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The Prince

He had been hunting for her since the moment she was taken from him

His mate

He barely remembered his own name And only recalled it because his three companions spoke it while they searched for her across violent and dark seas, through ancient and slu forests, over stor enough to feed his body and allow his companions a few hours of sleep Were it not for them, he would have flown off, soared far and wide

But he would need the strength of their blades andand wisdoh

Before he faced the dark queen who had torn into his inner before she had been locked in an iron coffin And after he was done with her, after that, then he’d take on the cold-blooded gods theht remain of his mate

So he stayed with his companions, even as the days passed Then the weeks

Then months

Still he searched Still he hunted for her on every dusty and forgotten road

And so his soul on the wind to wherever she was held captive, entombed

I will find you

The Princess

The iron smothered her It had snuffed out the fire in her veins, as surely as if the flames had been doused

She could hear the water, even in the iron box, even with the iron ; the endless rushing of water over stone It filled the gaps between her screa

A sliver of island in the heart of a mist-veiled river, little more than a smooth slab of rock amid the rapids and falls That’s where they’d put her Stored her In a stone teod

As she would likely be forgotten It was better than the alternative: to be remembered for her utter failure If there would be anyone left to remember her If there would be anyone left at all

She would not allow it That failure

She would not tell them what they wished to know

Noriver No h the bellowing rapids

She had tried to keep track of the days

But she did not kno long they had kept her in that iron box How long they had forced her to sleep, lulled into oblivion by the sweet smoke they’d poured in while they traveled here To this island, this teaps lasted between her screa anew

Days, ether, as her own blood often slithered over the stone floor and into the river itself

A princess as to live for a thousand years Longer

That had been her gift It was now her curse

Another curse to bear, as heavy as the one placed upon her long before her birth To sacrifice her very self to right an ancient wrong To pay another’s debt to the gods who had found their world, become trapped in it And then ruled it

She did not feel the waroddess who had blessed and daoddess of light and flame even cared that she now lay trapped within the iron box--or if the i whohis life, spare their world