Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Cerise’s grip tightened on Beloved and she charged at the smirking prince, flame coursing through her veins. His eyes widened and he raised his hands in surrender, the bear pelt sliding down his torso, revealing the deep V cut over his hips.
With a battle cry, Cerise swung Beloved, aiming an axe head at his bearded neck, stopping as the blade landed beneath his rugged jaw.
It sheared the long facial hair and nicked his royal throat.
Oberon sucked in a breath, angling his head away from the weapon, exposing more of his thick neck.
A line of blood ran over the skin of his larynx, down the sharp curve of his shoulder and rigid chest.
These Mirvadelan royals thought they could get away with anything.
Recruiting templars and clerics for their holy war, promising them a lifetime of glory, respect, and care for themselves and their families.
Instead, they were used as fodder against Azkanix and his armies and burned to cinders where they fell, preventing their corpses from transforming into their undead enemy.
There were too many dead, and time was too short for proper burials for everyone slaughtered, they said.
There were too many wounded, too little resources, to provide financial aid for all the warriors who sacrificed their sanity and bodies to protect the Kingdom of Sylvenath and its citizens.
There was too little for Cerise.
Not enough medical supplies for surgery on her knee when it shattered in the Battle for the Merathoraen Valley. All barracks were too full to allow her to stay. There was no space for her in refugee housing as the war pressed closer to the capital of Tyrnoraen, and there was nowhere she could stay.
There were too many injured, unemployed veterans to find her work.
There were too many victims in the war, and the royal family did nothing to help the wounded they created.
Whatever Oberon’s role, he was complicit in the crimes, in the abuses of his family upon the people. Even if he did not enact them like his brother, he did nothing to stop it. And that made him just as guilty.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have interfered with the necromancer. Let Oberon stay a bear. He deserved that confined existence where he could do no damage to anyone except himself.
Yet…the necromancer was destroying her forest. Her world. And Oberon had helped. But with the Mirvadelans, there was always another game being played. And here she was, being used by one of the royals once again.
Cerise’s knuckles whitened on Beloved, the heat of anger boiling her veins as her thoughts swirled.
Oberon swallowed, throat bobbing. Yet when Cerise looked into his eyes, they crinkled with mirth.
“Enjoying yourself, prince?” Cerise spat, pressing Beloved closer.
He tensed, breathing hard, his grin wavering. “What if I said yes?” Oberon’s voice was low yet strong, with a roughness that purred through Cerise’s body.
“Then I’d say you’re even more disgusting than the rest of your family, which seems impossible.”
“You must not know my family well, then,” he replied. “The truth is, this is a first for me. I’ve never had a blade this close to my neck before—”
“I find that surprising.”
The grin widened. “Let alone by such a fine-looking woman. I’m amazed to discover I like it.”
“Don’t mock me,” Cerise growled. She knew she wasn’t beautiful. Not with the scar that sliced through the right side of her face up to her scalp. And that was just the visible deformation. The rest of her body beneath the pelts and furs was just as ravaged from undead claws.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” A gentle snow fell, small, fluffy snowflakes melting on the prince’s skin, and a shiver wracked his body, the fluids from the shed bear form cooling.
Tufts of air gusted from their mouths as they stared at one another, Oberon stiffening as the cold seeped deeper into his skin.
If Eirwen was in her place, she’d let the prince wrap himself in the bear pelt, take him home, and warm him by the fire.
Give him a bowl of soup. Hear his story.
But Cerise was not Eirwen. They’d survived this long because of it.
“What do you want from us?”
“Nothing more than your help.”
Cerise huffed a disbelieving scoff. “What could two isolated peasants possibly offer a prince in the way of help?”
Oberon’s brow pinched. While he held her gaze, Cerise could almost see the wheels in his mind turning. Trying to determine which combination of lies would soothe her.
Red spread from beneath the bear’s skin covering Oberon’s legs, a slow trickle through the ice-crusted snow. Oberon adjusted the fur, revealing the lichboar’s gash on his bare, muscular thigh.
He pressed the pelt down hard on the wound. When his gaze returned to Cerise’s, she hated the pleading desperation shining within them.
Through lips purpling from the cold, he said, “Please, I don’t know what I’ve done to offend you, but somehow we’ve started on the wrong foot. Can we find somewhere warm, where I can stitch this wound and be clothed? I’ll explain everything, I promise.”
What was there to explain? A follower of Azkanix was amplifying the curse in the woods. She didn’t care how he encountered the necromancer or why he was transformed into a bear.
But why had he wandered to Cerise and Eirwen’s cabin, rather than return to Tyrnoraen? To the clerics who could erase the rune from his flesh and the populace who’d recognize those tainted pink eyes as those of the royal family immediately.
