Page 14 of The Withering Wood

“What do you want from us?”

“Nothing more than your help.”

Cerise huffed a disbelieving scoff. “What could two isolated peasants possibly offer a prince in the way of help?”

Oberon’s brow pinched. While he held her gaze, Cerise could almost see the wheels in his mind turning. Trying to determine which combination of lies would soothe her.

Red spread from beneath the bear’s skin covering Oberon’s legs, a slow trickle through the ice-crusted snow. Oberon adjusted the fur, revealing the lichboar’s gash on his bare, muscular thigh.

He pressed the pelt down hard on the wound. When his gaze returned to Cerise’s, she hated the pleading desperation shining within them.

Through lips purpling from the cold, he said, “Please, I don’t know what I’ve done to offend you, but somehow we’ve started on the wrong foot. Can we find somewhere warm, where I can stitch this wound and be clothed? I’ll explain everything, I promise.”

What was there to explain? A follower of Azkanix was amplifying the curse in the woods. She didn’t care how he encountered the necromancer or why he was transformed into a bear.

But why had he wandered to Cerise and Eirwen’s cabin, rather than return to Tyrnoraen? To the clerics who could erase the rune from his flesh and the populace who’d recognize those tainted pink eyes as those of the royal family immediately.

He must either be on the run from his family or trying to take advantage of Cerise and Eirwen’s kindness.

It’d been six years since they left Tyrnoraen, four since Azkanix cursed the world. Cerise had no idea as to the conditions within the capital since the blight began. For all she knew, the entire kingdom collapsed in on itself like a dying star. Perhaps the prince had a hand in its demise and was chased from the city. If she led him toward her home, those who wanted his head would be led straight to her and Eirwen. Then, they’d be punished for harboring him.

If that was not the circumstance, then he was idiotic enough to leave the safety of Tyrnoraen. Where he bumbled into the necromancer and somehow got himself transformed into a bear. And now he expected Cerise and Eirwen to provide him comfort and safety, to help solve his problems, when they received no such thing from him, his family, or his kingdom. If the royalty couldn’t be bothered by the issues of their subjects, then the subjects had no obligation to provide aid in return.

Their resources were limited enough. Cerise would not waste them on a selfish, stupid prince.

She pulled Beloved away from Oberon’s throat, the brief brightness of hope flickering in his gaze. He must’ve seen the stoic resolve in her face, for it quickly shuttered into surprise, disappointment, then concern.

“You’re going to leave me here? In the cold?”

“You have your old skin to wear. Should keep you warm enough to find shelter. A hollowed tree, perhaps?”

She turned her back on the shivering, naked prince, leaning on Beloved as she walked, each step a fresh agony that rippled through her leg.

“I’ll freeze out here!”

“Not my problem,” Cerise said.

A few steps away, she paused at a discolored, fuzzy slab of flesh on the ground. The piece of runic skin she’d carved away from his bear shape. She picked it up between her thumb and forefinger, ice crystals forming where the fluids froze. Cerise tossed it over her shoulder and as it landed on the snow with a wet slap she called, “Forgot a piece.”

Cerise told Eirwen everything.

From the first rune she noticed, to her day with the bear destroying them, the fight with the dwarf, his lichboar, and finally the fateful reveal of what—or who—the bear truly was. Eirwen’s pale sapphire eyes widened as Cerise’s tale progressed, yet she kept focused on her work, massaging Cerise’s knee and pulling out the cold.

As Cerise spoke, the image of Oberon stained her mind. His toned, tall body, trembling as he knelt before her in the snow. The way his mouth curled when Beloved was at his throat, the trickle of blood that outlined the curves of his neck. The way his large hands clutched the bear pelt, the fur sliding through his fingers. The way his thick, golden-brown hair cascaded around his face and over his shoulders, falling snow kissing his skin.

May Azkanix’s shattered soul take him for the curse he laid on her mind.

“You left him out there?” Eirwen gasped, incredulous.

“We have enough problems without adding a wayward prince to the list.”

“Perhaps if you’d let him explain, you’d discover he could be a help and not a hindrance. What do you plan on doing about the runes without his aid locating them?”

“I will add observation of them to my daily walk around our home. With vigilance, I can prevent it from creeping into our space.”

“What about the rest of the wood? The rest of the kingdom?”

“It can perish, for all I care. As long as we have enough to survive, that’s all that matters to me.”