by Dahlia Lu
He stopped a soldier, grabbed the horse’s rein right from his hands and mounted the animal. He knew he owned a far superior specimen, but this one would have to do. He couldn’t afford to waste another second. The woman he loved and his dignity was depending on it.
The words of the messenger burned into his chest. Someone was going to have to die if it was true. His father had given his bride elect as a peace tribute to the tyrant prince of the Northern Kingdom. The messenger reminded him several times to think of his country, but those words fueled the fire coursing through his vein. All he had thought about was his country! He had spent restless years at the border securing the kingdom from invaders instead of enjoying the luxury of a prince inside gilded palaces. His father rewarded his loyalty by taking away the only woman he had ever loved?
He felt tricked, deceived and beguiled.
He fell head over heels for her the first moment he laid eyes on her when she performed courting dance of the butterflies. He had spent so much effort tracking her down, fencing off the vengeful prime minister, and finally managed to persuade her to marry him. Now all of these efforts had gone to waste because his father had just given her to another. The sole thought of another man’s hands on her was enough for a murderous rage to burn a hole in his chest. Humiliation was eating him away.
He rode nonstop for two full days and night before his city came into sight. His horse was near the brink of exhaustion, but he needed it to survive until it got him through the gate. The soldiers on the city wall were on the lookout, and when they saw him, they immediately opened the gate. He dashed onto the city streets with the goal of getting to the palace’s gate. He didn’t care who or what was in his way. They better get out of his way and fast.
Escorts were following him as he walked down the hallway. They informed him that his father was in the study and that was all he needed to know from them.
With his sword firmly in his right hand, he kicked the door to the study open. Despite his obvious entrance, his father sat calmly at his desk. His father had been expecting him.
Protocol demanded that he kneel before his lord father.
“Where is she?” The question he couldn’t wait another second to ask.
His father looked up and calmly answered, “I’ve given her to Sayan.”
“She’s my wife!” He restrained the urge to shout. Even if he was a prince, such insolence could sever his head.
“Bride elect,” his father corrected him, “and now she is the concubine of Prince Sayan.”
He glared at his father. All the respect he had for the man evaporated in an instant. “She is mine!”
“If and when I say she is,” his father slammed a firm fist on the table to put him back in his place. Such display would only work on his subjects, not on him.
“There are many beautiful women in our kingdom, why must it be her?”
“I specifically forbid her from attending the banquet. However, Prince Sayan accidentally discovered her in the garden and asked to have her. What was I supposed to do?”
He clamped shut.
“Think of your country, my son.”
Those words again. He stood up without permission to challenge his father’s authority. His father walked around his desk and stood face to face with him.
“Do not let a woman cloud your judgment.”
A sour taste rolled down his throat as he turned away and exited the doors. His father could ask him for any kind of sacrifice and he would not utter a word, but he could not sacrifice Nala for the sake of ascending the throne. Even if he becomes the king, this humiliation would follow him to the grave.
He must get her back before she crosses the border.
Chapter Five
There is a desert separating the Northern Kingdom and the Western Kingdom.
Nala snugged her abductor’s cape around her body and used it to veil her face. They were traveling toward the North against the northern wind. It would hurt to breathe in the sands flying at her.
The scent of blood was all around him.
She looked up at her abductor and saw a violent storm in his dark brown eyes. His chest was very warm, even hot. She didn’t understand why he was so angry. She should have been the one who is angry. She waited for him to make the first insult so she could counter, but he said nothing.
The full moon was rising higher and higher. The wind had calmed quite a bit. The group stopped at her abductor’s command and set camp at a tiny patch of oasis. Her abductor dismounted the horse first before he grabbed her by the waist and flipped her onto his shoulder again.
They said men from the Northern Kingdom were brutes, and now she knows why.
She didn’t bother to fight him. He would have to put her down eventually. She may not weight much, but combined with the weight of the weapon behind his back, a ton of feathers still amount to a ton.
Her abductor carried her into the newly set up camp and threw her onto a pile of cushions. He may be rough, but he was nice enough not to throw her on the hard ground. He unstrapped the blade from his back and set it aside. He glanced at her every so often. There was still an angry expression on his face, but he said nothing to her, not even a word.
“Are you…sulking?” she asked curiously.
“Who’s sulking?”
“You’re obviously angry with me, but you’re not saying anything.”
“What should I say to you?” He asked. “I don’t have any rights to say anything to you.”
“You…abducted me,” she reminded him.
He knelt down to her level and stared her in the eyes. “Do you really want to marry that man?”
“What does ‘want’ have anything to do with it?”
He curved his eyes downward. When she thought he would stand up again, he lay down onto the cushions and turned his body sideways, facing away from her.
