane in the barn.
I was a fool to think that making it to twenty-five unmarried was a good sign.
He had caught the two of us together less than a month before this.
I was not ignorant of the rumors swirling around Krane and me.
We were not nearly as discreet as we should’ve been.
However, whispers and rumors were one thing, and my father discovering us with his own eyes was quite another.
I had foolishly hoped that he ignored the gossip because he believed in our love. How wrong I had been.
I shouldn’t have said anything, I will past me not to speak. To keep this news to herself and leave with Krane this instant.
I am powerless to do anything but watch the end of us unfold.
“Krane,” past me whispers. “There is something I have to tell you.”
I grip the bars, and bile swims up my throat as I watch her relay the news to him. I lived it, and yet somehow seeing it from this angle is worse. I hear her say that she is engaged to Earl Bram. My father was forcing the match, and in one month, the two of them would be married.
“No,” Krane snarls. The impressive muscles of his abdomen tighten as he sits up. “That cannot be.”
Past me rises beside him, gripping his arm and pleading with her eyes.
“I refused my father, Krane. Told him I would rather die than marry the earl.” She laughs without humor. “He cared little for my opinion on the matter. The price they’re willing to pay for me is too high.”
“You cannot marry him. You are already married to me, Scarlett.”
My heart trips over itself. The memory of our small ceremony comes rushing back.
The two of us had snuck away into the Whispering Woods with a ribbon and a knife.
Our palms had bled, and our fates were sealed in the old way.
Our vows of forever were shared during each fevered kiss and teeth-chattering moan.
The cut on my palm was barely a scar anymore, but it had meant everything. It still does.
“Our handfasting will not sway my father. He will take it as the slight it is.”
Krane drags a hand through his red hair, muscles tensing.
“Then leave with me. Now.”
He grips her face in his hands. She cradles his hands, her smile turning sad.
“And go where?”
“Anywhere.” Desperation laces each of his words.
“Go with him,” I whisper between the bars. “Be free.”
Krane presses on, my words swallowed up by the fog. I cannot change what is about to come.
“I have money. As long as we are together, it doesn’t matter.”
Tears fall heavily down her cheeks.
“Life would be difficult. Not to mention the duke would come after us. Probably enlist some of the king’s guards to help.”
Krane kisses her fiercely. I still feel the searing press of his lips. The last ones we’d ever shared. I will my past self to savor it.
“Let them come,” he says. “I’d rather die than be without you.”
A smile twists the lips of me from a month ago.
“Now who’s the dramatic one?”
He kisses her again, nipping at her lower lip.
“Still you.”
Pulling apart, she tucks a longer piece of red hair behind his ear.
“Let me think on it, okay? Give me some time to form a plan.”
My voice grows hoarse as I scream at her not to go.
I urge them both to get dressed, steal one of my father’s horses, and never look back.
They don’t hear me. Not as they both rise and share a parting kiss.
Brushing the hay from her hair, I love you’s are shared one final time.
Krane watches her as she slips from the barn and into the quiet main house.
“Go, Krane,” I sob. “Leave me behind. Save yourself.”
He would never do that. Krane was a good man, kind and loving.
The kind of man my father could never dream of being.
He was honest, and that honesty got him killed.
Krane put his trust in the wrong people—me, my father.
While I may not have killed him outright, my love for him caused his death—my arrogance in wanting us to have the life I always envisioned left him vulnerable.
He loved me and my father, and in the end, we both betrayed him. Krane had thought that if he approached my father, man to man, and asked for my hand, he would hear him out. Honesty and true love weren’t going to fill my father’s coffers, nor would they sign over new lands to him.
We were always doomed to meet this end, cursed by one man’s ambition.
The memory swirls into the fog. The tendrils lick over Krane until he is gone. From its depths, a new setting emerges. I watch as Krane, dressed in his simple clothes, approaches Crow’s Claw Manor in the dark. He looks both ways before opening the door, trepidation in each muscle.
Unease grips me as I watch Krane walk along the front room. He pauses outside my father’s study. Voices echo deep from within. Three to be exact. My stomach sinks.
After I left Krane in the stables, I slipped in through the back of the house. I had no idea they were there that night.
The oak door to my father’s study pushes open, and there they are. My father, clutching a glass of brandy beside a roaring fireplace adorned with a proud stag’s head, and Duke Marc of Greenbrooke and his son Bram. All three sets of eyes turn towards Krane as he enters the room.
His simple clothes are a far cry from the gaudy embellishments emblazoned on the three men surrounding him.
Krane stands out amongst them despite that.
He is taller than the duke and his son, nearly a head taller than my father.
He is stronger than all of them. His beauty easily eclipses that of the awful prince.
The scent of smoke and pine dances throughout the dungeon. The heat of the fire licks along my body. Krane bows to them, ever the dutiful servant. My stomach rolls at the subservience. He was always seen as beneath them when he was better than all of us.
