Only the
Stars Can Know
Four
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A/N: Here is chapter four, as you can see. I hope everyone that is reading this likes it
so far.
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He
stared down at her with slightly worried blue eyes, ringing the cool water from
the thick rag in the basin before once more placing it on her fevered
forehead. She slightly jumped at his
touch, as if she knew that it was he that had just barely touched her. “She shies from me even in her fevered
state,” he whispered to no one in particular but knowing that the Wise Man
would answer him anyway.
“I
believe,” he said, his voice slightly crackling with his old age, “that she
believes that you are her worst nightmares come true, My Prince.”
He
frowned, not really knowing what to say to those words, “I have done nothing to
her for her to think such things.”
The
Wise Man chuckled, it was the first time that the Prince had heard such a sound
from him, “She was beaten nearly to her death and out
of the darkness came this hideous creature with these unnatural eyes to
slaughter away everything in site. What else
could she think?”
It
was a rhetorical question but he answered the older man anyway, “I don’t know,
perhaps because I saved her she would come to realize that I mean her no harm.”
The
other man shook his head, “You are wise beyond your years, My Prince, but yet
you are ignorant as a babe when it comes to the emotions of others. Because of what she has been through she
feeds off of your strength like a starving child, yet she loathes herself for
it. There for she directs part of her
hatred towards you, for if not for you she would have not had to face the
weaknesses inside of her.”
The
Prince shook his head, “She is far from weak, I have seen others go through
less and emotionally suffer more. If
anything she is the strongest woman that I have ever known.”
The
old man blinked his tortured eyes, “Kileena?”
“Yes,”
he answered, “The Empress was indeed strong, yet she let her fear rule
her. Let it consume her soul entirely so
she never wanted to listen to reason.”
“And
now you hunt this Necromancer,” he stated, as if his words alone could sway his
Prince from his path.
“I
must seek away to stop
“As
I have said before I will not force you to sway from your path, Prince, I have
learned in the past that act is impossible.
Yet I do tell you this,” the old man continued, slowly rising and
walking to the door, his cane making no sound as it tapped against the thick
rugs, “every time you do something to make your life perfect, something always
happens that makes you want to change things.
Nothing is perfect, My Prince, above all else Life is never what you
want it to be.”
The
Prince’s hand clenched in tight fists, “
“Perhaps
she will once again hunt you,” the old man’s voice was slightly muffled from
the heavy curtain that he lowered as he walked from the room, leaving the
Prince alone with the Princess.
He
sighed and picked up the basin of water heading towards the exit and into the
main chamber of the large tent not surprised in the least when he found the
open space empty. Even ‘til this day the
Prince did not know where the Old Wise Man kept himself at night. There were no other detachments or separate
sections that he could see save for the one that currently housed the ill
Princess.
He
sighed once more and walked to the tent’s opening; the heavy material slightly
flapping in the desert wind as he loosened the knot that kept it closed and
stepped into the night air. It was thick
and heavy with heat and a rare hint of humidity as if it had just begun to
rain. He sighed and walked over to the
small wooden structure that kept the drifting sand out of the stone well slowly
dumping the lukewarm water as he went.
He lifted the latch that held the door shut as the breeze picked up
causing dust to cling to the corners of his eyes and clutch onto the thickness
of his hair. He reached up and shook his
fingers through dark uneven strands and vaguely reminded himself that he need a
trim as his gaze drifted to the sky trying to take in the beauty of the
stars. Not even the moon shown through
the dust that gathered, the upcoming threatening to block out the entire world
with its wrath.
“Perhaps
it really was for the better that we stopped here,” he muttered to himself, his
words lost in the growing storm. He
shook his head quickly refilling the basin with cool fresh water before hastily
walking back into the large ordinate tent.
S%S
If
this was what it was like to die, she wished that she could never again
experience it. Her insides clawed with
unknown ice, its fingers gripping her inner most soul and ever so slowly it
sucked the life from her. Her hands
itched to reach inside of herself and make the pain go away while her skin
seemed so intensely hot that it would start to melt from her bones. She thrashed in her grave of darkness, the
void dragging her deeper and deeper into oblivion making her limbs seem heavier
than humanly possible.
She
forced her hand to reach above her as she fell ever so slowly, clawing at
anything that might be there to stop her agonizing descent into emptiness. Out of the darkness he came, his own hand
reaching out and tightly gripping her wrist.
She gasped and whispered his name, her voice lost with in the void yet
grateful that he had finally come to take her away from the horrors that had
befallen upon her. Her eyes opened and
through the pitch blackness she saw his hold on her, it was the only thing that
she could make out in the putrid air.
She tried to grab him back but for reason she didn’t know her fingers
never could get a hold on him, they keep on slipping, her arm starting to feel
numb from the effort.
She
sighed as his face came into her vision, still boyish and handsome as
ever. She whispered his name, trying to
get him to hear her and for a while she thought that he had, his serious looks
of concern melting into a radiant smile.
