Through the wilds
1071 Words
Elara ran.
When Thorne had fainted, she ran from the cottage, gasping and afraid. The air weighed upon her, with scents of rain and damp ground, and the trees closed in around her, dark and unforgiving. The forest blazed past, the branches reaching out to her like bone-white fingers.
Madness.
A princess? A real queen of some lost realm?
Malgar? The Wolf King?
It couldn't be. It wasn't.
She'd lived her whole life as Elara, apprentice healer. A dull girl in a country village, her life no wider than the circle of woods that ringed around them.
And yet…
Something inside her stirred.
A voice. A whisper of truth, like a fragment of memory from a forgotten dream.
You know this isn't a lie.
Her heart racing, she stamped the idea out, stumbling over a buried root under the weighty shroud. The rain slowed to a drizzle, but the wind still ripped through, its wail whipping across the leaves above.
She took a breath, her body shaking, pressing a quivering hand against her forehead.
She needed air. Thoughts.
Then—
"Elara."
She turned.
Maren stood paces away, her expression unreadable in the shadowy lantern light spilling behind her.
"You knew," Elara said, her voice raspy, trembling. "You knew the truth about me all this time."
Maren took a deep breath, her fingers clenching into the folds of her cloak. "I found you a child," she said softly. "At the edge of the forest. Hurt. Alonely."
Elara gagged in the air.
"You remembered nothing," Maren continued, her voice steady. "Nothing of your name. Nothing of where you came from. Anything."
Elara felt something shatter inside her, an echoing, hollow emptiness that she had never mustered the strength to confront.
"And you never told me anything?" she gasped.
Maren's mouth was pressed into a thin line. "Because I wanted to keep you safe."
Elara's heart hammered.
Safe.
She'd been brought up in the village, believing she was dull, never speculating about why the forest had seemed like home to her all along and why images of distant fire and darkness haunted her during the night.
Was any of it true? Things so deep inside herself she'd become unaware of them?
Her knees shook beneath her. She was sick.
"I had a family," she gasped, to herself and not Maren. "A kingdom. And you—" She spewed up at him. "You made me think I was nothing."
Maren's head recoiled as if slapped. "No," she shook her head. "You were never nothing, Elara. You were my daughter in every way that mattered."
Elara's chest tightened.
She wished she could scream, scream. That she could inform Maren that she ought to have said something. That she ought to have listened.
But before she had even made a sound—
A low, sinister growl rattled through the trees.
Elara didn't budge.
Maren was immobile at her side, hand diving into the fabric of her cloak, fingers curling around something concealed.
The hairs on the back of Elara's neck stood on end.
Slowly, she turned.
There was something in the darkness at the periphery of the clearing.
Staring.
Its red eyes shone like burning coals.
Not like gold, Thorne's wasn't. Not like the dark brown of the village hunters.
Something else.
The storm raged overhead, lightning flashing for a moment, illuminating the creature in the darkness.
It was tall. Too tall. It had its body wrapped in tattered rags, its legs stretched unnaturally, its hands terminating in claws.
A shiver ran down her.
Not human.
Not Lycan.
Worse.
The monster breathed, its hiss a sloppy clatter. Its ember-red eyes burned with unnatural flame, fixed on Elara.
And then—
It leaped.
"Elara, go!" Maren's yell cut through the darkness.
Elara barely had time to move anywhere before Maren shoved her aside, stumbling into the mud. One heartbeat later, the beast slashed where she'd been, claws ripping up dirt.
Elara took a ragged breath as she slid free.
Too fast. Too fast.
Maren hurled something—a clump of glittering dust—and the beast recoiled, hissing like a beast burned.
It did so in the time to blink.
"Elara, run!" Maren shouted, placing herself between them and the beast.
"No—"
"Run!"
The monster attacked again.
Maren flashed out a hand—and fire burst from her palm, fiery golden and rampant. Fire scorched the chest of the creature, battering it back.
Elara stared.
She had never seen Maren employ magic before.
The beast let out a raging howl, the glowing red eyes lighting up, the body convulsing as it fought something immaterial.
Then, before Maren even had a chance to attack again, it did the last thing Elara hadn't been ready for.
It spoke.
"The Nightbane heir has awakened."
Elara's blood chilled.
The beast's voice was the voice of many voices, stacked on top of one another and unnatural-sounding, but furious and hungry.
It c****d its head, its red gleaming eyes on her once more, and smiled.
Not humanly, per se. Not lupine growls either.
Something else.
Something wrong.
"Your blood calls the darkness," it panted. "And the darkness shall claim you."
And with that, in the darkness, came an end.
Dissipated within the trees as though it had never been.
The wind howled through the clearing, and the silence that followed was tighter than the storm had been.
Elara gasped raggedly and fast, her heart pounding within her head.
Maren spat, releasing her shaking hand. The flames continued to flicker on her fingers before they faded to embers.
Elara's eyes returned to her, her voice barely above a breath.
"What was that?"
Maren's mouth was white, her jaw clenched in a tight line.
"A hunter," she spat. "One of Malgar's."
The mention of the name sent shivers down Elara's spine.
She swallowed hard, the reality of it all crashing down on her.
She wasn't safe.
Not anymore.
She'd been kept in the dark all these years. But they did now.
They knew she was alive.
And they'd find her.
Maren's eyes flashed to her, black with something unsaid.
"We have to leave."
Elara's mouth was parched with thirst.
"Where?" she gasped.
Maren's eyes swept out across the mountains in the distance.
"To the only place Malgar fears."
Elara clenched her fists at her hips, still burning inside.
There was no going back now.
The storm raged on overhead.
And the hunt was on.
- Writer
