Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Cerise knew a blizzard raged outside the tent before she opened her eyes.
Even with the absorber, the glacial pressure of the storm pressed stiff coldness into her leg, as if it were made of old mountain stone.
She kept her eyes shut, listening to the slap of wind and icy snowflakes against the tent.
After days without pain relief, her body refused to move.
Her muscles strained from keeping her upright, the area around her knee bulging as it swelled, draining her energy as her body fought off the aches.
Only a few more days. If things went well.
They’d catch up to Vraethik, kill him, and return home.
There she’d have a long, hot bath. Eirwen would pull out the chill from her body while she rested beside the crackling hearth, a steaming bowl of broth in hand.
She’d take a whole day to rest and whittle.
And the prince would return to Tyrnoraen, with no glory, no sign that he’d saved the world from rapid destruction.
A strange heaviness settled in her heart at realizing how little time was left in his company.
She barely knew the man, yet there was something comforting about him.
Warmth exuded from him, and not just from his body heat.
His presence at her side made her feel a little less tense, as if she didn’t need to constantly be looking over her shoulder.
She opened her eyes to find the prince staring at her.
Without Beloved between them, they’d grown closer throughout the night.
His face was less than a hand’s span away from her own, the soft blue light of the absorber casting silver streaks in his golden-brown hair.
It reflected in his pink eyes, not dissimilar from the stars he cherished.
She knew she should move away. That his touch would only ignite her horrors.
But when he was this close, his face took up her entire field of vision, and she didn’t want to look anywhere else.
“What came first, Mirvadel’s blessing or the eye color?” Cerise asked, voice cracking with dryness.
Amusement flickered in the prince’s gaze, his lips twitching. “You’ve heard the tale, then?”
“I’m more inclined to call it a myth, but yes.”
“It very well may be.” The low grumble of early morning in Oberon’s voice sent a pleasant coil through Cerise’s body.
“Whatever the truth is occurred so long ago that we don’t know what happened.
Perhaps Mirvadel blessed us, a gift that led us to found Tyrnoraen and also changed our eye color.
Or maybe it is a quirk of my family that they twisted into a Celestial legend to make it seem less odd. ”
“It is still odd, even if Celestial.”
“True, even I have been taken aback by their difference at times,” the prince said. His gaze grew serious. “I am glad I get to look in your eyes, rather than mine.”
Cerise scoffed. Her hazel eyes were nothing special, besides the scar that ran over one of them.
“It’s true. They remind me of trees. I mean how they once were, of course. Green leaves over brown bark. They’re beautiful.”
She wanted to tell him how stupid that sounded, but the words caught in her throat.
His breath brushed against her skin, and when his tongue darted over his lips, her gaze flicked to them.
How gentle yet firm they looked. A brief curiosity of what it’d feel like to press them against her own flickered across her mind.
When she returned her gaze to his, she caught him staring at her mouth as well, the pace of his breathing quickening.
“Cerise, please believe me when I say whatever rumors you’ve heard about me aren’t true.
Yes, I’ve had my fair share of…dalliances, but I’ve never been so blithe or indifferent as it seems people think.
I don’t go around fucking everything that walks.
I take matters of the heart seriously. And am rather particular in my bedmates. ”
“Is that why you never married?” she asked, despite herself.
It didn’t matter whether he was as modest as he claimed or as rakish as the rumors.
Whether he was married or not and why. He was just a prince who’d return to his kingdom.
Yet still, a part of her thawed around him, a tender piece that wanted to bask in the glow of his body and words.
“No, that was a welcome side effect of the curse. I was engaged to a princess from Estryalath, but then Azkanix died and all communication between other kingdoms stopped.” He sighed.
“Perhaps the rumors stemmed from my sneaking out and partying when I was younger. But those evenings rarely ended in random women’s beds, or them in mine.
And they are long in the past. In truth, you’re the first woman to catch my eye in many, many years. You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met.”
He lifted a hand, as if to place it on her cheek.
She blinked, and in that brief blackness, his hand transformed into the decayed claw that split her face.
