Frost Bite

Chapter One.

Prince Nixtoni

The following day was the day of my coronation. I was in my chambers getting ready for the ceremony when and old friend appeared in the doorway.                                                       

He leaned lazily against the doorframe, dressed in hunting attire with a bow strapped to his back and arrows dangling at his side.                                                                                                    

"You called, my lord?" he asked in a teasing manor, a sly smirk plastered across his lips.                                                  

We were around the same age, both in our early thirties with only a year’s difference between us. He had never looked at me as a Prince, let alone a soon to be King and enjoyed using my title as a way to playfully mock me.                                                       

I fastened the last few silver buttons of my overcoat and shot a glance in his direction.                                                    

"Yesterday, a woman ambushed the Royal party" I announced to which he nodded his head, arms crossed over his chest while he glanced up at the mural on the ceiling of an arctic scene where wild bears, the color of snow battled, teeth bared and claws raised to strike.                                                                      

"I am aware of such" he muttered, his eyes going to a far away place.                                                                                             

Aron, the greatest hunter that Vextin had ever seen had been covering the rear of the party the day before and had not made it in time to defend his next in line King against the threat. It no doubt had an impact on his pride.                                                      

"She took something of great value to me" my words caught his attention once more. He looked me over as I fixed the cuffs of my sleeves. He pushed off the doorframe and moved toward me.                                                                                      

"Your mother's necklace" he realized, stopping a few feet away. I met his eyes in the full length mirror from over my shoulder and nodded curtly.                                                                      

Despite it being a very delicate and feminine necklace, I had worn it religiously ever since she had passed away five years prior to the death of my father.                                                        

She was a beautiful woman, said to be the most beautiful in all of the Capital with long, midnight black hair and the grey eyes of the Northern hollows.                                                           

"I order you to retrieve it by first light tomorrow" Aron's jaw tightened, his teeth gritting at the forceful demand.                        

Although he was a dear friend of mine, I was still his Prince and future King. He despised being reminded of such but still bowed his head unwillingly in submission.                                         

"As you wish, my lord" he was about to head for the door when I turned to look back at him, green eyes piercing his almost coal black ones.                                                                                

"She is to be brought directly to me" my eyes narrowed before I continued "Unharmed" Aron was notorious for butchering his prey, finding pleasure in the hunt and sometimes even killing them without meaning too simply because he enjoyed watching them suffer.                                                                               

His bearded chin moved when a sadistic smile made its way onto his lips. He bowed in a similar way as the woman had before.                                                                                                

"I assure you, my Prince, no harm will befall the woman" I watched him carefully, the ice winds of the North fluttering in through the open balcony doors, ruffling the tail of my grey coat.            

There was a faint knock at the door, followed by the small voice of one of the servant woman,                                                  

"My Prince, I bring the jewels" without bothering to look at the girl, I nodded and held my arms out at my sides. She moved, quickly pinning the silver crest to my chest along with handmade clasps of white gold to my coat and cape. Her hands trembled when she slipped rings and cuffs onto my fingers and wrists, pausing to kneel and place a kiss to each of my knuckles as gratitude for allowing her to touch me.                                            

"She smelt of pine, salt rock, fern and tree bark" I added when Aron rose from his bow. My words were like a scented piece of cloth dangled before the nose of a blood hound, valuable and all he needed to find her.                                                          

For a brief moment her exposed throat so close to my lips, her hair dangling beneath my nose and her lips parting to moan flickered before my eyes. It was in that moment that her smell had overwhelmed me.                                                                     

"Salt rock, you say" Aron thought like a thief but tracked like a hunter, an asset to the Royal throne indeed.                                    

His head turned to gaze beyond the balcony, out onto the white plains and the dark blue, almost black ocean beyond. It was clear from the way his aura buzzed with excitement that he knew exactly where she was.

Aron

The shoreline of Vextin stretched on for miles, black water lapping against icy white and blue shores.                               

I knelt on the ice shelf, gazing at the raging waters below with my scarred fingers pressing into the frost. The cold hardly bothered the people of the North and it had even less of an impact on the Royal family.                                                              

Bears they were, fierce white beasts that had little issue with the temperature of the Capital city of the four realms.        

Prince Nixtoni was a man to be feared, well suited for combat, trained in the art of sword fighting and archery.                        

He could cut down an opponent twice his size in mere seconds so why would he, the greatest warrior in all of Myres be bested by a mere woman, a wolf no less?                                                             

My hand balled against the ice before I rose and headed further North. The wolf wasn't stupid. She knew that hardly anyone would dare venture that far North so it made sense that that's where she would seek refuge after having stolen from a bear.                                                                                                            

My boots crunched into the snow as I moved, the hood of my coat pulled up to conceal my face. I clutched my bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.                                                             

A fish eagle cried out overhead, it's wings beating violently against the air to propel it out, over the water.                          

My fingers twitched while I watched it, the need to shoot almost suffocating. Nixtoni's words reached my ears, an order to find the wolf and not a bird.                                                                

I grunted, continuing on, along the coast until old alder tree woods became that of pine and fern, telling me that I was close.                                                                                                      

I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of a freshly made footprint in the snow. It was that of a wolf, larger than any I have ever seen before. My fingers brushed over the track, my hand only half its size.                                                                             

My lips curled back, exposing a smile of white teeth as I glanced toward the East, in the direction the prints were heading.   

Surely she would make for an exciting hunt.

Blythe

I hunched over a kill, the carcass of a moose that I had brought down, now half buried in the snow and surrounded by a ring of red as its blood soaked into the white layer of shaven ice.                       

