Page 16 of The Starlit Ring (The Chronicles of Liridin #1)

I t was after midnight, and I couldn’t sleep.

All night long, the wind wept and raged. Ria snored gently, one arm hanging from the edge of her cot, dead to the world.

I tossed and turned. Though I’d been exhausted when I went to bed, my energy returned as soon as my head hit the pillow. I closed my eyes and tried to think about anything other than the howling wind, and Ria’s snoring.

The prince’s face appeared behind my closed eyelids, angular and angry, a single brow raised as if to ask, “Well?”

I groaned in exasperation. Ria didn’t answer.

I used the chamber pot and climbed back into bed. Still, sleep evaded me.

Finally, I threw back the blankets and donned my boots and cloak.

No one told me I couldn’t leave my tent at night, just that I shouldn’t .

And though I hardly wanted to be out among the soldiers at night, I didn’t know what else to do.

Anxiety crept through my veins like a slow-burning poison, and I couldn’t stand it any longer.

Light on my feet, I slipped between tents, hardly daring to breathe. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but it might be difficult to convince the soldiers of that.

But I needed a moment to myself. A minute or two to breathe deeply under the moonlight. No matter what I did, I’d be tired tomorrow. But I couldn’t lie on that cot any longer, waiting for sleep to take me like death. Or a lover. At this point, I’d accept either.

Avoiding campfires and guards alike, I sneaked to the far reaches of camp, where the clearing turned to forest. Bare branches and trunks dripped with silvery moonlight, and I took a moment to inhale the scent of pine and birch, the sharp smell of fresh snow.

I took another step into the forest, careful to keep the camp within my line of sight.

If I went missing, Ria would be devastated.

Prince Marius would be somehow even more suspicious.

And the soldiers would resent using any time at all to track me down.

They would probably leave me to die, without even a perfunctory search.

After all, I was nothing more than an unexpected addition.

Another mouth to feed. Another burden to bear.

I’d never been anything else. King Amonrew treated me as part of his family, but I knew well enough what I was.

A product of guilt. Father had shielded me from endless accusations, but when I looked in the mirror, I only saw a hopeless bastard, lonely and confused, playing dress-up in a princess’s clothes.

It didn’t matter if he swore up and down that I was his child. I didn’t believe him.

Leaving the tent was a mistake. I felt worse outside, standing among the trees like a woodland creature dazzled by starlight.

There was no outlet for my pent-up energy.

In the darkness, I was hesitant to stray too far.

The soldiers would not welcome me at their fires.

I had no real friends among the Tocchians, though I strived for alliances with the servants.

My new position as Ria’s guardian/maid seemed to confuse them, and I couldn’t blame them.

It was so obviously made-up. Acceptable only because Ria vouched for me, and Prince Marius couldn’t afford to anger her further.

I’d never felt more alone.

Minutes passed. Deciding there was no time like the present, I plucked the crystal obelisk from my pocket, and whispered, “Light.”

Nothing happened.

I shook it vigorously. “Light,” I repeated.

Only darkness.

“Work, gods damn it!” I cried, lobbing the obelisk at a tree trunk. It bounced off a boulder, and landed in the dirt, where it began to glow dully.

“Of course,” I grumbled, stomping as I went to retrieve it.

Nothing about this crystal had gone as planned.

No number of enchantments, spells, potion baths, or anything else that usually guaranteed success worked.

I had a half a mind to leave it there, glowing pitifully on the forest floor, a testament to my failure and its own triumphant stubbornness.

But I wasn’t ready to go back to camp, and the dim light was better than nothing.

With the crystal illuminating my way, I slipped further into the trees, pausing to mark them with my dagger, nearly weeping as the bark blunted the blade. I told myself it didn’t matter. I had nothing to do tomorrow but sit beside Jerek and sharpen my knives after supper.

This entire exercise was pointless. I already knew I wouldn’t feel better. I needed to get back to camp before someone caught me and demanded an explanation. Restlessness, I’d been told time and again, was never an excuse for misbehavior.

But I so desperately needed this moment of control, where my choices were all my own, and nobody was around to criticize them.

In the distance, I heard something snuffle .

I froze, imagining a deer, or perhaps a skunk. With no desire for an altercation tonight, I started to back away.

A twig snapped behind me. I whipped around and saw nothing.

Then came the furious pounding of feet—crunching through leaves and snow, trampling the underbrush.

I fumbled for my dagger and nearly dropped the crystal.

