Page 25 of The Masked Princess

At some point in the confusion, the number of people in the clearing doubled, and there was no more green mage fire. In the darkness it was hard to tell who belonged to which side, but she caught flashes of silver and blue among the men still fighting. Finally, the Dovean man nearest her speared the last bandit through the chest. After his opponent fell, the man teetered on his feet, but used his sword to stabilize himself. A small group of individuals stepped toward him and asked something, but he shook his head and waved them off.

“Princess Annalise, where are you?” Annalise relaxed as Soren’s voice, wild with worry and alarm, broke the silence.

“I’m here,” Annalise called back. She hefted the axe in her hands, ready to respond if it was a trick or if an unseen enemy was lurking in the darkness beyond the ring of the fire.

“Stay there. Don’t move, I’ll come to you.” Soren’s silhouette dipped his head toward the others, then nodded as if agreeing with whatever they said. She could just barely make out that instead of Dovean blue and silver, they wore some type of homespun cloth, although it wasn’t the same colors or cut as what the bandits had used and was hard to see any other details in the fire’s light. They spread out around the clearing, a few taking up station to either side of Annalise, separated by nearly twenty feet. She tensed, but they weren’t looking at her and were instead facing the forest with bows at the ready.

Soren walked to her, sword still in hand. She noted with some alarm that he was limping so badly his right leg was dragging half a step behind him.

At just that moment, the clouds parted and the nearly full moon shone brightly down on them.

“Oh, Annalise, you’re okay. I was so worried,” Soren said, his voice hardly more than a whisper when he stopped in front of her. His expression turned from relieved to stormy when he took in her cracked mask and the bandage around her neck.

“Who did this to you?” he growled. He lifted the tip of his sword just a fraction, as if ready to mete out retribution to whoever dared injure her.

“Those men.” She nodded to the three corpses near them at the edge of the clearing. “One of them had a knife.”

“Let me see.” He reached out for her, but she took a half-step back, shaking her head.

“I’m covered in blood.”

He glanced down at her gloved hands, which were soaked with blood, then at the axe she still clutched, and his jaw tightened. “Okay, in that case, let’s go to the fire. I need to see how badly you’re hurt.”

As they entered the ring of light, the events of the past ten minutes hit Annalise like a boulder. She let the heavy axe slip from her grasp with a thud and then, in the next step, sank to her knees in shock, fighting for breath. She hated her curse almost as much as she hated using it, and yet, in only a couple of months, she’d killed four people. Her fingers twitched as she registered the sticky blood soaking her gloves, and she dry-heaved at the memory of their tortured screams.

Soren had turned when he heard the weapon drop. She looked up at him now, struck momentarily speechless at how handsome he was. His hair was ruffled and glinted golden red in the light of the fire, and a blood splatter across his cheek and nose gave him a fierce air. His eyes burned into hers like molten coals, and she imagined for a second that he was a fire god incarnate.

“Annalise, are you injured? How can I help?” he asked, crouching down, his face twisted in concern.

She shook her head, speechless for a long moment until she finally found the courage to force out the heavy words. “I’m guilty of using my curse to kill three men tonight and am ready to receive the punishment that you promised my father. I’m sorry, Soren, for putting you in this position. There was nothing else I could have done,” she said as tears coursed down her cheeks, one swollen and one still hidden behind her now-ruined mask. She risked one last glance up at him, to imprint his face as the last thing she would ever see. “And yet, if anyone was to do this, I’m glad that it is you. I trust you to make it quick and as painless as you can. Thank you for these past few weeks; they have given me more happiness than you will ever know.” As she finished speaking, she bent her head in submission, awaiting her fate.

Instead of the bite of the sword on her neck, she felt a soft gloved hand on her face.

Soren tilted her chin up until she was forced to look at him. His eyes glistened in the firelight, and his expression was so tender and loving she wondered if she’d already died and this was her reward from the Goddess. “Dearest, you won’t die today, not while I draw breath, and certainly not by my hand,” he whispered. “I could never harm a single hair on your head, let alone kill you. I may have failed to protect you and shield you from these horrors today, but I swear to you that I will do everything within my power to ensure you never have to use your curse again.”

CHAPTER 19

Soren made sure Annalise was safe by the fire with a dagger at her side for added protection before he took stock of what was left after the attack on the bandit camp.

Considering the small number of bandits that abducted Annalise, Soren hadn’t been expecting to find a group nearly thirty strong. That had been a miscalculation, but twenty trained soldiers should have held their own against a band of amateurs. The real danger had come in the form of the mage, and it had cost him the lives of most of his men. If it hadn’t been for help from a surprising quarter, Soren was sure that he would also have died.

“I’ve directed my men to gather up the bodies and take them a good distance away. It’s too late to move camp, but it would be unwise to keep them where they can attract predators,” a tall man dressed in gray said. His homespun cloak made him nearly blend into the shadows, and Soren would have had a hard time keeping track of where he was if it weren’t for the glint of firelight on the silver circlet atop his head.

“Thank you. Did you have any casualties?” Soren asked.

“None, only a few injuries. And you?”

Soren glanced at the fire where the remainder of his men were lying or sitting. “There’s less than a handful of us left from the rescue party, and all are injured. It’s not nearly enough to protect our charge.”

The man nodded, his eyes falling on Annalise. “She is the Dovean princess, is she not?”

Soren’s hand drifted to his sword, and he widened his stance. “She is. Is that going to be a problem?”

He didn’t know the mystery man or any of the men who followed him. They’d joined mid-fight without introduction, and at the time, he’d welcomed any help he could get. Now, he started to wonder if perhaps the enemy of his enemy wasn’t necessarily his friend after all.

“Not at all.” The man looked from Annalise to Soren, and then to the sword Soren held ready at his side. “We’ve heard stories of the masked Princess of Dovea, and news of her betrothal to King Nelan. In fact, my lady would be very interested to meet your charge. Our territory is a day’s journey away. There we can provide you and your men with shelter, food, and healers as well as a safe place to rest.”

Soren frowned but didn’t see how he could refuse the offer; now that the adrenaline of finding Annalise had worn off, his injuries were making themselves known anew. If he were honest with himself, he doubted he could defend her from a hungry wolf pup, let alone a motivated human.