“Do you have any intentions of taking me back?”
“No, you are coming back to the Northern Kingdom with me.”
She leaned forward and rested her elbows on his arm. “You look like someone I know, but that really can’t be. He’s a shepherd and you’re a prince. One had to be born a prince, right?”
He turned to lie on his back. Her elbows slipped onto his chest.
Nala slowly got up to create distance between them. The ripe peach she’d kept in her bag had been squished when she slipped. The juice leaked out of the bag and damped the fabric of her gown.
“It’s starting to feel sticky,” she was referring to the juice stain. She got up and headed out of the tent.
Sayan watched as Nala leave the tent.
He had expected many things from this trip to the Western Kingdom, but finding Nala had not been one of them. Just when he was about to give up hope of ever seeing her again, she fell from the tree branch into his arms. He didn’t know how to deal with the shock. He also didn’t know how to deal with the bottled up anger.
She appeared in his life the same way as how she disappeared – without a warning.
The soldiers outside were getting rowdy. Sayan got up and headed out to see what was causing the commotion. Nala was standing by the desert spring and began loosening her gown. She pulled on the belt holding her gown together and the fabrics quickly slipped off her smooth skin.
Sayan hastily stepped in front of her to shield her away from the lustful eyes of his soldiers. He covered her body with his cloak and swept her off her feet. He could see the objections in the soldier’s eyes but they didn’t dare to voice it. He carried her back into the tent and stopped in his tracks as soon as the tent provided them with privacy.
“What did you think you were doing?” He asked in an interrogative tone.
“I need to bathe.” Her reply was too casual for what she had just displayed in front of a bunch of horny bastards.
“If I didn’t step in, do you know what they could have done to you?” He didn’t even want to think about it. Unlike her, he had seen it more than once before.
“Are you protective of me?”
Her pale green eyes looked up at him. He found it strange that she would even ask such a question. If he had ever felt protective toward a female, it would be her. She knew that damn well.
“Don’t ever do that again.” He subtly sighed and then let her down to her feet. She was away from the protection of his cloak now. Her naked body was fully exposed. Sayan avoided looking at her as he removed his cloak and then wrapped it around her.
“You’re looking away as if the sight of me hurts your eyes.”
“I’m looking away because it doesn’t.” He returned his eyes to look at her. There wasn’t any sign of embarrassment he could detect on her face. “Are you trying to seduce me?”
She responded with a confused look in her eyes. “It must have been done without my awareness.”
He felt irritated with her. He pushed her down onto the cushion and mounted over her. Her pale green eyes were still as if she was a doll. He inched closer to her lips, went passed it, and whispered into her ear.
“I will never see you as a woman.”
He rolled over on his back to give her back her space. Night after night he had battled with his insomnia, but that night was different. His body was relaxed enough for his mind to rest. He was able to sleep soundly that night.
The sand had covered their tracks, but Ce knew his way around the territory. There was only one quick and smooth road connecting the Western and Northern Kingdom. Merchants feared this road because it was plagued with bandits, but the Northern Prince would not find it a problem.
Ce clutched the pale pink gown in his hand as he urged his camel to move forward. When he arrived at the oasis, he found it stuck on a palm’s leaves. He knew for sure it was Nala’s. Her sweet scent still lingered on the garment. He found some comfort that it was the garment and not her corpse left to rot in the desert.
He had expected this. His only hope was that she survived until he could get to her.
He quickly hid the pink gown from view when his sister caught up to his pace. Her attention to details did not let him succeed.
“That’s her gown is it?” his sister asked.
“Nothing gets past you, does it?”
“Do you still want her back?”
“I will get back what is mine.”
His sister eyed the gown in his hand. “What’s left for you? It’s ironic, really. You were saving that beautiful flower for your wedding night only to have your enemies trample all over it.”
He shot her a warning glare and she returned a cold smile. If his sister added another insult to his injury, he might snap.
“A smart woman knows when to speak and when to shut up. That tongue of yours will get you killed one day.”
Chapter Six
She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned her body towards him. Sayan grabbed her by the waist, lifted her up from the horse’s mount, and then let her down on her feet. His tunic was so big on her that the collar fell off one shoulder and the length ran to her knees.
The warm sand felt good beneath her feet, so she dug her feet further into the sand and felt something soft and moving beneath her heel. A cobra jumped out of the sand, hissed, and aimed at her calf. She caught it by the neck, its fangs half an inch from her flesh.
A quick swing of a dagger cut its head off and sent it rolling on the sand. Nala looked up. The prince was sheathing his weapon back into a leather case. He picked up the snake’s head, placed it on a rock, and smashed it beneath his boot.
“You didn’t have to kill it,” she said, “I frightened it first.”
