Chapter 8
Lyra
“Mam! Pap!” I screamed and rushed for the small farmhouse.
There in the back doorway my mother appeared. Frantic, eyes wild, terrified. For a moment the Norns of fate gave us a final glimpse.
“Lyra! Run, litla! Run and do not look back.”
“Mam! No!”
A shadow filled the doorway behind my mother. A man. He raised a blade. Mam screamed. A hand covered my eyes and pulled me back.
But I heard it all. The sick sound of steel cutting through flesh.
Arms wrapped around my middle, yanking me away. I thrashed and kicked and clawed. It was the Draven heir. He clung to me, holding my back to his body. The Draven prince was tall and strong, just like Pap.
His eyes weren’t as vibrant and gold as his brother’s, the boy who made my skin feel strange and my insides flip about.
Another prince. I did not know Dravenmoor had two princes. Now, they both kept me from my mother and father.
“Let me go!” Tears sprang to my eyes. My voice cracked.
“Roark, go!” The heir shouted. “They’re already here.”
Panic took me from behind. The prince was dragging me away. No. No.
“Mam!” I sobbed and slumped in his arms.
The prince only tightened his hold and dragged me deeper into the woods. Screams, terror, more sounds of breaking wood and shattering glass rattled in my head. Flames danced along the sod rooftop. The goats and hogs tried to escape their pens.
I did not see my mother and father again before too many trees stood between us and I was pulled, screaming and wailing, into the darkness of the wood.
An ache bloomed over my head when we stopped. The eldest prince hid us behind a pile of heavy stones. “Girl, look at me. I need you to keep quiet. Look at me.”
A gentle hand curled around mine again. The same soft warmth filled my blood, as comforting as when Mam wrapped warm furs around my shoulders and played with my hair until I fell asleep every night.
The young prince. My prince. He sat beside me, clutching my hand.
“Jorvans,” he whispered. “It was Jorvans.”
“My mam?” I hardly heard the words.
He blinked away. No mistake, a boy did not know what to say when he knew the dreary truth. I did not want to cry, did not want to give us up, but the pain of knowing the Jorvan Stav Guard had gotten to my folk because of me was like a hot knife carving across my chest.
I let my head fall back and I shrieked into the night.
Arms encircled me again. The eldest prince held me against his chest, muffling my sounds. His palms trapped my head.
Somewhere behind me, my prince shouted. “Nivek, stop. No, she won’t… she won’t remember me.”
“Then it will keep her safer,” the elder of the two snapped.
Murky thoughts filled my head. Like a blanket of night coating the pain of Mam and Pap. Shadows covered the fear until I could breathe easier. Calm, like a cool morning, took hold. My head fell forward against a chest, a man, I thought. I could hardly recall much of anything.
“Nivek,” a boy’s voice whispered. “Don’t make her forget me.”
“If you have a soul bond, not even my soul shadows can hide it forever, brother. Perhaps one day you’ll find your way back to each other.”
I did not understand what the man meant, but I had no time to think long on it before sleep pulled me into the dreamless, murky black.
Mists tangled around knobby branches and the sting of lingering heat from the flames still burned my eyes. I blinked against the ache. Why was there so much smoke in every breath?
“Keep those closed.” Leather wrapped fingers brushed over my lashes. “Don’t let anyone see the silver in those eyes, girl. Hear me?”
The voice was hoarse and rough, older, but not as deep as my pap’s. Why did it sound familiar?
“We get snatched, we’re dead. Maybe we shouldn’t have done it.” A new voice, a boy’s that was young enough it cracked and squeaked, uncertain if it was yet a man’s tone or still a child’s.
“Quiet. We’re here now, and we’re seeing it through,” snapped the first. “Get yourself into the damn shadows and stay down. Go. Go.”
A protest from the second followed, but in the end the scrape of boots faded into the briars of the wood and were lost in the mists. What was happening?
I shifted and whimpered, muscles ached from running. A memory flickered through the fog in my mind. Run. Do not look back.
Mam. She screamed at me.
I’d left her. Why did I leave her?
“Stop fidgeting, godsdammit.” The man who held me tightened his hold around me.
I went still. An ache carved through my heart. Something happened tonight. Why could I not recall the truth of it? Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew whatever happened was because of those horrid, cursed silver scars in my eyes.