The trees shuddered. Snow sprayed from their branches and scattered through the air. Something grunted. A pair of eyes appeared, gleaming in the moonlight.

I shrieked as the bear charged from the bushes.

Leaves clung to its matted fur. Massive paws thundered against the forest floor, talons leaving behind indentations. The stench of blood and shit was nearly overpowering.

I choked on bile.

Tiny ears twitched. The bear’s mouth opened, and I glimpsed long, yellow teeth. Strings of saliva connected the top and bottom fangs.

Those fangs would soon be red with blood. Though my mind screamed at me to run, my feet were rooted to the spot.

We had bears in Olmstead. I was lucky enough to have never crossed paths with them, but even I knew that running would only make things worse. Bears rarely attacked humans, but they liked it when their snacks fought back. Fleeing would only excite it.

Eyes glinting, the beast stampeded toward me, spit flying, huffing loudly, like we’d been engaged in a game of cat and mouse for a long time now.

As if it would have to do anything more than throw itself on top of me to kill me. A single claw in the belly, and I’d bleed out.

Throw something! cried a little voice in the back of my mind that sounded a lot like my mother’s. Throw something at it!

There was no time to stoop and pry a rock from the frozen earth. I glanced at the crystal in my hand and made a snap decision.

I lobbed it at the bear with all my strength. Then I loosed a scream of rage and threw up my arms so that my cloak fluttered around me like a pair of massive wings.

The bear halted in its tracks, and watched me with beady eyes, head cocked as if assessing whether a puny human could harm it.

Up close, I realized that it was absolutely enormous.

Were it to stand, it might be well over seven feet tall.

I could just barely make out the scars crisscrossing its snout, winding up its leg like vines.

Was this the bear that had been spotted a few days ago?

I didn’t have time to wonder. Its mouth opened, and I ducked down, scrabbling my fingers along the ground, searching for something, anything that I could throw at it.

I wasn’t exactly adept at throwing knives, and I was loath to part with my dagger, so I needed to find something else, and fast. My fingers curled around a branch, short but thick, and I stood, chucking it at the bear.

The branch bounced off its nose. A disgruntled snort. Then the bear rose onto its back legs.

And ran right at me.

I screamed again, staggering backward, groping at the air with my free hand, clutching the dagger with the other.

A shadow darted before me. A flash of silver followed.

“Run!” the shadow snarled, and I did. All of ten feet, until I found a tree with a trunk thick as a bloated corpse and sneaked behind it. I peered out into woods drenched in moonlight and watched.

The bear charged, spraying spittle as it roared.

The figure before me raised his sword. Blond hair, long and loose, draped over a dark cloak.

Shit . Prince Marius himself had come to rescue me.

There was no way he could go up against a beast of this size and live to tell the tale. Not by himself, anyway.

Bending low, I snatched up anything I could find—pebbles, twigs, chunks of bark. I stuffed branches into the crook of my arm.

“Get down!” I shouted.

Prince Marius dropped to the ground with the elegance of a potato sack. Embarrassing, but effective.

I launched the first rock at the bear and narrowly missed. Flinching, the bear took step back. I hurled another rock, and another, until it was panting, glancing around wildly.

“Are you mad?” hissed Prince Marius, grasping his sword. He remained squatted down, hands over his head, as I pelted the bear with everything in reach.

“Yell at it! Wave your arms! Flap your cloak about!” I snapped at him. Then I turned back to the bear, and screeched, “You! Begone, you massive, reeking fuckwit! No one invited you!”

The prince let out a guffaw as he stood, the corners of his cloak grasped in his hands, spread wide like a sheet as he stretched out his arms. “Yes,” he rasped, nearly choking with laughter. “No one invited you!”

“Scram!” Another rock pelted its snout.

“Go away!” Marius flapped his cloak and lunged forward, not unlike an enormous bat.

The bear turned from us at last and thundered into the forest.

“I don’t suppose I need to ask if you’re alright,” said the prince, turning to me.

“I, um, yes. I think I am. Alright, that is.” My hands were badly scraped, and my knees trembled like saplings in a gale, but I didn’t feel any cuts or scratches. “It didn’t hurt me.”

“Mm, yes, but it was about to,” said Prince Marius. He sighed, as if terribly inconvenienced. “Please return to camp with me. I think we should talk, and it would be far nicer to do so in front of a nice, warm fire. Wouldn’t you agree?”