He knelt down on one knee and pulled her ankle toward him. He inspected the length of her leg.
“Did it bite you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
His expression softened a little. “Be careful where you step. There is no cure to a cobra’s venom.”
“It will put me out for a little while, but it won’t be able to kill me.”
“I thought that only men think that they are invincible.”
“Are you one of those men?” She smiled when his brown eyes met her green ones. “I have heard much about you in the recent year. They say you are only battles away from losing your soul.”
“You knew where I was all these years, but you never bothered come looking for me?” He interrogated.
“Were you expecting me?” She asked innocently.
His hand reached out for her slender neck. “And all of these years I kept making excuses for you! You’re no different than any of them!”
“Why would I look for you? I don’t even know you.” Her reply was as calm as a stagnant surface. The prince loosened his grip on her neck. She looked at him, still perfectly calm.
“What happened?”
She blinked at his question.
“What happened to you after you left?”
A whirlwind of sand suddenly surrounded them. A man appeared behind the prince and rested his sharp blade against the prince’s neck.
Nala scuttled back when she saw him.
The man’s hair had the same color and texture as hers. She felt a rush of panic engulfing her. His clear blue eyes were so incredibly cold that it sent shivers down her spine.
The prince pulled up his own blade to block the sharp edge from severing his head. He pushed the enemy’s blade back and rolled onto the sand in one fluid motion.
Nala quickly found shelter behind the prince’s back while he stood in a defensive stance. She tugged on the back of his tunic with shaking hands.
“Make him go away…” she muttered. “Please make him go away…”
“I see,” said the man, “he is your lover.”
With those quick words, the man disappeared into thin air.
She had lost strength in her legs, but fortunately the prince turned around to hold her up. She hid her face in his chest to regain some emotional balance.
“What is that man?” the prince asked, questioning what he had just witnessed. “Don’t be afraid, he’s gone now.”
“He’s not gone…he’s always around. I could…feel it. He’s always following me.” She sobbed. “I’m so afraid of him. Make him go away…”
“Do you know him?”
“I…I don’t want to remember.” She shook her head. She used to be curious about her past, but now it is just too frightening. There was always an overwhelming feeling of anxiety when she tried to remember. Her heart would ache agonizingly. “I don’t want to remember at all!”
She had fainted in his arms.
Sayan picked her up and carried her to the tent the soldiers had erected for him. The bright sun would not help her condition. The soldiers assumed that she fainted from dehydration, but Sayan knew it was from shock.
He didn’t know what had happened to her after she left him, but he could guess it was traumatic enough for her to reject it entirely. She knew that man, that creature, and she was frightened of him. The Nala he knew was never afraid of anything, so he was stunned when he felt her shaking hands on his back. She never showed a hint of fear, much less screamed out like that. Nala was always curious about her past, but why did she say she didn’t want to remember? This girl was not the Nala he knew at all, but eight years could change anyone.
Is that how long it had been since they parted?
He was dumbfounded at the realization. She must be in her thirties by now, but she didn’t look a day older than adolescence. He reached for her face, sliding his fingers down her cheeks. He was surprised at how soft she was. There was not a flaw on her face that could reveal her actual age.
He placed her on the cushions and made sure she was breathing properly. The fingerprints on the side of her neck made him mutter a curse under his breath. He didn’t think he had used that much force, but the marks were hard evidence. Why didn’t she cry out or beg for him to let go? Other women would have.
Her dark lashes fluttered opened. Her pale green eyes looked up at him, soft and vulnerable. Of
all the years he had known her, she had never looked more vulnerable.
“Is he gone?” she whispered the question.
“Long gone,” he replied. He had questions about that man, but he decided it wasn’t important. “You truly don’t know who I am?”
“You are the prince of the Northern Kingdom,” she replied.
“Besides that,”
“You are a notorious warlord?”
“Besides that too,”
She looked up at him with a confused expression. “I couldn’t possibly know another prince.”
Sayan lowered his gaze. “When we get back to the Northern Kingdom, we’ll get you some real clothes.” He changed the topic. “I don’t have enough tunics for the both of us.”
“I just want to bathe. This is the longest I’ve ever gone without a bath.”
“Sometimes I wonder why you like to bathe so often.”
“I like to be clean.”
“If you were any cleaner, you wouldn’t have any skin left.”
Two soldiers entered the tent. One was carrying a small table and the other was carrying a tray of food. They placed them on the ground next to the cushions, bowed, then left. There was a roast chicken, bread, fruits, and a kettle of wine.
“I know it doesn’t look appetizing to you, but I promise there will be better food once we returned to the palace.” He pulled out a drumstick and handed it to her. She shook her head, refusing to take it. “You need to eat.”
“I like fruits.” She reached for the green grapes.
