Page 1 of The Wild Prince’s Favorite (The Dragon Empire Saga #3)
The Northern Mountains.
For those who could only see them from afar, they were white, cold giants of stone and ice sitting at the far end of the continent like monolithic sentinels.
Some claimed there were exactly one hundred mountains.
Some claimed there was but one mountain that had gradually split into dozens to form a long, twisted chain around itself.
Those natural monuments were mysterious to most, and even more to those who dared to approach.
Like a god’s twisted labyrinth, the deeper one got into them, the more they turned into a death trap.
There was not one single, clear pathway into them.
The first mountains were smaller, smoother, like gentle mermaids calling the fearless to trap them in the depths of their older sisters.
Once one passed the first trials of those stone giants, the task only grew harder.
The paths were no longer paths, but ragged trails and climbing challenges, often to find one cornered in some deep cave, or at the edge of a bottomless and surely fatal precipice.
They were unpredictable, and the snow was like their mischievous friend, making the task even harder and the land impossible to conquer.
With each snowfall, the game was reinvented; the once-safe roads were back to being hazardous and lethal again.
If one didn’t get killed falling off a cliff or from being trapped in the biting ice and snow, they would surely get lost in the dead ends and resign themselves to the cruel sentence of starvation.
Only those who were born and blessed by the mountains could navigate their tortuous paths and befriend those giants of stone to try to find and learn almost all of their secrets.
To the Northern people, the clans inhabiting those mountains, climbing around and going from one end of those dangerous ice queens to another was child’s play.
They never feared the heights, the dark caves, nor the bite of the cold; all of those things were part of their world like the ground under their feet.
Those mountains were their whole world; a small, cruel world.
Even to those who knew how to tame the rock giants, the elements weren’t kind.
They could climb as much as they wanted, but food was terribly scarce, and finding a bush of berries that had outlived the biting cold was a blessing; being able to keep the livestock alive was another.
Not many species could live in this cold, and the survival of a single sheep could mean one week with a full stomach… or an empty one.
Amongst those people, a young woman was perhaps a bit more blessed than the others, in invisible ways.
Her piercing black eyes were the best at spotting the tiniest little gem of color through the thick veils of white snow.
She could track the smallest sparkle of a red berry hidden underneath a layer of frost, leading to a full bush of precious food.
She could climb better than most; like a snow cat, her fingers as secure as claws against the rock, her feet swift and light.
She could see well in the darkness of any cave, and find her way through the most complex maze of tunnels.
She was truly a child of the mountains, born and raised not to live but to survive her hostile homeland.
Ironically, her heart was often turned far away from there.
When her feet took her to some cliff at the edge of her sky-grazing home, her eyes would always turn toward the vast, vast land beneath them.
Her world was far too high and north for her to see what was going on at the other end of the continent, but her mind would find ways to imagine.
She could weave full stories out of the threads of rumors she had heard from others.
She imagined a land where the sun kissed its inhabitants’ skin all the time, and where the darkness of night wasn’t enough to chase away the warmth.
Where they had food everywhere, full bushes of colorful berries blooming all around, huge flocks of livestock, and even fish flooding their rivers.
.. She envied those people, although it was a fine line between envy and resentment.
Whenever she would turn her eyes toward the foot of her mountain, the anger inevitably rose.
“Alezya!”
The voice of her father echoed from afar, and a chill went down her spine despite her thick coat.
She was late. She grabbed her basket full of berries, harnessed it to her back, and started running.
No one could really run on the mountains.
Not without the risk to trip and open their head on some stalagmite, or break their neck on a sheet of ice.
One had to learn to run slowly, to jump from one place to another, and ensure there was stable ground under their feet while keeping their head up and eyes open so as not to trip or slide to their death.
Alezya was good at this. She climbed faster than most thanks to her well-trained body, her knowledge of the mountains, and the confidence she had in finding her way home.
Her home was on one of the largest mountains, where her clan had asserted their dominance and established themselves before anyone else generations ago, taking ownership of that prime location.
She liked that mountain the most but hated that it was theirs alone.
She loved all of the mountains equally and wished the clans could see it that way too.
Sadly, the Northern clans were even more divided than the tips of those mountains, and not likely to ever unite as one again. ..
Alezya hurried as fast as she could to climb and run back, risking her own safety a couple of times in the process.
Her father’s anger was scarier than the darkness of an abyss trying to bite her from below.
Her heart beating fast and the blood rushing to her cheeks, she tried to breathe as much as she could as the air up there wasn’t as nourishing to her lungs.
Her clan was hidden high in the mountains, but they were sovereign over a lot of the mountain’s land below them.
Closer to the base, one could see their little flocks of tahrs busy eating all the grass they could find, while the shepherds watched out for the snow cats trying to eat them.
Alezya was one of the few not to hate the snow cats for stealing their food; those feline stomachs were probably just as hard to fill as theirs, and their prey just happened to be the same. ..
She finally reached the entrance of the first tunnel and made her way into the maze, briefly greeting the few people of her clan she walked past. Most of them didn’t return the greeting, or worse, avoided her eyes as if they hadn’t seen her; their cold attitudes were like little daggers to her heart.
Still, Alezya kept going, biting her lip and swallowing the bitterness.
Those people all used to treat her well, but now, she was a pariah. ..
Finally, she reached the larger cave where she was met with her father’s furious glare. He was an imposing man that had a constant dark expression on his long, square face, and thick bear fur draped over his shoulders.
“Where have you been?!”
“I was picking fruits,” she calmly answered, showing her full basket.
The few eyes around them couldn’t help but glance at all the food she had gathered, but her father did not care a single bit. Instead, he stormed up to her, grabbed the basket, and threw it to the ground, glaring while he towered over her. Alezya lowered her head, knowing what was coming.
“Do not give me that attitude!” he shouted. “You think you can act like this?! You don’t get to stay here and roam freely after how you dishonored our family! Are you going to keep acting like this? You’re an eyesore! You should be sorry!”
She didn’t answer. Alezya didn’t feel apologetic at all; she felt angry she was treated like this.
This public humiliation had become almost a daily ritual.
However, she knew nothing good would come out of talking back to him; it would only make him even madder.
So she bit back her emotions, her words clogging her throat, and kept her head low enough that he wouldn’t see the bitterness on her face, nor would she have to face his.
“Our people are already struggling, yet my own daughter thinks she can act as she pleases! Do you think you can get away with your shame if you keep acting as if nothing happened? I can barely bring myself to face the other clans anymore, how dare you act like you did nothing wrong?!”
Because she had done nothing wrong. Instead, Alezya was furious that her father made her feel ashamed and acted like the fault was hers. Like she had any fault at all...
“You should be grateful we didn’t kill you, and yet you’re determined to let that creature live! If you had any compassion for your family, you’d get rid of that monster and cower in shame! You should be begging me for forgiveness!”
Alezya lowered her head even more and bit her lower lip even harder.
She kept telling herself she had done nothing wrong and she would not be sorry.
Weeks and months of hearing those horrible words again and again had built her up to become formidably resilient.
She had always loved her family, but it was getting harder and harder to keep doing so. She hated her father right now.
“Dishonoring your own clan, your own father! Thank the gods your sisters are already married and have accomplished their duties as women, or you’d be the end of us all!”
Alezya did not feel happy for her older sisters at all, nor did she feel sorry for them. They had long been married off to men from other clans and were fulfilling their roles... the one role she had failed at.