4. The Portal in Nightmare Forest #3
She wonders if it’s selfish for her to run and if she should stay and try to free the others. Will Cornelius kill them when they find me missing?
When the door opens, Sapphira doesn’t have time to think. She moves quickly, rushing forward to grasp the sword. She unsheathes it, then swings it in a wide arc as she races toward the open door.
The woman jumps out of the way, and a stunned guard is caught in the chest, the blade sliding against a weave of metal.
Sapphira drives her shoulder into him and slashes the second guard’s arm as he reaches for his blade.
“Damn you!” a knight shouts through his heaume, only the slits of his eyes visible. Sapphira cries out as he jabs her in the side, lucky that the blade only grazes her.
She battles one of the men, who is big, burly, and slow in his sword work as she duels him. Sapphira fends off jabs from another before using the big man’s momentum to send him crashing into his partner, then ducks under a guard’s arm and takes off down the hall.
Sapphira’s glad for the training with Dorian and Fein. She bested them many times in two-on-one matches.
Breathing deep through the pain in her side, Sapphira runs full speed ahead. She knows the halls and travels them quickly, taking every shortcut.
Traversing the empty west side of the castle, which King Cornelius and his men have yet to occupy, Sapphira makes it outside. She startles a young stable boy as she appears, bloody and brandishing a sword.
The boy doesn’t speak. Wide-eyed, he watches her prepare her horse, Vixen. He gives a short bow when she swings onto her mount, awkwardly brandishing her sword as she maneuvers out of the castle grounds.
He glances around nervously before whispering loud enough for her to hear, “Godspeed, Crowned Princess, and safe travels.”
The sound of thundering hooves has Sapphira turning to watch as the guards pursuing her take off. She pats Vixen’s side, urging her faster.
“Come on, girl.”
Vixen speeds down the trail, her thunderous hooves cracking the ground and echoing out through the night as she whinnies and weaves away from the arrows flying past her.
Despite Vixen’s reputation for speed, the Sairin mounts are faster and quickly gaining on her, and Sapphira wonders how long Agath has been working with them to coordinate this.
Has Agath been sitting around for months, years even, planning to take my throne?
Sapphira wonders. Or, was it the plan all along, plotted from the minute my parents died?
She’s sick at the thought and all the betrayal.
An arrow whistles past Sapphira’s head as loose braids and curls fall around her shoulders and back, swishing as she ducks and dodges.
She has never taken Vixen out of the castle grounds and isn’t a great rider, but she’ll have to think of something fast to get the Sairin off her tail.
She has no idea what she’ll do once she gets out of Dansui or where she’ll go.
She hasn’t left the castle in years and has no plan for this sort of thing.
A well-shot arrow nicks Vixen’s flank, and she whinnies long and loud, stumbling over her own feet as she goes down hard.
Sapphira is thrown from her back. The enemies’ horses come to surround her as she rolls into the grass and brambles, getting cut up by the rocks and thorns. She cries out as she comes to a stop at the edge of the jungle, and a sharp stick jutting up from the ground pierces her thigh.
Weapons and angry men stare her down, arrows aimed as they climb from their horses. Sapphira looks frantically around for her sword, her fingers closing over the hilt as she reaches for it.
There is nowhere to go. Sapphira is surrounded by enemies at her front and a jungle at her back—Nightmare Forest.
As a girl, she heard many scary tales about what roams those woods, especially in the black of night. Her parents forbid her from entering. They said nothing but death and dismemberment waited for her in the jungle’s depths. She shivers.
But what will these men do to her if they catch her? She doesn’t know what King Cornelius has planned for her and her power, but it could be worse than she even imagines.
Soldiers close in, and Sapphira knows death will be her fate either way. Dorian’s and Fein’s words echo in her head. Get away. Live .
The king knows my secret; if he gets his hands on me, he’ll want to use my valuable blood to make powerful, unstoppable heirs. I can’t let that happen.
Sapphira makes her choice. She grits her teeth and scrambles to her feet, a groan ripped from her throat at the pain as she keeps low and turns and runs into the forest. She hobbles, clenching her teeth against the pain as she weaves through the dense trees, thankful for the men’s heavy armor slowing them down.
The trees are a maze, and the forest is dark and cold. Sapphira jumps at the terrifying sound of wailing souls and swears she sees shadows moving through the dark in her peripheral vision.
She doesn’t stop to listen or focus on the shifting shadows, even as pain burns through her thigh and an arrow grazes her hip and thickest part of her arm. She can’t.
But she isn’t watching her feet either.
The ground is a trap; twisted roots trip her up, and vines overhead snag her. The soldiers are also getting swallowed up by the jungle, the sound of clanking metal echoing as they knock their knees together and stumble to the ground.
Sapphira runs with the men on her tail. The suffocating dress Cornelius put her in is tearing, jewels scattering to the forest floor, and her long hair is tangling and dragging against branches as she comes upon a giant tree.
In the forest, pierced by arrows and hunted like a dog. I muse over the irony. This is the freedom I wanted—the wish I cast on every shooting star and every birthday candle. I asked to be freed from wandering the halls of an empty palace like a haunting apparition.
The tree’s trunk is as wide around as half a dozen men lying head to toe.
As she passes, the ground tries to grab her, roots reaching up like distorted hands.
So focused on getting free, Sapphira doesn’t notice the massive slope.
When an arrow lodges in her leg, she falls back, tumbling hard down the hill.
At the bottom, she lies, staring up at the wine-dark sky.
Her chest heaves, and her body aches all over. Footsteps surround her.
“Get up,” Sapphira says to herself. “Live. Live.”
She hobbles to her feet, wondering why she fights as she picks up her sword before the ground can swallow it.
She clutches it hard as she takes on four men alone. She isn’t sure what happened to the others—whether they got lost or were taken by the woods.
Swords and steel clash, echoing through the branches and toward the evening sky. Sapphira grows tired as slashes tear at her body from all sides. The men shout things at her, but she can’t hear most of the words. She only knows that they accuse her of the loss of their men.
The passage of time is a strange friend, familiar and twisted at once.
Sapphira knows it, but it wears a different face than it did when she was a child.
Once as fast as a racehorse, now it is as slow and meandering as a lazy river.
It moves even slower now that she is close to death. The world around her seems to go still.
Bleeding out fast and smiling maniacally, Sapphira roars at the sky. “Is this a cruel joke?” she shouts. “Is this the freedom you’ve granted me?”
Needles sting up her arms, and her arms go numb. Ice shoots from her hands without her ordering it, freezing the closest men as frost covers the grass below and leaves above. She stares in shock for a moment, then smiles. If I have to go out, at least I’ll bring them with me.
“Monster!” one knight cries.
She stumbles back after a jab pierces her side, and Dorian’s wooden star tumbles from Sapphira’s dress, rolling along the ground.
Her foot catches on a hole or fissure hidden along the ground. Her ankle twists, and her eyes widen as she falls downward into the forest floor.
The last thing she sees are the stunned faces of soldiers above her as she is devoured by the earth.