She smiled right back at him, trying to show her gratitude in her gaze for
she knew that he could not hear her inside the darkened abyss.
Her
smile slowly melted as she took in his eyes, eyes that once held life in them
were now dull and emotionless making his smile seem almost sinister. With renewed strength she grabbed her arm
that he held and tried with all of her might to rip from the hold he had on
her. A wave of dread swept through her
as his grip tightened, his nails digging so deep into her flesh that thin
crimson spider webs of blood began to trail down her arm. Her scream of terror was lost, the void
absorbing all sound save for the harsh and cruel laughter that began to bubble
from his lips. His boyish face twisted
and turned in the darkness, melting features until he became some horrible
illusion that once was her love. She
tugged on her caught arm fiercely; almost screaming again as once blunt nails
grew to razor sharp claws and tore brutally into her already battered skin.
All
the while his cruel laughter echoed across her ears, drowning out even the
quite humming of the abyss. It pierced
her mind with such pain that the wounds in her damaged wrist became a dull
ache. More hands grasped her dragging
her further down, away from the demented form of the one she loved. Voices screamed in her ears, yelled her name
and shrieked so loud that she thought she would never be able to hear
again. She forced her heavy eyelids to
open wide, focusing on anything but the grotesque figure above her.
Blue
flowed into her vision so fast her body jerked, her hands swinging in front of
her to hit against bare flesh as she sat straight in her bed of thick cloth and
finely woven blankets. She screamed and
arms enveloped her, holding her tightly against his strong body.
She
sobbed in relief, her hands clutching material of the darkest blue, almost
black against the dim candlelight. No
words came from her mouth as she just simply held onto him too desperately
afraid to let go. He smelt of sandalwood
and soap, his unruly dark hair still wet as it brushed against her cheek. His sent surrounded her, gave her a peace
that she thought was lost to her for all eternity, and for the first time since
she had been rescued she allowed herself to fall into weakness once again. Her hands losing their hold that they had on
him, smoothing the wrinkles that she had made in his shirt and burring her face
against him. Her nose brushed along the
side of his neck, “Stay with me,” she whispered, trying to lay back down
keeping her arms secured around his larger frame.
She
felt him sigh, his warm breath dancing across the exposed skin of her neck and
shoulder, “I cannot, Princess, it would be improper.”
She
frantically shook her head, “If you don’t he’ll come back!” Tears threatened to once more flow down her
still slightly bruised cheeks. “Please,”
she begged, once more gripping the blue fabric.
“Who
will?” he whispered softly to her, as if he was trying to sooth the wildest of
creatures. His hand reached up and
gently ran sword callused fingers through her hair, careful not to snag on any
of tangles that had formed during the night, “There is no one else here but
you, the Wise Man, and myself.”
She
pulled back, to look into his strange colored eyes, her own wide and
frantic. How could she possibly tell
him, this dangerous cold-blooded killer, that the one person that she had
wanted to spend her life with had come to haunt her most horrid
nightmares? That he had come to destroy
her so that she could never show any kind of weakness again? “You think of me as a weak pathetic little
child,” she accused, trying to find some of her lost dignity.
He
reached up and brushed disorderly locks of hair from her face, the tips of his
fingers barely brushing against her skin.
His eyes intensely looked into hers for the span of a few moments before
searching the rest of her features, as if he could find the answer within
her. “No Princess,” he finally said,
“You have been through something so horrid that a lesser person would have
perished long ago.”
Her
tears broke free and ran down her cheeks, “No, they, the marauders... they
didn’t... rape me like they did to the other women and girls.” She broke her gaze with him and focused on
something else just know realizing that her hands still rested upon his body, her
fingers just barely above the steady, strong beat of his heart.
“And
that makes you very fortunate, but not weak and it still doesn’t change the way
I see you,” his tone was that of understanding, not of pity or mockery as she
expected.
When
she did not answer him he reached up and gently took her hands from his chest
and placed them in her lap. “I will sit
with you until the sun raises and for beyond that if you do not raise with it,”
he said, giving her trembling hands one last squeeze before pulling up one of
the ordinate chairs and settling on it.
She
laid down on her side, curling around her fluffy blanket and pulling it up to
her chin as she kept her sorrow filled gaze on him. “You won’t leave me?” she asked, trying not
to sound like the terrified child that she felt like.
He
shook his head, thick uneven locks of dark chocolate brushing against his jaw
line and cheeks.
“You
will watch me sleep?” her grip on her covers tightened so much that her
knuckles turned white. She waited for
him to nod before asking her question, “What about you? Don’t you need to sleep?”
He
gave her a chuckle, this one had no warmth behind it, “You
are not the only one that has demons chasing you when you sleep. No Princess, I don’t sleep anymore.”
He
smiled at her, trying to lighten the mood but the smile was cold and bitter,
almost as frosty as the look in his eyes when his was killing, covered in
crimson blood, when she had first laid eyes on him.
TBC...