Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Cerise’s eyes flew open, a heavy leg pressed against her own.
In the dark moment before her vision adjusted, she felt the weight of undead bodies pinning her to the ground.
She kicked the leg away, a surprised grunt coming from the body.
In another blink, her mind caught up with her reflexes, remembering she was no longer trapped beneath the exploded corpses but hiding from the perpetual cold in a tent with an unfortunately handsome and charming prince.
Whose leg had crept against her own while she was asleep, taking advantage of her unconsciousness to touch her, despite Cerise telling him to never, ever do so.
The second before he could launch upward, could dare to encroach upon her space again or slither away and use his royal tongue to persuade her he hadn’t meant to touch her, Cerise snatched Beloved and pressed the axe blade to his throat. She leaned over him, forcing him to stay on his back.
“What are you playing at?” she growled, ignoring the aching bend in her stiff knee as she crouched over the prince, his face a mask of surprise. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she made out the sweep of his hair on the ground, the hazy tiredness in his light eyes.
“What?” he replied, voice husky with sleep.
“You were touching me.”
The prince blinked several times. “Not on purpose. I must’ve shifted in my sleep, trying to get closer to more warmth. I promise, I’d never purposefully touch you without permission.”
Their breaths mingled while they stared at one another, Cerise searching his face for a lie.
Her hair draped down, brushing against his cheeks.
Heat radiated from every part of him, relaxing the nighttime chill in her skin and bones, enticing her to remain near.
Her pained leg wobbled, and a low grumble escaped the prince as Beloved nicked his flesh.
He raised a hand to his face, laying fingers over his nose and mouth in his bear’s promise that he meant no harm.
Cerise kept his gaze for several moments, waiting for him to break.
To laugh. Tease. Fight. But he remained in that submissive position, staring right back at her, unflinching.
With a sigh, she rolled back onto her bottom, stretching out her leg.
She pushed the shaft of Beloved through the tent flaps, a light purple dawn breaking.
“We better get moving,” she said, using Beloved to push to her feet, knee crackling and popping.
“That sounded painful.”
“It’s fine,” she grumbled, exiting the warm tent into the frigid winter morning.
The compacted ramp was now ice slick. She tested it with her good leg but knew it was too slippery for her to maintain her balance with her weakened knee.
“Need a hand?” the prince asked from behind her, peeking his head out of the tent.
“No.” Cerise pushed on the waist high pile of snow until it didn’t depress farther, then rolled over the edge to the top.
The prince handed her the snowshoes, and she rose to her feet with another ripping pain through her knee.
She’d never gone this long without Eirwen pulling out the persistent chill, soothing the pressure of movement.
The prince must’ve noticed her grimace, for he asked, “Is there truly nothing else that can be done for your pain? What about placing the absorber beside it?”
“I’ve tried. It won’t work. My flesh is too warm for it to sense the cold within. And the artifact itself is too cold to lay on my skin. It’ll freeze me. Make it worse.”
He frowned. “Your sister mentioned Idle Lily’s Honey. What about that? Did you bring some?”
“I will never touch that accursed plant,” Cerise spat. “I’ve lived with this ailment long enough. I know how to cope, so quit pestering me about it. Pack up the tent and let’s get going.”
The prince didn’t respond, though the furrow in his brow told her he was still contemplating how to help. Yet he obeyed her order and soon they were once again following Vraethik’s trail of runes through the cursed woods.
Not one-hundred paces into their trek, the prince asked, “Why will you not use Idle Lily’s Honey?”
Memories flashed across Cerise’s mind. The clerics of Vhypael’s Temple, forcing it upon the child to make them compliant.
The clerics who were once abandoned children themselves, immobile and staring into the ceiling, mouths slack and open while the smoke of Zyrdriel’s Mercy filled their lungs.
The injured templars and soldiers spoon fed Zyrdriel’s Honey to ease their moans and cries, yet even when their wounds healed, their minds were broken, unable to function without the plant’s “gift” in their veins.
“Not all are consumed by it,” the prince said, reading her thoughts.
