Page 47 of The Withering Wood

Her stomach clenched and gurgled at the thought. “Please.”

Dry heat pulsed against Cerise as she entered the familiar cabin walls, replacing the woodcutting axes on their handles near the door. The chickens huddled near the hearth, their stench clinging to the hot air. As she ate, her and Eirwen spoke of what had happened the past few weeks, and Cerise felt her mind float away. She didn’t tell her sister about any intimacy with the prince. Admitting it happened, that it was real, would make her lose it all over again. Even as Eirwen pulled the cold from her body and she climbed into her own bed, she seemed to recede, like falling into a repeating dream. Everything was so…normal. Yet somehow it didn’t feel as it had before. There was a shadow clinging to her back, a burly visage hovering in her wishful, peripheral vision.

PART FOUR

The Beloved

Chapter Sixteen

Weeks passed. Still, the prince did not fade from Cerise’s mind or heart. She returned to the stony shell she was before meeting him, though with him etched into her, she held a new shape. He sometimes appeared in her dreams, replacing the decayed claws of the undead with his soft touch on her skin. Transforming the air of rotting battle fields with that of steam rising from hot springs. He lingered within her, and after a time, she stopped fighting it. Yes, she thought the imprint he left on her ridiculous, given the short amount of time they knew one another.

Perhaps she was simply a ridiculous woman.

So instead of trying to suffocate him out of her, she folded his memories into her shape like molding molten glass. A fragile, precious thing that warmed her from the inside out.

Eirwen cast her sidelong glances every now and then but never again brought up the prince or asked what, if anything, happened between them on their trek. They fell back into a steady routine as if Cerise never left, just as she’d requested. Only Cerise felt the heaviness in her bones, the hollow where the prince carved himself into her then left.

As she did her rounds through the wood, sometimes she’d find herself staring in the direction of Tyrnoraen, wondering where he was. How he filled his days. If he’d found a way to reverse the curse.

If he thought of her at all.

The first time she encountered a cursed tree with Vraethik’s rune etched into the wood, her heart caught in her throat as memories flooded over her. When she’d thought him little more than an intelligent beast, and they’d traveled through the forest hacking away Vraethik’s magic.

If only she’d known who lay beneath the bear’s pelt. Maybe they could’ve broken the curse on him sooner. Had a few more precious days.

Cerise’s eyes stung and she screamed, swinging her axes at the old marks in the tree. Over and over she swung, screaming until her throat was hoarse, arms ached, and the tree’s trunk broke, scraping against other trees as it fell. When the tree collapsed, so too did Cerise’s hold to the past. It was over. It was done.

Now, when she came across those inert runes, she simply walked by.

Her workdays shortened, unable to walk as far or as long without Beloved. No other weapons in their house could support her weight, and she didn’t want to break them trying. She’d help Eirwen with the garden in the morning and whittle in the evening, their shelves quickly filling with small, wooden figurines of animals either extinct or soon to be.

Yet her obsessive need to stay busy meant that wood dwindled faster, and she more often had to hunt for trees to down. Those, too, grew farther away, as those she’d previously cut would not regrow. For although the curse no longer spread, it remained a stain on the land.

The day after a blistering blizzard layered the forest in a quiet, bright day, she wandered the woods. They’d used much firewood the day and night prior, and with a bright sky overhead, Cerise decided to replenish their stores. After hours of walking back and forth, back and forth, from their cabin into the woods, carrying as many loads of firewood as she could, her leg wobbled, begging for a rest. Placing the last batch into the woodshed, she stalked around to the front porch, where a large figure waited, facing the door. A small pack, shining with the cool light of a full absorber and chopped wood peeking out the top, leaned against their cabin.

She froze, heart slamming against her ribs while disbelieving excitement hummed in her fingertips. If her leg didn’t hurt so bad, she’d think she was in a dream.

Fighting the grin tugging on her lips, she unslung one of the axes and crept behind the towering figure.

Before he turned to face her, she pressed the axe to his throat. He tensed, sucking in a breath.

“Kneel,” she commanded.

The prince fell to his knees, and with the axe still at his neck, she stalked to the other side of him. He gazed up at her with those brilliant, dawn-pink eyes, ice crusted on his golden-brown hair and beard gleaming in the light.

“I told you I’d return,” he said, hands clenching on his legs as if he restrained himself from reaching out to touch her. He stared at her with the same yearning intensity he had at the hot springs, yet a fear lingered there, too.

“And I told you if you ever stepped foot on my property again, I’d take your skin.”

“I’ve come to offer you something better, I hope.”

“What could possibly be better than a royal hide?”

“How about a prince’s heart?”

Cerise would’ve laughed at the melodramatics if her breath hadn’t caught in her throat.

“I never stopped thinking of you, Cerise. Even in my waking hours, I couldn’t stop dreaming about you. Maybe in the time since we last saw each other, your feelings have changed. But even with roaring fires and heavy blankets, tucked within the walls of Tyrnoraen Keep, everything’s been cold since I left your side. There’s no place I’d rather be than here with you.”