Chapter 3

MAELIS

I couldn't open my eyes, couldn't move my body and could barely breathe. The pain was too great.

Blood kept pouring out of my body like water from a ruined vessel and every stab wound burned like fire.

Voices, they sounded distant yet near, I made out one, laden with helplessness, "What do we do with her body?"

"You heard Princess Serina, toss her into the sea and have the fishes feast on her body," The other, cold and unfeeling replied.

"But..." The first voice spoke again, showcasing hesitance.

"Just do as you are told Icarus," The other hissed in reply.

A fleeting sigh, boots dragged across the floor and then warm, rough hands touched me, fingers pressing gently against my neck.

There was a pause and then a sharp quiet intake of breath, "Sorry princess."

**************

Cold, that was the first thing I felt.

Every inch of my body was freezing like I had been dropped into an icy glacier.

Maybe I had...

My clothes were wet, clinging to my body like a second skin but the iciness was not enough to numb the pain in my abdomen.

Then... something changed.

For the first time since Serina’s dagger pierced my stomach, I felt something else- warmth.

It started from my feet then spread out across my body. Something soft fell over me, a quilt perhaps.

Was I dead?

No, that didn't seem to be the case. I could smell pinewood and smoke...A fire. That had to be the source of the warmth.

Slowly, my eyes fluttered open, the fire the first thing that came to sight. There was a shadow of a man behind it, I squinted, trying to see.

And then it all came rushing back, I recollected being lifted then tossed in a lake. I could remember sinking, water clogging all of my pores and how I was held between death and survival.

Hands had grabbed me, dragged me out and now...this.

"I'm not dead," I whispered, my voice sounded hoarse and foreign even to myself.

"You nearly did, I almost didn't get you out of the water on time," A voice replied to me.

I recognized it, from earlier, the whisper in my ears.

"Who are you?" I asked. He stood, walking round the fire to where I lay and then he bent, his lips parted, "Icarus."

"Please forgive me for overstepping," He added, lifting his hands to my forehead, "You are still burning up, might take a day or two before the fever completely subsides."

His voice wasn't the only thing that was recognizable, his face was too. I dug into my memory, trying to recollect who he was and then it clicked- Soft smiles, kind eyes, he was one of the guards that manned the main entrance to Ronan’s home.

But, that wasn't the only memory that flooded my brain, it all came rushing back, "My child, where is he?" I gasped,tossing the quilt off my body, it tugged hard on my bandaged stomach.

The pain had my back sinking back into another soft quilt beneath me, panting for breath.

"You can't move my Lady, you are heavily injured," Icarus warned.

"I have to return. My baby, he's waiting for me," I said, a frantic appeal for help.

Icarus looked away, like he could not bear to look upon my face.

I stopped breathing, grabbing his sleeves so tightly my knuckles became white, "What is it?"

He turned to me with a gaze full of empathy and a cold tight knot formed in my gut. My body stiffened and I couldn't even bear to blink.

"The child, he's dead. I heard he died after the announcement, the whole kingdom is in mourning." Icarus answered, his eyes squeezed shut as if it pained him to say those words.

"No," I shook my head, stuttering in disbelief. It couldn't be my child, it definitely couldn't, "He's alive, I heard him. Ronan...yes, Ronan was holding him."

"I hate to break the news to you like this my Lady but it is true, Alpha Ronan announced it himself."

When I saw Ronan announce Serina as his bride instead of me, when she had revealed the truth of their betrayal to me and even when my own Father had sanctioned it all, I didn't feel like my world had truly ended, not until now.

"No," I mumbled breathlessly and then I screamed. A sharp jarring sound that reverberated in the woods surrounding us.

Rivulets of anguish spilled out rapidly from my lids, like they would never stop and I screamed until I lost my voice, curling into myself.

It wasn't just my belly that had been punctured, my heart was too and so was my soul,

*********

Time passed but my grief remained, sorrow pulsing through my veins with every beat of my heart.

"My Lady, you can't return. Lady Serina gave orders for your body to be dumped. If she knows you’re alive, she’ll kill you!” Icarus stepped closer with a frantic expression, trying to dissuade me.

"I don’t care," I pushed his arm that was barring my path away, "I already have no reason to live."

My child was gone, my whole life buried and I was a step short of killing myself.

However, every single time I made the attempt, something always held me back, a feeling different from the ocean of melancholy that threatened to swallow me.

This one burned with a fury that could not be snuffed out, not even by the rain that slicked over my skin, washing the earth beneath my feet.

"You have every reason to live, my Lady," Icarus said, face wet with the outpour of rain from above.

I stared at him for a long while, then my shoulders sagged.

"You are right, I can't die. Not yet...Not while Serina lives on…”

I looked towards the horizon, through the rain clouding my vision, to Pyreth, towards the kingdom where everything was taken from me.

Death sounded so much like freedom but if I died now, it would be with a heart full of regret.

The realization struck me and I decided there and then, that even if it killed me, even if I had to claw my way through scorching sand, I would live and return.

And when I did…

They would beg for the mercy I was never given.