Cerise ground her teeth. “It is my business, and mine alone, what I choose to put in my body and why.”
“I am simply curious why you choose to suffer if you do not have to.”
“Why don’t you tell me why you care so much?”
“I do not like to see people in pain,” the prince murmured. The resigned defeat in his voice tugged on Cerise’s hardened heartstrings.
“I’ve seen it harm more than help,” she answered. “I won’t risk becoming the living dead. The world has seen enough of the undead and their kind.”
“Fair point.”
As the sun shifted overhead, so too did the clouds, releasing a light dusting of snow that sifted through the gnarled, blackened canopy.
In the distance, pops and cracks of snapping bones echoed through the forest. Several trees glowed with necrotic runes, and Cerise’s jaw clenched as they passed each one, hating to let the curse remain a stain on the land.
Shards of bone protruded through the earth, the faint green glow from their cursed base illuminating the snow.
Eventually, they paused at a carved bone that was twice as tall as Cerise, the rune etched at waist height.
This rune was slightly different from the others, with a few more points stabbed into the bone above the zags.
It was also carved deeper into the bone, which would take more time to remove.
A brief moment of curiosity flashed through her, wondering what the different design meant.
Perhaps it amplified the curse further. Maybe made the rune more difficult to destroy.
Whatever the spell, it didn’t matter. It needed to be eradicated.
As she sliced away the rune, Cerise recalled the prince’s words from two nights prior. “You said you and others estimated where Azkanix’s bones fell. Do you know what fragment this is from, then?”
“It is difficult to know for certain, but I can make an educated guess,” he replied, stalking around the bone. It appeared sheared in half, the top forming a sharp point and widening toward the base. Fractures fissured up the side where the cold splintered it. “I think—”
CRACK!
As Cerise shaved off the last sliver of rune, the bone exploded.
Cerise instinctively threw her arms over her face, turning her back to the eruption, shards of sharp white blasting through the forest. They sliced through the snow with delicate shucking sounds and stabbed into trees with hard thunks.
As soon as the disaster began, it was over.
Cerise’s ears rang with the abrupt transition from bursting bone to cursed silence.
Dropping her arms from her face, Cerise looked around her, heart seizing with horror.
Where each bone shard landed, the sickly green of Azkanix’s curse leaked into the snow, seeping down into the ground.
The entire patch of forest in their immediate area brightened with necromancy, a glow illuminating the woods as it spread.
Where the bone embedded in trees, the shining necrosis slithered through its striations.
Sap wept green, and as it poured over the plants, the bark melted into thick, diseased drops that hissed when it hit the snow.
She snatched Beloved and leapt to her feet, scrambling away from the curse.
In a shelter of the trees where the exploded bone failed to touch, she sucked in bracing breaths, quieting the rushing beat of her heart.
Her leg wobbled, sharp pain rushing through it as the fear faded and her senses returned.
She leaned on Beloved, staring with a clenched jaw at the new patch of contaminated forest she helped create.
That must have been what the different rune did—made the bone erupt if removed, spreading the curse faster. Which meant they had to leave all the runes alone.
She ground her teeth together, fists whitening around Beloved’s shaft, wishing it was Vraethik’s neck.
“Cerise!” Oberon shouted, feet sifting through the snow as he wound his way to her. His dazzling eyes were wide with concern, and fog tufted from his firm, open mouth. “Are you injured?”
“No. You?” She looked him up and down and, besides the terror on his face, he seemed fine.
“No, thank Mirvadel.”
Cerise cringed. “We have nothing to thank her for.” She turned her back on the prince, reorienting to the direction they needed to travel and estimating the remaining length of daylight.
He sucked in a harsh breath. “Cerise. Stop.”
“What?”
“Don’t. Move.” The command in his voice, which dropped to a low rumble in its seriousness, pinned her to the spot. He approached her from behind and Cerise sensed when he was near, the warmth of him emanating through the air.
“What are you doing?”
He gave a rough, thoughtful grumble. A moment later, Cerise felt a tug, like he’d pulled on her clothes. Before she whipped around to snap at him, he extended his arm, hand open.