Home > The Savage and the Swan(9)

The Savage and the Swan(9)
Author: Ella Fields

“Of course, she knows,” my father said from behind me, and I stumbled back into my bedchamber, taking in the weary lines of his face. “She’s sealed our fates.”

Though his words struck through me like a dull blade, there was no anger to his tone, only soft resignation. Eyeing his armor and the sword at his side, I asked, “Where are you going?”

“The prince and his men await us outside the city. We’re to escort them back to Errin.”

“You can’t,” I said, panic scratching at my voice. “It’s not safe.”

“Nowhere is safe,” he grumbled, then forced a smile into place when my face fell. Collecting me close, he murmured against my hair, “Look at me, honey bee.” Inhaling his scent, the blueberries I knew he kept tucked in a pouch upon his weapon holster, I met his tired green eyes. “Be brave.”

My mother followed him out, leaving stifling worry in her wake. It clouded the room, my mind, and I was thankful when Linka entered to take me away from it. “Come, now. It’s just a quick journey south.”

I nodded, my arm in hers. From the balcony of my parents’ rooms, Linka and I watched as my father, atop his midnight stallion, took flight with his soldiers and disappeared beyond the gathering dust.

 

 

Dusk rolled over the hillside, dragging day into deep pinks and oranges to gift to the growing night.

This time, he was there, and upon seeing the sword resting against the rocky wall of the cave, I paused, picked it up, and then I waited.

“Sunshine,” he said with feigned cheer as if I was anything but a heavy rain cloud. His boots hit the tree with a mighty thump that shook the dirt above my head, his steps lazy yet quick as he approached the mouth of the cave. “We need not train if you—”

As soon as he entered, I leaped at him, and without enough warning to remove his weapon, he ducked just in time to avoid losing precious strands of that creamy blond hair. “Opal.”

I ignored him, ignored the sound of my name on his lips that made it sound more than the simple thing it was. “Fight.”

After staring at me for unbending, fracturing moments, his blue gaze darkened. Finally, he unsheathed his sword. “Did someone piss you off?”

I didn’t want to talk. Doing so would only lead to more anguish, more anger, as his people continuously slaughtered my own as well as humans, and he didn’t care. He didn’t care that their hatred, their malice, their greed, and their cruelty had pulled my family apart and would soon have us begging at the feet of mortals for refuge.

Refuge they now wouldn’t give because of me, because in their eyes, all of us were monsters, abominations not to be trusted.

No, this crimson male didn’t care at all.

I struck again, and our swords met in the air, moonlight flaying off the blades as they slid and then clashed between us. “Opal,” Fang said once more, but I didn’t take my eyes off his blade as I stepped back. “Fuck, what’s gotten into you?”

I couldn’t talk to him. I shouldn’t have even been associating with him. No matter how innocent it seemed.

“Sunshine?” A question containing a softness that could be mistaken for concern.

I couldn’t kill him. Even if I could, I wasn’t ready to kill anyone, and we both knew it.

So I dropped the sword, and this time, I was the one to leave without looking back.

 

 

Guards were stationed on every corner outside the castle gates, many giving me disapproving glances as I moved through the bustling market quarter of the city toward the square.

I deserved their disapproval, most certainly, but not for any reason they knew.

They clearly thought it absurd that my mother would allow me to venture into the city streets, swallowed up by carriages and wagons ambling behind horses over the cobblestone and the vendor carts squatting before each alleyway.

But my mother, who’d been confined to her rooms since my father had left, didn’t know.

“We have enough seedlings to last through the winter, my princess,” Linka said beside me, her hands wrung tight around her empty shopping basket. “Herbs, too. Whatever else you might need, we can fetch for you.”

I wasn’t here for any of those things, and she soon discovered that as we crossed the square and headed straight for a dark alley. We walked to its end, the creek whispering through gnarled bushes on the other side unable to mask the scent of aged wine and roses.

I refrained from wrinkling my nose as we stood before the black-painted door pressed between a stone arch. The rock exterior was darker here, more of a creamy brown, some stones struck through with black rot and drooping, leafy vines. A stark comparison to the moonstone white and overflowing trellises throughout the rest of the city.

The door knocker was shaped into the head of a serpent, a sun rising in the copper plaque behind it. Our royal crest. Although she was an entity larger than any royal framework, she’d served Sinshell for hundreds of years. Though the curious would wonder whom it was that truly gained from her line of work.

I wrapped my hand through the metal, felt the rumored tingle right down to my fingertips, and then released it to thunk against the door.

“Princess,” Linka hissed, belatedly realizing where we stood—whose door we stood before. “I forbid you to—”

“Wait here,” I said and moved inside when the hinges creaked and the door opened on its own. Guilt punched at my stomach, but I’d needed an escort for the sentinels at the gates to so much as consider allowing me a brief absence from the castle, and though she’d protested, it had to be Linka.

I couldn’t chance bringing anyone else.

The door closed soundlessly behind me, candlelight flickering and climbing from the half dozen giant candles perched upon the book-lined walls. I took three steps forward to stand on a shaggy patch of emerald carpet.

Wreathed in a fading patch of sunlight that cut through the red glass window to her left, the ruby-eyed female crossed her legs in the generous throne-styled chair behind her oversized desk.

“Bright one,” the serpent sorceress crooned, the two glowing white snakes upon her shoulders stirring. “I’ve been waiting some time for you.”

She’s sealed our fates.

“Really?” Swallowing over the knot in my throat, I lifted the hood of my gray cloak from my head and tucked my hands within its folds to hide their trembling. “Then I am sorry to have kept you waiting.”

The sorceress hummed as though she didn’t believe me. A plate of cherries sat before her, the snakes curled beneath her voluminous waves of burgundy hair growing still. “You’re too late.”

I blinked, then frowned. “You said you’ve been waiting.”

“Indeed, I was, but you kept me waiting too long.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she purred and stabbed a cherry with a toothpick. “Someone paid me a visit before you, and now I no longer hold the cards to your fate.”

“How?” I asked, all the while something nudged at my muddied mind, piecing my confusion into something that shot an arrow of fear into my heart.

“You know how, little Princess. The creature who visited me?” Chewing the cherry, she grinned, the blood-ripe fruit staining her serpentine smile. “Well, your fates are intertwined.”

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