The Emperor's Killer Bride

12.

The White Forest should have been called the Dark Forest of Death.

The forest was primordial. Centuries-old trees with sprawling limbs guarded the darkness, blotting out any sunlight. Their bark was mottled and splotched as if steamed soup had been frozen in time on its surface. Chunky combs of wet moss hung from their rotten boughs. 

A pungent tang oozed from most of the trees in the forest. It was truly a place to make your veins freeze over. Everything considered edible in another forest was nauseating here. It left you with the same sickening taste of your own blood. It was a forest to be avoided. 

However, it was the same forest that forty innocent women had been sent in to run for their lives, all in the name of a game.

Never had he encountered these emotions on his many hunts. He had quarried after dread lions and tigers in the fathomless bowels and dripping pits of the deepest caves. He had ascended sky-kissing mountains to seek for their family ancestral sword, which every Prince needs to get before becoming the Crowned Prince. He had even, as a favor to his grandmother, crossed a tyranny of distance to bring to her the white unicorn that lives in the caves of Saraganda.

But this dark forest was different from anywhere he had been before. Hunting after wild animals into dens and burrows, down pits and through gloomy ravines, could not begin to compare to this gullet of madness. 

Just being here felt like partaking in an unholy mockery of life. He tried to think of any reason that would make this hunt look like a form of entertainment, but every thoughtful reasoning eluded him. Having women run in a thick dark forest filled with fog was not entertainment, neither was it a form to show how powerful one is, like his ancestors had assumed doing this will make them unbeatable by other smaller kingdoms.

Personally, he felt as though it was a shield to cover up their shame and fear.

As his horse's hoofs pounded hard against the dried scattered leaves on the ground, Eduardo kept his eyes searching, hoping to find what he came to this wretched place to find, the one woman he had been thinking about.

He recalled Arman's words as he got him a piece of cloth to cover his face, leaving only his eyes visible and his white mare. He had simply nodded at his grandmother as he quickly walked past her without saying anything. Although her gaze had followed him, she didn't say a word about it.

"Do not do this to me, Baal," Arman pleaded desperately. "What am I to tell the Dowager should she question your absence?"

"Tell her whatever fits your book, Arman," he replied, settling on his mare while tieing the black cloth over his face. "All I know is that I'm joining this hunt and getting that woman out." He had changed from his ceremonial clothes and was now wearing Arman's cream-colored shirt, that didn't fit his broad shoulders completely, and his light brown colored breeches. His long dark hair was now tied with a silk band.

Although ruggedly dressed, Arman couldn't help but notice how good-looking he was.

"What is so important about this woman that you're risking everything for her?" Arman thundered. He couldn't help it. He had wanted to join the hunt, just so he could get the woman and her sister out. But, a lot was at risk. A single mistake would jeopardize every single thing they had been planning all along. "You left the damn woman in the hands of a man who seems to be very dangerous just six days back. And you're here, today, trying to risk everything for her?"

Arman wouldn't understand, Eduardo thought as he stared ahead, waiting for the right moment to kick his horse to run off. Time was going, and he needed every bit of it.

"I made a mistake," Eduardo seethed. "Now, I do not wish to talk about this anymore. Let go of the reins."

But Arman only tightened his hold on the reins even more. "I thought you didn't care? I tried to tell you about her yesterday, but you acted nonchalant, as though she meant nothing!"

"Let go of the reins!"

"And now, you're risking everything, not just the mission alone, but also your life in hopes to get her. What happens when you don't and something terrible ends up happening to you both?"

Anger curled hot and unstoppable in his gut, like a blazing inferno that wanted to burn him from the inside out. His mouth had gone hard and he was flexing his jaw. Somehow, if he wasn't in a hurry to get to the White Forest, he knew he would've dueled with Arman just to let go of some of his pent-up frustrations. But now wasn't the right time.

"I don't think I owe an explanation to any of my subjects as to why I'm doing something. You're a subject of mine, Arman. Nothing more," he watched as Arman flinched at his words, but didn't show anything more besides that. "See to it that the mission is handled perfectly. I'll see you when the time is right." Without waiting for anything, he pulled tightly at the reins and freed them from Arman's hold, then nudged at his mare and rode off.

Now, as he let his eyes wander all around the fog-filled forest, he felt bad for the harsh words he had uttered to his friends.

But as he had said, Arman wouldn't understand the raging and the loud thundering in his chest. Or how his heart had missed a beat at the pure look of hatred the woman had passed to him before she had run off. He wouldn't understand how many sleepless nights he had had ever since he had left her behind without saving her six days back. If anything, Arman would never understand what he, himself, was yet to understand.

He had joined the hunt late, twenty minutes after the women and the hunters took off, which was why he was still yet to come across any of the women or the hunters. What worries him the most was Ash. His arrows were real, and if he was targeting the woman too, an impending danger was close by without her knowing.

"I must be insane," he groaned, facepalming as he squinted his eyes towards the figure moving in front of him. The pacing of his heart accelerated in hopes that it might be the woman he was looking for.

It wasn't. But it was one of the women. Eduardo found himself getting pissed at the situation and just as he was about to nudge his horse forward without attempting to lay a claim on her, an arrow shot past through his eyes and straight at the woman's chest. 

The world stopped for a moment.

He stood on his horse, staring in shock at the woman lying on dead dried leaves, blood oozing from her chest, eyes wide open staring into nothing. He couldn't move as he tried to understand what exactly had just happened.

