Page 2 of Winter Gods & Serpents

I turned to the tall, buffed figure that approached grabbing the dagger out of my hand and sheathing it back to my thigh.

“Only a little.”

He scoffed, “I know your little—your little dead is a lot dead.”

“And we only need him a little alive.”

“A lot actually.” He pulled me outside, the strong light fogged my sight, I had been in that dark room for far too long.

Tension tightened every muscle in his face and body, his emerald stare darkened in concern. “We found the rest of his squadron by the ruins, very eager to protect what they knew. They slit their own throats before I could even capture one. If we want to find anything out, it will have to be through him.” Cai was not prone to displays of frustration, he was known for his calm demeanour, but I read it there along with devastation. They’d come again, to soil the lands of the mightiest people, to his people—our people.

I huffed a sigh and turned to him. “Isjordians will never speak, their blessings are to thank.” They were people of war, tactics, wits, and schemes but most importantly they were people of strong god gifted honour. To them death was better than betrayal.

“They could be here for you,” he stated half-heartedly, blatantly avoiding my gaze.

“He knows exactly where I am, he would have come for me, formally. I am still a royal.” In title, in armour a monster, in truth, a human woman and in my father’s eyes still a pawn.

Cai threw a puzzled look behind the Volant mountains, behind Myrdur, the fallen lands, staring into the dark clouds gathered atop and the thick mist surrounding them, letting nothing show in sight. A blanket of omens. “There is nothing left for him to barge into here again. These are a no man's lands, graveyards. No one has claimed them. None even him who destroyed them.”

The small hair on my neck rose and I threw a wary glance over the tall giants of rock. My guardian called it a sixth sense; Cai called it paranoia but this time he’d given into it. The mist called to me, a warning whispering my name. And I saw it stare back at me, the dark cloud of terror that had enveloped the air, land, and sea. It had a scent. Bitter and tangy like poison, metal, and fear.

“There are no lands he cannot have, is power he is looking for. Whatever he thinks he can find here, I want to find out. He can harvest power even from the dead, let’s not lower our guards,” I warned.

Upon both our heavy sighs, bitter memories and fears creeped in my thoughts causing blood to pulse and thrust in my temples in a drumming beat and slowly air begun meeting my lungs in difficulty. Before I would be sent panting, before my eyes would cloud black, before I would see my whole world spin and shift onto the void, before I would tremble and drop clutching my chest in pain; I moved. Unconsciously, striding in quick paces toward the forest.

“I will come with,” Cai called following steps behind.

I swallowed a clog in my throat. “No, I just need a few moments.” Maybe more than just a few. My day nightmares were clocking longer than they usually would. It was terrifying to confess that they were no longer containable. Now I felt my head warp so deep in my thoughts that once it had taken me a day to gather myself fully.

“Return quick, or Nia will hunt you down,” he called again, his voice fading in the distance.

The moment trees had surrounded me I took a deep breath and with their own volition my feet took off in a sprint through the brick coloured forest floor. The gusting sharpness and friction of the air almost scraped my skin, it moved the towering trees like wandering spirits and pulled my hair against its current. The moment my feet carried me to a pace, my eyes fogged as my surroundings engulfed in dark black flames, creeping through branches, leaves and air, crawling towards me hungry, for my taste, to burn and devour me. The smell of burnt flesh and screams tore the heavy air, retching, pleading and fearsome as my features twisted in a cry. I shook my head to rid the drowning thoughts and plaguing memories. I felt it then, in how my limbs trembled, the oily shame and fear that hit me as my chest clutched in disgust of my own actions. Again and again, I would experience it—having left everyone behind to save myself. It was my punishment for the past twelve years and I had open armed accepted it.

