Page 10 of Pawns of Fate

Truthfully, Rose was not alright. She was terrified.

The gray-skinned ogre was at least eight feet tall.

Yellow tusks, covered in drool, stuck out of its lopsided mouth.

And it had friends. The handful of knights accompanying them were all engaged in battle with an ogre of their own, leaving this one free to harass her and Nicholas.

It stalked closer to them, and Rose screamed.

Nicholas brandished his sword and yelled something to the effect of “stay away from the fighting.” He needn’t have bothered.

Rose had no intention of going any closer to the foul creatures and was fighting the urge to run all the way back to Robson Castle.

Rose shuffled backwards with a motion that essentially amounted to a very ungainly crab walk until her back pressed against a pine tree. The solidity of the tree gave her the illusion of safety, enough that Rose turned her eyes to the battle in front of her.

The ogres were immense; one was at least nine feet tall, and all had arms thicker than tree trunks.

However, the knights were faster and worked together with an ease that suggested this was hardly their first battle.

One ogre had already fallen, and Rose watched another lose an arm to a skillful stroke of a broadsword.

The thought that her aural magic—were it strong enough to put the monsters to sleep—would be helpful in this situation crossed Rose’s mind. Hiding under a pine tree felt worse than useless. She turned her attention to Nicholas.

Despite his claims that his magic was weak, sparks of electricity surrounded Nicholas’s blade and burned the ogre each time Nicholas struck.

He stabbed the yellow-tusked ogre’s abdomen, and the beast bellowed.

Indigo blood gushed out of the wound when Nicholas pulled his sword out.

Rose felt nausea fill her stomach like a balloon; the smell of the ogre’s blood and burnt flesh was worse than rotten fish.

She turned away from the battle and wandered just a little deeper into the forest, desperate to find a private place to empty the contents of her stomach. Unfortunately, Rose didn’t realize that ogres were hardly the only monsters in the forest. She unwittingly stepped into a nest of twiddletoads.

A shocked squeal left her lips as what she’d thought was an innocuous circle of large, colorful mushrooms came to life, hopping this way and that.

Each time the toads jumped, shimmering powder spewed from the spotted mushrooms on their backs.

Rose wasn’t an expert on the flora and fauna of Onanish, but she was sure that the ever-thickening dusty haze was poisonous—black dots formed at the edge of her vision.

She stumbled in her attempt to escape the twiddletoad’s poison, but the little monsters followed her. Rose fell to her knees. The black dots at the edge of her vision grew to spots. She put a hand on the forest floor, trying to steady herself, but it was in vain.

Right as Rose fell to the forest floor, she caught a glimpse of a large black snake with golden eyes.

“Help,” she groaned. “Somebody, help.” Even just those three words caused great pain. Her throat burned from the chalky poison.

Did the black snake wink at her? That couldn’t be. But it did strike out and ruthlessly catch one of the twiddletoads in its mouth, causing the other toads to disperse and the air to clear.

Rose slipped into unconsciousness.

The snake spat out the toad’s corpse and then slithered next to Rose’s sleeping form, observing the rise and fall of her chest and the sound of breath escaping her lips. Metallic footsteps approached. A male voice called, “Rose, Rose!”

The snake slipped into the bushes just before Nicholas entered the clearing.

NICHOLAS

Panic viciously squeezed his heart when he saw Rose’s figure lying on the forest floor.

Nicholas dropped to his knees and checked for her pulse. When he felt her heartbeat, Nicholas felt a relief stronger than almost any other emotion he’d felt in his life. He glanced around and noticed the corpse of a red-capped twiddletoad beside his fiancée. What the hell had happened here?

He picked Rose up. Twiddletoads could be lethal if a person breathed in too much of their poison for too long.

They usually lived in large groups, but only one corpse was nearby.

Perhaps this one was already sickly, abandoned by its group, and hadn’t had enough toxicity to kill Rose, just knock her unconscious.

Syzman came up beside him. “You found her,” the shadow mage commented, then he bent down to examine the twiddletoad’s corpse. “Odd. Only one toad.” Syzman straightened up and shoved the little monster into his satchel. “ She should be dead.”

Nicholas’s eyebrow twitched. Syzman was technically correct, even if the words were harsh.

“Sorry, my lord. I’m glad she’s alright.”

“Do you have any smelling salts?” Nicholas asked, carrying Rose’s limp form back to their party.

“No. Rest might be better, anyway,” Syzman said, following behind. “We’ve sent a few men to fetch more horses, but it will be an hour or two before they return. She might feel better simply waking up in the castle than waiting in the woods next to dead ogres.”

Nicholas bit the inside of his cheek. Once again, Syzman was correct, even if his words were blunt. He wanted to ask Rose what happened. He’d seen her scurry over to the pine tree, putting a safe distance between herself and the fighting. She’d seemed scared, but in control of her faculties.

Then he’d turned his attention to dealing the ogre a final blow.

When he’d looked back again, Rose was gone.

She hadn’t gone far, but you didn’t have to go far in this forest to run into danger.

He let out a breath of frustration? Relief?

Nicholas wasn’t sure. Adrenaline and too many emotions were bouncing around inside of him.

He’d never felt this strongly about much of anything before.

He looked down at the beautiful woman in his arms. His very soon-to-be wife.

