A War of Silver and Gold Page 9

  A day when I would no longer be.

  She shook herself out of that thought and walked through the branches of the trees that had fallen on the ground, a few of them, the smaller cracked under her footsteps.

  The Hollow stood before them. Ael walked beside Cassia, the reins of his horse firmly held on his right hand. He inspected the Tree.

  It was massive. Almost like a cottage in the woods.

  That was the reason they were created after all. They had been Elven Houses. She could almost touch their bark and they would talk to me in her mind. They would tell her how beautiful the family that stayed inside them had been, how peaceful and merry those old times were. It broke her heart to listen to these old stories of grandeur when the forest was still full of life and colour.

  It was sad, but it was true and real.

  She pulled the horse inside the entrance of the Hollow and listened as Ael did the same. The branches of the tree wrapped around each other and trapped them within, away from the harmful forest of the night.

  Ael sighed in relief.

  The grass had grown greener and there were a few poppies here and there on the ground. Every piece of furniture that existed once inside the tree had been covered by moss.

  Ael seemed astonished at the fact that there was a bit of life in the forest.

  The beds were covered with grass and the tables and chairs likewise, but there were poppies too this time, not just grass. It made her happy to see that her forest was growing alive again.

  Her face, though, remained expressionless as she let go of the horse’s reins and turned to Ael.

  His face was priceless. His brow frowned and his lips pursed, his eyes narrowing and his cheeks had grown redder from the cold.

  “That’s...”

  “A piece of art. I know.”

  For a moment she thought about the romanticised idea of the whole scenery around them.

  Faint light, green, flowery floor and no snow, but poppies and there was the singing of the waters that had just begun. A low, slow melody that she had known; only because the bard in the castle played it sometimes during gatherings.

  It was a love song of two lovers from different civilisations; the male was Nevdor and the female was human. Their families fought over a piece of land for hundreds of years, but in the darkness, their union gave birth to a child. The child of Justice, the unifier of the Elves.

  Useless legend! Everyone died in the end.

  “What are they saying?”

  She tilted her head and closed her eyes for a moment. He must have moved closer to her because she felt his warmth enveloping her in.

  She could feel his eyes learning the contours of her face. Every dip and curve.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him, her head tilted back a bit. “A song about lovers.” She didn’t know why, but her voice had turned huskier. “The Child of Justice.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  She shook her head and looked away from him. The moment had turned intimate and it unnerved Cassia. “You must know it, it’s a legend as old as time.” She pulled away from him and glanced back around the Hollow. She couldn’t stay there under the careful inspection of his eyes.

  Blue eyes that almost made her shiver for an unknown reason. Maybe she had been alone for too long. “We must rest.”

  “It’s early.”

  “Indeed, but we leave at five, we must make haste.”

  He sighed. “I know, but somehow I don’t want to leave from this place.”

  She chuckled, this time it for real, not bitter and fake.

  Nightfall was beautiful from inside the Hollow.

  The stars were clear and shining and the air was warmer. She didn’t want to leave too. The castle was full of intrigue and people that would never stop from stabbing you in your sleep.

  She wanted to stay there, but she knew that she had a duty to the world, to her race, to her people, to what she was, to what was left of her. She had things that she had to protect with her life.

  “No one wants. They enchant you.” She lied, but she couldn’t have done otherwise.

  He chuckled softly as again taking a step closer, his hand almost grazing hers. “You brought me into an enchanted tree.”

  She shook her head. “Let’s sleep.”

  She moved away from him, went to her horse and grabbed her blanket. She spread it before her and grabbed the horse’s reins.

  She bound the horse to the bark of the Hollow and returned to her blanket. She lay down, wrapping her cloak around her and closed her eyes.

  There was a fuss and then Ael’s horse huffed as he bound it beside hers. She kept her mind empty from thinking too forward of the situation. He lay behind her, his blanket spread over them both.

  His one arm wrapping around her waist and she thought that her heart had stopped beating. She cleared her throat and growled.

  “What are you doing, Ael?”

  He chuckled against her hair and pressed her tighter against him. “I am cold.”

  “You are not, you are just twisting it.”

  “I am not. I am cold, though and I have nightmares during the night.”

  She sighed heavily as she suppressed a shiver, not from the cold, but from the feelings the close proximity brought over her. He unnerved her, but he also made her feel like a female for once in her life.

  The more feministic part of her wanted to push him away and stand her ground; the air in the Hollow was warm enough. She didn’t need him. She never needed anyone in her life. She could fend for herself just fine.

  “What are you? A lost puppy?” Her voice was bitter as she prayed to Nature that he hadn’t felt her shiver.

  “I may be.” His breath clouded against her ear. She should have shivered again, but she bit her cheek and grounded herself.

  “I hope this won’t happen again.” She was certain that she was going to regret it in the morning. “Sleep.”

  Under other circumstances, she would have pushed him away and threw him out of the Hollow.

  But not now, not when the chills of war went down the dark dens of her mind, spreading in tendrils and disturbed her own sleep.

  She could feel his smile against her hair as she drifted to sleep.