Strange dark shadows begun following me from all sides, their mouths hungry and dark steel claws itching for blood, my blood. A shudder went through my spine as I felt their heavy presence nearing me, their flesh leaking the darkness of a void, pooling all around them like tar. My heart caged not from bones, but from fear and frustration, a hot emotion that I had felt without halt for the past twelve years, since the night my mother, sister and brother were killed, by the same monsters chasing me, led by him, the Adriatian king. The famed Obscur Asteri, ruler of night and my hunter.

The edge of the forest became visible, it laid ahead like a painting in a dark corridor. Trees cleared out, two blue landscapes crashing onto each other came forward. The marbling sea water and floating sky blended in a marvellous painting and I halted before the cliff, my breath catching and my chest on bursting fire. Reality began shifting, it warped in gusts of black smoke and mist. I breathed in jagged pants taking in what laid in front of me as the monsters approached. I turned to take one last look at them as I had forced myself too every day. One moment they stared pure darkness into my soul, the next they started turning to nothing. There were no ghastly wicked creatures chasing and hunting me, the monsters staring back were those of flesh and blood, they were men, one of the worst kinds. Since the night twelve years ago, I have tried to outrun these creatures who once haunted me, hungered for my death—twelve years had passed since the feeling of guilt and mourn corrupted my whole being. Once physical, these monsters now they were just remnants of nightmares. A cursed prison of thoughts.

The smell of burnt flesh was now taken over by that of chestnuts and salt, the screaming now turned to only rustling leaves and crashing waves. The brief momentum of returning to my reality was accompanied by a razor-sharp pain dulling across my palms and up my arms. Metallic taste and smell of blood creeped in my lungs as I stared down my hands now leaking of blood and smearing the paled leaves under me crimson. Pain—the wrong cure for panic but a temporary remedy of forgetting it. Wrong, but there were so many other wrongs with me.

He would come for me. My father would soon come for me. My curse for being born in a castle of darkness was to always be surrounded by nightmares. He was the largest darkness in my life, and he had cast all my nightmares, because of him all evil had followed in a chain motion. The fall of Olympia, the continent’s fear and uproar, the attack, my mothers and my sibling’s death, my exile. A mourning child sent away to another foreign land days after the people she loved most died seemed the perfect plan for my father.

The useless one survived? Gone till she can serve me something, away from danger, away from bringing any to us, were his exact words. Exactly what any daughter craves, such affection for his orphan. Almost ridiculously funny. I would have laughed had those words not gnawed me for months when I was a child. My uselessness was what I had thanked the heavens every day, it would be his sweet torture. My uselessness was his failure, but it was also mine.

“I do not like you doing this anymore, not when there are soldiers of all kinds hovering around Fernfoss, and is not Isjordians I am fearing,” Alaric’s voice startled me from behind. He was right, I had been so endorsed onto my own head I didn’t even hear him approach.

Alaric was my guardian, my mother’s closest friend, an Olympian. He had accompanied her to Isjord after her marriage and stayed as her guard. He had become my family since the moment I was born and after the attack my father had sent me with him into hiding. He was the only one I would ever recognize as a father. Alaric did not have big shoes to fill, but he was exceptional at being more than just a father figure. He was my friend, my uncle and brother. Even though the stern bastard willed my nerves out of my brains sometimes, I loved him more than anything or anyone.

“That is exactly why I need to be here,” I stated approaching him.

He let out a heavy sigh rubbing his paled grey beard. “I need you to be scared Snow, you become reckless when you have no fear.”

Fear was a lie, the shackle of submission. I submitted to no one. “I am reckless however. My father thrives in the fear of others, I will never give him the pleasure of feasting on mine and as for the Adriatians,” I said, a grin drawing wide in my features. “Of them I truly am not afraid, their courage will soon be their fear.”

“You’re determined to return then?”

He was coming for me; my father would soon end my exile and I’d soon end my hibernating vengeance. “I don’t have a choice.”

Distress shadowed his black irises. “I know this feels like it’s your responsibility, to deal with him and guard Myrdur, but it truly is not. The soldiers could be after what everyone is her after in these lands; relics, bones, gold, glory—”