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As he turned to his left to try and spot the absent steed, he froze. Out of the deluge, a white horse sauntered across the field of death and destruction, oblivious to the threat of artillery that had started up again from both sides. On its back sat a young woman with long, golden hair, a flowing white gown flapping in the wind. She was beautiful, her head crowned with a glowing halo.
Am I dead already?
He gulped as she brought the horse to a standstill and slid from the saddle. Her bare feet picked up no mud as she wandered toward him, pausing beside the writhing wounded to touch a gentle hand to their foreheads. Their agonized eyes stared up at her, only to turn vacant as she drew her hand away, leaving smiles upon their faces as they took their last breaths.
“Who is she?” Dorian whispered. He turned to his friend. But Hudson was not standing at his side any longer. He lay still on the ground, his eyes blank, a livid red gash trickling blood from his throat. And everything had fallen unnervingly silent. No-one fired, no-one shouted, no-one attacked. Indeed, as he looked around, he found there was no-one still standing but him. Everyone had fallen, though he did not know how such a thing could have happened.
His head whipped back around as the mysterious woman approached. As she neared, he thought she looked familiar. A face he had tried to forget for her sake as well as his.
“Why did you do that? Why?” Dorian yelled, his heart clenching in a vise of pain for all the dead who were strewn around him. Hudson, Sergeant, his entire cavalry unit, all of the British, even all of the enemy battalions.
The woman smiled and came to a halt just in front of him, her bare feet still unsettlingly clean of any dirt. “It was not me, Dorian. It was you. You did this.”
“How could I?” His cheeks were slick, the rain hiding his tears as they fell. Hedidknow her, he felt sure of it. So why could he not remember her name? “How could I have done such a thing? I do not have the power for this devastation.”
“Oh, Dorian.” The woman reached out to touch his face. “You know why.” As soon as her fingertips met with his skin, the battlefield vanished.
He sat up, drenched with sweat and panting hard, in the familiar surroundings of his home. The sheets were twisted around him like a python, his bedclothes as sodden as if he had dived into the pond of his estate. He blinked rapidly, his heart hammering violently as he spied a glowing light in the corner of his bed-chamber. Had she followed him here into the waking world?
No… It is only the moonlight peering in through the drapes,he realized with an almighty gasp of relief. And a touch of sadness. For he was forbidden from seeing the young woman in his dreams again. That was the only place he could now find her, without taking drastic measures that would ruin the family name that he now upheld. Alone. No father, no mother, no siblings, no wife to help him bear the weight of it.
“I think I understand,” he said softly, thinking of his dream. “I think I have always known it.”
Rain pattered against the windowpane, softer than the storm from his slumber. It rustled through the trees outside, the winds rising up to a howl that whistled through the hairline gaps in the window frame. In his delirious state, he thought he heard it say what he feared the most, and what he had come to understand from that decimated battlefield of his nightmare—three harrowing words:You are cursed.
“I know.” He rolled his head in his hands as the tears came. “I know I am. That is why I am better off alone, so I cannot hurt anyone, ever again.”
As his stifled sobs filled the silent room, no-one came to comfort him. No-one ever did.