  11

  The woods were void of sapient life, travellers were too afraid to venture into Navacore, especially due to its incredulous winter weather. No inns, no towns or small villages. There was nothing to offer shelter and they had to rest during the nights in the Hollows.

  Cassia inhaled sharply and gritted her teeth against the cold night breeze, flowing away from the direction of her city.

  It was the festival of Tenebrosity back home. The festival where darkness and everything related thrived. Cassia had never left during the festival, but she was thankful she did. Tenebrosity was as lethal as anything else in that damned Nevdor culture. Sacrifices of prisoners and blood bathing were only few of the rituals. Cassia had done anything to ban the festival, but it was tradition. A bloodlust tradition.

  She cursed under her breath a foul enough word to make the trees hum in disapproval.

  It had been her turn to hunt for dinner in the forest. Ael had offered to take her place, but she didn’t trust him hunting alone in her woods.

  She sat down on the forest ground, her back against the harsh bark of a tree. She wasn’t afraid of her forest; it wasn’t going to hurt her, but, still, terror grabbed her in its dense clutches.

  She threw a glance up to the evening sky and sighed.

  Tomorrow morning they would reach Nadaon’s town, and then, they march for the Citadel.

  She dreaded the thought that she had to meet the King again, suffer his affectionate smiles and withstand his proud remarks. He loved her –if something like him could love- because she was made from his blood and flesh. He loved her because she was a burning flame that he had created, a flame that could kill and gut and never be ashamed.

  He didn’t know, though, that Cassia was embarras
sed by what she had done to honour his name, his kingdom. Their Kingdom.

  She pressed her eyes shut and rested her head on her knees. There was silence for a moment in her mind, delectable, beautiful silence. She only listened to the sounds of the forest. The soft, cold wind, the growling of far away beasts, the beckoning whispers of the ash on the ground.

  She shivered. Flashes, memories like a thunderstorm crashed through her, tore in her mind. The warmth of Ael’s embrace, the burning in her back lingered.

  Cassia had no mate, he was dead anyway and Ael was a possible pleasure that she chose to ignore. She didn’t want to bind herself mentally to the lycan. Her pride would have never allowed her to take a step closer to the lycan in a most intimate way.

  There was a whisper out there in the dark that snapped her out of her reverie. Her indefinable eyes glanced about the forest like the predator she was. She stood from the ground and grabbed her bow.

  She dragged one arrow from her quiver. She had never been proficient with the bow, but she knew her way around one.

  She was a mediocrity when it came to arrows, but her aim was good enough to strike down her prey.

  She shuddered slightly as she let the arrow fly from the string and bring down the net from the trap that she had built.

  She grabbed the rabbits, killed them, skinned them and returned to Hollow. Her hands bloodied and fur stuck on the membrane between her fingers, tickling the back of her palm.

  She threw the rabbits before Ael on the Hollow’s ground.

  Ael yelped and took a step away, cringing. Cassia snorted loudly, rolling her eyes. He was a goddamn-rutting-lycan, how was he supposed to hunt down and kill if he was terrified of a couple of skinned rabbits?

  Cassia moved away towards the little river to wash her hands from the blood and the sticky miasma.

  “What am I supposed to do with them?” His voice was full of disgust and pity for the dead rabbits.

  “You are going to cook them like the good wife you are.” She didn’t turn to acknowledge him; she kept washing her hands with the cold river water.

  “I can’t do this.”

  She stilled her hands in the crystal cold water and turned her head, glancing at him with burning eyes. “Princess,” she groaned mockingly. “You are going to do as I told you without questioning me because if you do; I’ll skin you just as I skinned those rabbits.”

  “Certain you would not back off?”

  She nodded. “I am serious about this. I’ll skin you and let the wolves take care of you as they did to your sister.”

  “Nadeer was a harlot, barely my sister. Her mother was my father’s second wife, anyway. We are not considered siblings at all.”

  “Nevertheless, you are going to cook tonight.”

  He sighed as he bent down and picked the rabbits up. “I couldn’t do otherwise.”

  + + +

  He cooked that night. Even though he was not the most accomplished cook, it was decent.

  Cassia had tasted worse back in the war camps; when she neglected the King’s table and ate with her soldiers instead. She had sung along those males and danced and made shocking jokes that would make a normal female of noble birth blush to her death.

  The King only liked her because of the necessity of blood. Continuing his line. She was to take the throne; if she ever married. He was certain though, that it would take her a long time to marry and since her mate was gone, it served his purpose.

  Ael turned to look at Cassia as she sat against the bark of the Hollow, wrapped in her blanket. She gazed at the faint stars through the thick branches of the tree.

  He shifted in his place a few feet away from her. When he spoke, his voice was full of amusement. “It’s hard for me to understand that you travelled alone in these woods.”

  She heated debate went over inside her whether to stay silent or reply. She preferred silence better, but her mouth had a mind of its own. “It’s not that bad. I can fend for myself, you know. I prefer silence. I like being alone.”