Cerise flinched away and sat, cool air swirling around her as the distance grew between herself and the prince.
Reckless, to let him so close. Stupid, to dream of a touch that’d only bring nightmares.
“Cerise, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“It’s fine,” she said too quickly, running a hand through her short, tangled hair, flipping it over to the side. She gritted her teeth, pushing against the aching, swelling skin over her knee. She’d momentarily forgotten about it while gazing at the prince like an idiot. “We need to get going.”
She pulled the layers from beneath her, once again draping them over herself. The prince hesitated, but soon she heard the rustle of clothes as he did the same. Once bundled, she pushed herself to her feet, hunching as she slipped outside, leaning on Beloved.
Wind whipped against the trees, branches creaking and black, dead flakes of wood hurtling along with the snow. The storm thrashed against her clothes, threatening to pull down her hood. She tightened it and squinted in the blazing white, trying to keep the flurry out of her eyes.
Behind the howling wind and thuds of dislodged wood cascading against other trees, the intermittent pops of Azkanix’s bursting bones erupted.
A deep mumble came from behind her, and she turned to find the prince standing near her shoulder.
Only his vibrant eyes were showing beneath the winter clothes, brightened by the blinding white blizzard.
Another deep mumble rumbled from the prince, and he stared at her expectantly.
“What?” she shouted, voice swallowed by the wind.
He pulled his scarf down. “The breaking bones—Vraethik may have carved them, like yesterday’s.”
Dread settled heavy and nauseating in Cerise’s gut.
If those distant, erupting bones were carved with the same explosion rune they experienced the day prior, this section of the forest was doomed.
Even if the snowpack slowed the curse’s progression into the ground, the wind could whip it into other trees, propel them with enough force to hurtle them through the snow and into the earth.
As the curse seeped from the bones, the snow would melt, and it’d pierce the soil eventually.
They needed to move fast.
They took down camp while Cerise pretended not to hear the prince’s command that he do it by himself.
There wasn’t time to waste, and her knee couldn’t get much worse than it already was.
How they’d catch up to Vraethik when her leg was as heavy and stiff as the Merathel Mountains, she didn’t know. But she had to try.
The blizzard rampaged. Icy snow slashed against their clothes and pricked their faces like needle points.
Wind threatened to topple them, hurtling from the west at dizzying speeds.
With each laborious step, a shock of sharp, aching agony reverberated from her knee through her leg.
It distracted her from the cold that pressed through her many layers, the slices of frost against the flesh around her eyes.
There was only pain.
Searing through her joint. Blazing through her leg.
Taking over all sensation.
Her leg weakened and wobbled, quivering like cursed tree branches beneath the storm. Even Beloved wasn’t enough to keep her upright. It couldn’t find a firm place through the fresh, unpacked snow, and she couldn’t lean on it.
By late morning, her knee gave up. With one step, it trembled and ached, and with the next, it refused to catch her weight, instead collapsing on itself with a loud snap. Cerise crumbled to the ground, face meeting the frigid, icy snow.
She pushed her fists into the ground, gritting her teeth as she tried to pick herself up. She couldn’t fail now. Not when Vraethik threatened the fragile existence she’d created with Eirwen. Not when she’d learned that the prince might’ve found a way to reverse the curse.
While her torso would lift and her right leg could curl, when she shifted her left leg, a blinding pain like a lightning strike shot through her, and she’d fall once again.
Distantly, the prince’s voice shouted, but she couldn’t understand what he said.
He crouched beside her and yelled, “I’m going to pick you up, okay?”
She pushed her torso up one more time, arms shaking with the strain. But she couldn’t get her legs beneath her, couldn’t get to her feet on her own. Cerise grunted in acceptance even as her body tensed, preparing for the prince’s contact.
Strong, thick arms looped under hers. As if she weighed nothing, they lifted her back up. The prince draped her left arm over his shoulder, and he wrapped his own around her back, holding her tight.
“You can do this.” His yell was a whisper beneath the storm, but his words bolstered her heart as his strength supported her body. “Only a little farther.”