He must either be on the run from his family or trying to take advantage of Cerise and Eirwen’s kindness.
It’d been six years since they left Tyrnoraen, four since Azkanix cursed the world.
Cerise had no idea as to the conditions within the capital since the blight began.
For all she knew, the entire kingdom collapsed in on itself like a dying star.
Perhaps the prince had a hand in its demise and was chased from the city.
If she led him toward her home, those who wanted his head would be led straight to her and Eirwen.
Then, they’d be punished for harboring him.
If that was not the circumstance, then he was idiotic enough to leave the safety of Tyrnoraen.
Where he bumbled into the necromancer and somehow got himself transformed into a bear.
And now he expected Cerise and Eirwen to provide him comfort and safety, to help solve his problems, when they received no such thing from him, his family, or his kingdom.
If the royalty couldn’t be bothered by the issues of their subjects, then the subjects had no obligation to provide aid in return.
Their resources were limited enough. Cerise would not waste them on a selfish, stupid prince.
She pulled Beloved away from Oberon’s throat, the brief brightness of hope flickering in his gaze. He must’ve seen the stoic resolve in her face, for it quickly shuttered into surprise, disappointment, then concern.
“You’re going to leave me here? In the cold?”
“You have your old skin to wear. Should keep you warm enough to find shelter. A hollowed tree, perhaps?”
She turned her back on the shivering, naked prince, leaning on Beloved as she walked, each step a fresh agony that rippled through her leg.
“I’ll freeze out here!”
“Not my problem,” Cerise said.
A few steps away, she paused at a discolored, fuzzy slab of flesh on the ground.
The piece of runic skin she’d carved away from his bear shape.
She picked it up between her thumb and forefinger, ice crystals forming where the fluids froze.
Cerise tossed it over her shoulder and as it landed on the snow with a wet slap she called, “Forgot a piece.”
Cerise told Eirwen everything.
From the first rune she noticed, to her day with the bear destroying them, the fight with the dwarf, his lichboar, and finally the fateful reveal of what—or who—the bear truly was.
Eirwen’s pale sapphire eyes widened as Cerise’s tale progressed, yet she kept focused on her work, massaging Cerise’s knee and pulling out the cold.
As Cerise spoke, the image of Oberon stained her mind.
His toned, tall body, trembling as he knelt before her in the snow.
The way his mouth curled when Beloved was at his throat, the trickle of blood that outlined the curves of his neck.
The way his large hands clutched the bear pelt, the fur sliding through his fingers.
The way his thick, golden-brown hair cascaded around his face and over his shoulders, falling snow kissing his skin.
May Azkanix’s shattered soul take him for the curse he laid on her mind.
“You left him out there?” Eirwen gasped, incredulous.
“We have enough problems without adding a wayward prince to the list.”
“Perhaps if you’d let him explain, you’d discover he could be a help and not a hindrance. What do you plan on doing about the runes without his aid locating them?”
“I will add observation of them to my daily walk around our home. With vigilance, I can prevent it from creeping into our space.”
“What about the rest of the wood? The rest of the kingdom?”
“It can perish, for all I care. As long as we have enough to survive, that’s all that matters to me.”
Eirwen clicked her tongue, disapproving. “You would have us be the last living people in Sylvenath.”
“And why not? What good has any other person done us?”
“Perhaps we have been unfortunate in those who’ve crossed our path.
Yet, you have not met everyone. Certainly, there are those out there who deserve to live.
Children who are unlucky enough to only know this cursed world.
You have a chance to stop this growing evil, yet instead, with one bitter stroke, you’d damn them all to Azkanix’s curse. ”
Cerise scoffed, casting her gaze to the crackling fire as her heart wrenched.
“Just think,” Eirwen whispered, wrapping frigid fingers through Cerise’s hand, “what it would’ve meant if someone saved us when we were children.”
“It isn’t the same.” Cerise pulled her hand away and ran it through her hair, resting a fist beneath her cheek.
“Regardless, what difference could I make? I do not know all the rune locations. There’s no hope for me finding them all, nor catching up with the dwarf.
Best let the prince gather his remaining forces and storm the forest.”
Eirwen went silent, folding her hands in her lap. Her sister was skilled at changing Cerise’s mind, but she knew when to give up the debate. Still, Cerise’s heart ached when she glanced at her sister’s crestfallen face, firelight flickering across her delicate features.
“The prince will solve it, I’m sure. Meanwhile, I’ll ensure that we survive. That you survive. You’re the only person I’ve met in my whole life who deserves it.”
A sad smile spread on Eirwen’s face. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t others out there who do.”