“Krane,” my father says with surprise. “What are you doing here?”
Krane’s cheeks heat. It would be unusual for him to be in my father’s study, especially without invitation. Not to mention the last time they were face-to-face, he had been inside of me. Still, he clears his throat and straightens his spine.
“Sir, I wanted to—”
“Offer congratulations to the duke and his son. Earl Bram and Scarlett will make their union formal in a month.”
There is a glint in her father’s eye I don’t miss. This was his way of giving Krane an out. If he had agreed to his words and left, my father would’ve let him live. At least he would’ve let him live long enough to escape. But Krane was too headstrong—too in love to heed the subtle warning.
I see it all the same, and my stomach rolls.
Krane shakes his head, squaring his shoulders once more.
“I came to speak about that with you.” He swallows loudly. “I wanted to ask you—beg you—to wed her to me instead.”
There is silence for a moment. The three men look at each other before breaking into riotous laughter. My father nearly doubles over as he wipes tears from his eyes. Both the duke and his son look smug. Color floods Krane’s cheeks and stains the tops of his ears.
I want to go to him and shield him from their cruelty. My heart breaks for him—how earnest his plea was and the callous laughter it was met with. I should’ve killed my father when I had the chance.
Krane weathers their indignation, never backing down.
“Wed her to you?” my father asks once he catches his breath. “Have you lost your mind? A poor stable boy? A bastard with no family name to speak of? What could you even possibly offer that would tempt me into giving you her hand?”
“I love her—have since we were children.” Krane braves my father’s cruel remarks. “We handfasted in the woods. She is already my wife.”
The laughter in the room dies like a candle being blown out. Something forbidding settles amongst the party. I can feel it from where I am trapped. Ice nails of apprehension claw down my neck.
“Richard,” Duke Marc hisses. “This will not do.”
My father licks his lips before draining the rest of his brandy. Whatever tenderness he felt towards Krane is gone. That glint in his eye deepens and lays bare the rotten soul he’s always possessed.
“No. No, it will not.”
My father walks over to Krane and claps him on the shoulder. My love is surprised but holds fast. With a sigh, my father shakes his head.
“Since you two decided to wed without my knowledge in the old way, then you will earn her hand in the same manner.” He squeezes Krane’s shoulder in his meaty fist. “You will have to prove yourself.”
Krane looks apprehensive but takes the bait.
“How?”
“Simple. By going into the Whispering Woods and locating the pumpkin used by the headless rider. I’m sure you know the stories.” Krane nods, and my father continues. “Bring it to me before dawn, and I will give my daughter to you. It will be a sign that the old gods have blessed your union.”
“Richard—”
My father holds up a hand to silence the duke.
“It is a folk tradition. One that shouldn’t be taken lightly.”
“Sir, isn’t the headless rider a legend? How will I—”
“If you wish to have my daughter, those are my demands that must be met.”
Krane still looks unsure, but I can see the hope in his green eyes.
He would do anything to have me. Even fall for my father’s ruse.
His betrayal is evident now. The part he played in Krane’s demise is larger than I ever thought.
To know he was the one who sent him into the woods—the room spins around me, and I grip the bars to keep upright.
“Go fast.” My father claps Krane on the shoulder again. “We’ll be waiting for you at the woods’ edge at dusk.”
“Thank you, sir. You won’t regret this.”
My father inclines his head as Krane rushes from the room. The fog swirls around the scene, twisting it and forming a new shape. The thick rows of trees loom behind Krane, who is already caked in dirt as he looks for the fabled pumpkin my father demanded. Dirt clings to his hair and clothes.
I have to stop this—stop him. This might be my last chance to do so.
I was going to wait for the Headless Horseman, but what if this is what I was meant to do instead?
This may be the only chance to free Krane from the creature’s grasp and let him finally have peace. If only I could save him from his fate.
“Krane,” I scream, reaching through the bars.
He travels deeper into the woods as I call his name over and over again. The fog swirls to keep up with his movements. His body gets swept further away from me as tendrils of mist encase him. My hand reaches forward and feels only damp air.
Without giving myself a chance to reconsider, I slip through the opening of the bars and rush forward. I dive into the thick fog, unable to see my hand in front of my face.
“Krane!’ I call. “Krane! Leave this place while you still can!”
My fingers find nothing but air as I rush deeper into the fog. I don’t know how far I run for, or even how it's possible. For a moment, I think I’ll be trapped in this unending fog forever. That is, until I hear the sound of thunderous hooves and two strong arms bracketing me.
“You cannot run from this,” the Headless Horseman snarls in my ear.
Green flames lick over my shoulder as I thrash against him. I buck against his hold, but there is nothing that can be done.
“Before the sun rises, you will see what you have done, and you will pay for it.”
The fog recedes, and the scene before me comes into view. The breath in my lungs freezes, and so do my movements. I scream. I don’t want to see this, but it can’t be stopped.
In this creature’s arms, I am powerless. All I can do now is weep.