He got down from his horse and approached the dead woman. At first he had assumed the arrow would be one placed for Ash. But as soon as he knelt before the corpse, he found that it wasn't. This arrow was entirely different from the one Arman had told him he had placed for Ash. If it were Ash, he was sure he would've stepped forward to claim the woman, since he had no idea his arrows had been switched.

Something was wrong. He went back to his horse and pulled at the reins without climbing up. He needed to keep a close watch to see. However, few feet away, lies another corpse, with the same type of arrow plunged into her chest.

By the time he had walked five more miles, he had come across six corpses. All had the same type of arrow plunged directly into their chest. Eduardo needed no miracle to realize it was a conspiracy. 

But the most disturbing question clouding his mind that moment was the whereabouts of his woman.

He was yet to find her, he was desperately hoping that she hadn't been part of the m******e.

*

Regina sucked in a ragged breath, her breath coming out in deep, thick waves of exhaustion. She bent down, her hands placed on her knees while her hair fell onto her face.

Valeria was in the same position as she was. Also sucking in deep waves of breath to calm her raging heart.

"I... I...think we're safe now." Valeria's voice was breathy and harsh. "That's it? She's dead already?" She couldn't even bring herself to say Skyler's name. The shock was still new and fresh to her. Just a few hours ago she had been with Skyler, laughing for a moment before they were asked to run non-stop in the thick, foggy forest. A few minutes later, Skyler had been shot dead by an arrow, right beside her.

That image would forever remain engraved in her heart.

"She's gone, that's it for her?" Tears trickled down her disheveled face, where dirt had found a place to stay.

Regina shook her head, finally able to calm down, then took her sister's hands in hers. "It's fine. She might not be dead." She tried to reassure her, but even she knew the lie was blatant.

"Didn't the King say the arrows wouldn't kill us?"

"And you believed that?" Regina seethed, shaking her sister. "You believed what that fool said? That we'd only run and whoever captures us owns us? How pathetic!" It completely made no sense. This was the reason for the hunt, for them to be hunted down like treasures and then killed like animals. Wasn't that what this was all about?

She must have been stupid to have believed his words. To have believed him when he had said the arrows wouldn't hurt them. Heck, she must have been even more naive than she had ever thought when she felt her heart tug a little as he told off Lord Ashton. But that was just a simple game of power for him, not the truth.

Now, she had watched seven of the women she had spent six days with die right before her eyes. Funny enough, they couldn't see who was shooting. The arrows just keep coming in the air and right at the chest.

"We're as good as dead, Gina," Valeria cried desperately. "I don't want to die like this. I can't go like this, Gina. I can't." She was hysterical, and Regina had no way, absolutely no way of calming her down. They are doomed already.

She looked up, scanning the part of the forest they were in. The fog was less dense here, so was the mist, which makes everything less hectic to find their way out. But the trees still look creepy, centuries-old perhaps with sprawling limbs that make them scarier. The pungent tang that had oozed from the trees back wasn't on these trees now, that calmed Regina a bit, cause that pungent tang makes everything worse.

Regina sat on the dried leaves, then pulled Valeria towards her and placed her head on her chest and let her sister cry her eyes out. She desperately wanted to cry too, to find a shoulder to lean on and let the tears flow, but she couldn't do that. She couldn’t afford to appear so weak and broken in the presence of her little sister. For her sister, she was willing to endure it all.

"I can't believe this," Valeria said. "He knew we'd be part of this, perhaps that was why he didn't care to save us. But I had hoped, I had believed, that his words back there were true even though he refused to save us. But now this? This is the end for us?"

"Don't say that," she couldn't stop tears from welling up in her eyes no matter how hard she tried. "We'll get out of here alive, Lee. I promise you that."

Valeria didn't say a word, instead, she held onto her sister even more. A few moments later, Regina tapped her, indicating that they should continue.

"We have to keep going. Can you keep up?"

"Yes."

They continued running, but this time around they weren't running that much. They were already exhausted.

"I wanted to hold your baby one day and be an Aunt," Valeria suddenly said, a glint in her eyes. "I wish I'd one day see you fall in love and be happy with the man of your dreams, even if we were still slaves. I guess that was a far-fetched dream now, right?"

Regina's heart tugged at her sister's words. But she didn't say anything, instead, she tightened her hold on her sister's hand.

"If we survive this, Gina, I wish to eat those cheesecakes we used to eat back home before mother and father were killed."

That stopped Regina in her tracks, she turned to look at her sister with a sad smile on her face. "Of course, Lee. I'll get that for you." Somehow, the tears she had been holding back rolled down in thick waves on her face. "I'll get you whatever it is you need, and I'll make sure you never go through something like this ever..."

Her words caught in her throat as she watched an arrow pierce through Valeria's chest. Blood splattered on her face as Valeria slumped to the ground. Her eyes were wet and held something so distant that Regina couldn't fathom what it had meant. 

Her world stopped. And nothing made sense anymore. Slowly, she watched on as Valeria's eyes closed, tears trickling by its side. 

Regina sank to her knees. Her emotions weren't in check, they were all over the place. Her hands shook as she tried to touch Valeria, but it seemed as though her hands had their minds on their own, they wouldn't move. They wouldn't touch Valeria's slumped body.

'Sweeeeppp' The sound of an arrow passing right beside her brought her back to her senses. She looked up, saw no one but heard another sound of an arrow passing.

Although she wanted to stay back, Regina knew that it wasn't the right time. She had to leave. Only if she stays alive would she be able to save her sister.

So, she did the only logical thing her brain had been suggesting.

She ran.