  He passed his fingers through his blond hair and smiled. She couldn’t find it in herself to return the feeling. “I can see that.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “You are only here because I need to have my eyes on you.”

  He laughed. Something tightened at the pit of her stomach and she glanced on the grass, exhaling soundly. She let her hand grasp the grass and tug at it, unplugging it from the soil. She twirled around in her palm before she let it go and turned to look at Ael.

  “You do want to have the upper hand in anything.”

  Cassia’s face was expressionless. “If I didn’t, I would have been long dead even before the War.”

  “Why did you choose to fight?” Her eyes narrowed at him as she tilted her head to the side. “I mean,” he blinked. “You could have stayed in the palace, protected and let the soldiers take care of the Battlefield. You didn’t though.”

  She could feel admiration emanating from his voice. He was somehow –even though he barely knew her- proud about her past no matter how inquisitive he was being. It didn’t bother her, not really, not as much as it should. It was good somehow to know that someone –apart from the King- admired her strength, instead of condemning it because she was of the gentler kind.

  “The King gave me a purpose; he gave me an enemy to hate with everything I had. He bestowed upon me a legacy that I never knew I had to protect with my life." She cleared her throat, unrelenting tears gathering around her eyes, behind her eyelashes. "The King made me kill when I was twelve, he forced a sword on my hand and a dagger in the other.” She blinked and looked away from Ael’s blue gaze. “He sent me into a room full of Shadow Breakers and locked the door. I was to earn the right to live.” She shook her head and inhaled. “And gods, I did.” She blinked again fighting the tears that stung bitterly on the reminder of her past. “I killed them all. Six Breakers, lying on the ground of that room, and my grandfather beaming in bliss for what I had done.”

  He sat straighter, but his head bowed low. She couldn’t see his face. And maybe she didn’t want; she didn’t wish to see the sadness and pity in his glance.

  “You were strong.” He nodded and turned to look at her. Her head resting on her knees as she gazed at him. She could even feel a smile tugging on her lips, but she fought it deep down. “Maybe stronger than me, or a hundred soldiers put together.”

  “Killing doesn’t make you strong. I killed the Breakers because it was a matter of survival. It was instinct that drove my blade, not sanity.”

  “The primal instinct is the reason we still exist as a species.” He glanced away and smiled. “I survived because of it when I was bitten by the lycans.”

  “Why did he give you to them?” It came out from her mouth before she could stuff it down into the pits of her throat.

  He chuckled bitterly and bowed his head. “I always believed that the world needed peace, but Lord Abertron needed war. When I told him about what I wanted to do after I was crowned Lord,” he stopped, the memory seemed too painful for him. He shook his head and she wanted to tell him that he didn’t need to continue, that it was enough for today and they had to rest. H er heart though, told her that he needed to get these memories out of his soul, out of his heart.

  She nodded at him and he looked away to the other side. The atmosphere was growing tenser by the second. “I went against him along with a few other Dark Elves, seeking peace. He fed us all to the lycans, but I survived because I crawled before them, and sworn to fight for them, and abide by their beliefs. It was hard for me initially, but something snapped inside me.” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “Revenge.”

  Uncomfortable silence took over them, overwhelming them both, but it felt as if she was lost in a desert, as if she was hanging from Hirho’s Waterfalls, at the end of the World, where nothing good and sane continued, but darkness and sorrow prevailed and dominated.

  “We better sleep.”

  “Are you cold?”

&nbs
p; She battled with her sanity. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t, that she didn’t need him, that she would be fine alone; she and her nightmares. She knew though, she would be lying to herself, to what she craved for. She shook her head; she never needed someone’s warmth to sleep at night, it was a luxury that she didn’t have, a luxury that never belonged to her. She was a creature of darkness. She knew how to survive in it and thrive, feeding on its vices.

  “I am.” She shook her head though. “But, not tonight.”

  She needed him there, but she didn’t need him that night. She wanted to take full breaths of her freedom and enjoy it as long as it lasted.

  He understood her meaning and nodded his head, smirking. “Goodnight, then.”

  She nodded her head and closed her eyes as she lay against the bark. “Goodnight.”

  She drifted away, but she could still feel, deep in her sleep, too exhausted to even speak, that he dragged his arms around her. His warm, hot chest against her side, his head on her shoulder and his legs entwined with hers. She wanted to pull away, but she was too sleepy and too far away to talk or even move.

  12

  She snapped out of her sleep too quickly for her brain to adjust. Her eyes sore against the dim daylight.

  Cassia pushed against Ael's chest, groaning in distaste from the close proximity.

  Waking up enveloped in the heat of an embrace was foreign to the Lady. It was something she had never experienced before, something she didn’t care to experience.

  Ael woke up, his breathing fairly quickened as he gazed up at her through hooded eyes. She squeaked as she twisted and ungracefully landed on her arse. She grabbed her dagger clumsily and pointed it at him.

  “I told you to stay away.” Her voice was full of that eloquent and colourful sense of anger she acquired when she felt threatened. She growled inelegantly. "You can't even follow a simple order.”

  “I am sorry. I thought-” He trailed and her eyes widened.