The prince: doom
511 Words
Lucan pov
I wasn’t supposed to be here.
If my father found out, he’d send the entire guard after me. If my mother knew, she’d cry for a week and call it a bad omen. But something pulled me past the castle gates, past the orchards and the river trails, deep into the forest where even the hounds refused to follow.
I didn’t mean to go this far.
But I did.
The trees grew thicker the deeper I wandered—taller, older, like they’d been standing long before my kingdom was carved into maps. Moss covered everything. The air felt heavy with silence, like even the birds were holding their breath.
And that’s when I saw her.
At first, I thought she was a ghost.
She stood by a waterfall, barefoot and pale, her dark curls tumbling over her shoulders like a storm. She was talking—but no one was there. Her face was lit with something strange. Not fear. Not sadness. Like she was speaking to the air, or something inside it.
I ducked behind a tree before I could think twice.
I didn’t want to startle her—or worse, make a fool of myself. I’m a prince. I’ve met nobles, diplomats, princesses from neighboring lands. But none of them looked like her. None of them made the world feel like it had stopped spinning.
I leaned in, watching.
She wasn’t just beautiful. She was wild beautiful. Like something untamed. Her skin looked like it had never known comfort—marked with faint bruises, shadows that didn’t belong on someone so soft. Her feet were stained green from the moss. But she didn’t flinch. She belonged to the forest in a way I didn’t know humans could.
And then she stopped talking.
I held my breath.
She turned away from the water and walked toward a clearing just ahead. I followed, slow and careful, heart thudding like a drum against my ribs.
That’s when I saw the flowers.
My stomach twisted.
Nisa.
They were spread like a bed of purple silk—beautiful, yes, but deadly. I knew the stories. One petal could make a soldier collapse. They weren’t supposed to grow this close to the inner forest.
She didn’t stop.
She walked right into the middle of them.
I opened my mouth to warn her, but the words stuck in my throat.
She sat down.
Kneeling in the center of a poison field.
And then… the flowers moved.
Not to sting. Not to tighten. But to bloom.
Slowly. Gently. They turned toward her like sunflowers to light, brushing against her skin with the tenderness of a lullaby. She touched them—touched them—with bare hands, and they curled into her palm like they knew her.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
Not in all my lessons. Not in the old scrolls or forbidden books hidden behind the palace library.
She wasn’t afraid of the poison.
And the poison wasn’t afraid of her.
I whispered before I realized I had spoken.
“What… are you?”
- Writer