This certainly wasn’t how he’d wanted to introduce her to Onanish, but nothing seemed to be going how he wanted where Rose was concerned.

He cradled her body a little closer, a little tighter, and wondered how he’d ever get this woman to trust him now.

ROSE

Rose woke to soft sheets surrounding her body and a fluffy pillow cradling her head.

It felt nice, but… wrong. She’d been in the middle of a forest, watching a…

snake. Yes. A snake killed one of the twiddletoads.

She felt her body for bites or lingering signs of venom.

Her nose and lungs burned, but she suspected that was from the twiddletoads.

Apparently, the snake had not bitten her.

A soft snore grabbed her attention. Nicholas was holding her hand and had fallen asleep in a chair beside the bed. Silver locks fell across his face, obscuring it from Rose’s view and tempting her to gently tuck the strands behind Nicholas’s ears.

She looked around at the large, feminine bedroom.

The floors were white marble but covered with delicate, patterned rugs.

The furniture and textiles used a simple, pastel palette, creating a light, airy effect for the whole room.

Afternoon sunbeams filtered through a square window and danced on a large vase of pink roses on the coffee table.

The door to the room opened. A faun, dressed in a maid’s uniform with a pretty silk girdle the color of daffodils, stepped through and said, “Lady Rose! You’re awake!”

Nicholas woke up with a small jolt. A thousand emotions flickered across his face, but he seemed to settle on concern as he asked Rose how she felt or if she needed anything.

“A little water would be nice,” she replied.

“Of course,” Nicholas said, then nodded at the maid, who excused herself, presumably to fetch the water.

“Where are we?” Rose asked, though she already knew the answer.

“We made it to the castle.” Nicholas’s jaw clenched, his brows furrowed, and he said his next words slowly and gently. “I carried you here after I found you unconscious in the woods. What happened, Rose?”

Part of Rose had worried that Nicholas would be angry. Uncle Hector certainly would have been. But Nicholas clutched her hand like a frail baby bird.

“I couldn’t stomach the odor of the ogre blood.” She grimaced.

“Ahhh. That makes sense. It takes some getting used to.”

“So, I went into the woods looking for a place to—” Rose fidgeted with Nicholas’s hand for a second, becoming more and more aware of the pleasant physical contact. “I needed to deal with my nausea,” she said. “I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings and stepped on a colony of twiddletoads.”

“Not just the dead one we found?”

“No, a black snake caught one of the toads and scared the rest of them away. I assumed it had eaten the one it killed.” It was already strange that the snake had attacked the twiddletoads at just the right moment for Rose to survive the encounter.

Stranger still that it hadn’t eaten its prey.

She decided not to mention the wink; it must have been a trick of her mind.

Nicholas opened his mouth, but the maid returned with a pitcher filled with cold, fresh water right at that moment. Rose drank it eagerly, sure she’d never tasted anything so refreshing. The liquid soothed her aching throat and washed away any lingering powder from the twiddletoads.

A second maid followed the first through the door. After Rose quenched her thirst and got out of bed, Nicholas introduced her.

“Rose, these are your maids. This is Betty.”

A short, full-bodied woman with brown hair and a warm smile stepped forward. Velvet deer antlers poked out of the curls on her head. A faun! They were uncommon outside heavily wooded territories, but a coniferous forest surrounded Castle Sharp. Rose couldn’t wait to get to know her better.

“And this is Lyla.”

A tall, slender woman stepped forward. Lyla had long, lavender hair and intelligent, purple eyes.

Both of her forearms were covered in dark, runic spell tattoos.

What was a powerful mage doing as her maid?

The urge to access the aural plane and read Lyla’s magical energy tickled the back of Rose’s mind.

“I know she’s dressed as a maid, but Lyla will serve as your and Ava’s bodyguard.

She’s a shadow mage from the same tower as Syzman.

You haven’t met Syzman or Jo?o officially yet, but they are bodyguards for York, our father, and me.

You’ll meet them at dinner tonight, if you’re feeling up to it.

We have Lyla disguised as a maid for an extra layer of protection,” he said as Lyla rolled down her sleeves, covering the runes on her arms.

It took Rose a minute to understand that she would have a bodyguard, let alone a shadow mage. Bodyguards were expensive, especially female ones. Shadow mages were in a different class altogether.

Rose had met a handful of shadow mages over the years, and they always had a terribly dark and dangerous energy because of the magic they practiced.

Controlling shadows was a rare gift, but shadow mages took it further than that, honing their entire bodies into physical and magical weapons from a young age.

She could remember when a ‘talent scout’ had come through her orphanage and ‘recruited’ a few girls who might develop an affinity for shadow magic.

They had been a pair of lavender-haired twins.

Rose wished she could remember what they’d looked like.

She’d heard the children were killed if they didn’t obtain mastery of the shadows fast enough. A twinge of pity grabbed Rose’s heart as she noticed a vicious scar hidden among Lyla’s tattoos.

“I look forward to working with both of you,” she said to the remarkable women standing before her.

Betty smiled back sweetly. Lyla let a predatory grin show, then tried to cover it with a casual smirk. Rose tried not to flinch.

Ogres. Twiddletoads. Fauns. Shadow mages and golden-eyed snakes. Rose had experienced more adventure in one afternoon with Nicholas than she usually did in a year. Life at Castle Sharp would be different; she was sure of that.