My hands gripped a piece of raw meat that I had just torn from its hind limb while I bit into it, canines tearing and ripping at the flesh, desperate for any form of food in such a wild and remote place where your next meal could be up to a month away.                                                                                                            

My palms had long since healed from the day before and my arms were now dripping in a blood that wasn't my own.             

I was about to take another bite of the meat when the sound of an arrow being drawn touched my ears. I tossed the chunk of meat aside and leaped across my kill, dodging the arrow that landed in the snow where I had been just moments before.        

I growled lowly, my body crouched down into the frost as I searched for the source of the attack.                                               

A man, no a hunter, was kneeling on higher ground, half hidden by dead shrubs and wild ferns. I gritted my teeth, he fired a second time and I managed to get behind a tree, hearing the arrow embed itself into the bark.                                                         

Judging from the sound, it was made of Royal steel, a much better quality than that which any normal hunter would use. There was no doubt that he had been sent by the Prince.                     

I searched for a way out, eyes looking for some way to counter his long range attacks.                                                  

I had to get in close, but how?                                                          

He’d already strung his third arrow and was waiting for my next move. He was ready and I realized that if I was going to get in close, I had to do it while he was restringing an arrow.              

I tugged my shirt over my head and balled it up tight, making sure that he wouldn't see the fabric past the tree trunk. I breathed in deep and tossed the shirt out as far as I could.                         

Like expected, he fired the arrow, piercing the fabric and realizing too late that it was a decoy. I shot out from my hiding place and was in front of him in a heartbeat. He strung again, this time aiming an arrow up at me from his crouched position.                    

Instead of looking scared like I was expecting him to, he had a glint of excitement in his eyes which caught me off guard long enough for him to fire his arrow straight into my right shoulder.                                                                                               

I cried out, staggering back a few steps, my eyes staring at my pierced shoulder in shock. He barely paid any attention to my nude figure and stood upright, his fingers moving at a speed greater than any I had ever seen before, a fifth arrow already strung.                                                                                      

I locked eyes with him, mine narrowing in annoyance as my hand moved to pull the arrow free of my shoulder.                  

I gritted my teeth when pain shot through me and tossed the arrow aside, already feeling the skin around my wound start to close.                                                                                     

The necklace that I stole felt cool against my skin, beating against my chest whenever I'd move.                                                          

"That doesn't belong to you" the man said, his eyes boring a whole into the bear that dangled from my throat. It had sapphire eyes and could no doubt fetch me a pretty penny.      

His voice was gruff, sounding as though he hadn't used it in many years.                                                                                      

My eyes located his remaining two arrows, not counting the one he had strung and realized that his carelessness in shooting had left him nearly defenseless. I leaped back from the hill and he fired, the arrow aimed for my thigh when I landed on one knee. It struck its target, digging deep into my thigh and cutting through flesh. My jaw tightened when my suspicions were confirmed, the pain deliberate as I took his blow intentionally.         

He was a skilled hunter, that much was clear but he was an even greater archer, he could have landed a killing blow twice now, but he kept aiming for non-vital areas as if he only wanted to maim me.                                                                                                

I stood, the arrow still in my leg but I didn't bother to remove it, regardless of the pain. He shot again and I dodged, my body crashing into the snow where I skidded to a stop some feet away.                                                                                                  

He was an annoyance and was starting to get on my nerves. One more. I wrenched the arrow from my thigh and turned, standing just as he let go of his arrow.                                    

I flung his earlier arrow, soaked in my blood back at him and struck him somewhere near the center of his chest. His own arrow struck target, slicing through the skin on my upper arm and taking root near the bone.                                                                      

"Dammit!" his voice echoed through the woods while I nurtured my wound, noticing that it’d hurt much more than the others.                                                                                                 

That bastard. It was a silver arrow. I couldn't remove it, the wound wouldn't heal as fast and I'd only loose more blood.                      

A throaty round of laughter pierced the air, a crazed sound that forced my eyes back up to the hunter. He was bleeding profusely from a gaping hole in his chest and the arrow that had been there was now strung.                                              

I didn't have time to react before it was fired and pierced my left knee cap. I screamed, falling to one knee when I felt the bone fracture. Broken bones healed equally as slow as a wound made my silver.                                                                          

The man began to make his way down the hill, skidding along the snow and ignoring the amount of blood that he was loosing. My body trembled not from the cold but from the pain that shot through it.                                                                                

“You’re quite the catch" he muttered, reaching the bottom of the slope and bending to pick up all of his discarded arrows. He moved around me until all five remaining arrows once again dangled from his waist then approached me, stopping a foot away.                                                                                                       

"You should know that a hunter always comes prepared" he informed, taking his time to string an arrow and aim it at close range.                                                                                                          

His eyes smiled and a breath of laughter escaped his lips.            

I moved to lash out at him, claws ready to tear through the material of his coat when he fired, the arrow striking my left shoulder and sending me tumbling back into the snow.                         

His boots crunched in the snow when he ventured closer, looming overhead with yet another arrow already strung.                         

This man was not a Knight, he was not a nobleman, he had no title nor a fortune but he was stronger, smarter than any I had ever faced.                                                                                     

"If you don't mind, I'd like for you to go to sleep now" he shot, the arrow hitting above center chest and before long my vision started to blur. He had poisoned it, laced the tip with some sort of drug.                                                                                        

I shrieked, tossing my head back and exposing my blood stained teeth and fangs. The sound caused birds to take flight in the trees above and snow to fall from their branches, burying the earth even deeper beneath its white blanket.