Married To Darkness

He led her to a massive, felled oak tree that looked like the skeletal remains of a giant. Its trunk was wide and flat, bleached gray by the sun, providing a perfect, natural canvas. He lifted her onto the wood, his hands lingering on her waist for a second to ensure she was steady.

"Carve it out, Salviana," he urged softly, stepping back to stand as a literal wall between her and the darkening woods. "Give the mind’s eye room to breathe. I’ll hold the line."

Salviana didn’t hear the clink of the knights’ armor or the restless shifting of the horses. She dropped to her knees on the trunk, the gold pin clutched in her hand like a dagger. The wood was her canvas, and the urgency in her soul was her ink.

She began to scratch.

The sound was frantic—a dry, rhythmic scritch-scritch-scritch that set the knights’ teeth on edge. She wasn’t drawing flowers or crowns. Under her hand, jagged lines began to take shape: a silhouette of a mountain, a crown of thorns, and a series of eyes that seemed to weep into the grain of the wood.

As she worked, the temperature around the fallen tree dropped. Her breath came out in small puffs of frost. Alaric watched her, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade, his gaze never leaving the shadows. He didn’t understand the magic that moved her fingers, but he understood the cost.

"Almost there," she muttered, her eyes glazed over, fixed on a world only she could see. "The hunt... the hunt didn’t end with the horn. It’s only just starting."

She dug the pin deep into the oak, a final, violent stroke that sent a splinter flying. She gasped, her awareness snapping back to the present, and looked down at the wide expanse of the tree trunk.

The image was clear now, and Alaric felt a chill that had nothing to do with the evening air as he stepped forward to see what his wife had "painted."

Suddenly there was an unnatural silence. It wasn’t the peaceful quiet of a forest settling for the night; it was the suffocating stillness of a tomb. The birds had stopped their chatter, and even the insects seemed to hold their breath.

Alaric’s hand drifted to the hilt of his sword, his muscles coiled like a spring. He stood over Salviana, his shadow long and protective against the gray wood of the fallen oak. Then, the wind picked up. It wasn’t a gust, but a low, rhythmic vibration—a whisper that seemed to come from the trees themselves. A repeated, garbled sentence that slid through the air, impossible to decipher yet heavy with a sense of ancient, cold malice.

Salviana didn’t look up. Her fingers moved in a blur, the gold pin digging deep into the oak until her knuckles were white. Then, with a sudden, sharp intake of breath, she went still.

"I’m done," she whispered, her voice sounding hollow and distant.

Alaric leaned over her shoulder, his eyes narrowing as he studied the frantic carving. It was a chaotic map of stick figures—twenty of them, etched with jagged, violent strokes. Every single one was pointing in the same direction, a unified movement that looked like a ritual. At the end of that pointed path stood two figures: a taller one and a smaller one. Them.

But it was the corner of the trunk that made Alaric’s mind jumble. Etched there was a strange, round shape, a heavy, looming moon or perhaps an eye—and a single, lone stick figure standing apart from the rest, watching.

"What could this be?" Salviana asked, her voice trembling as she traced the lines. "Why are they all looking, even pointing at us?"

"I don’t know," Alaric said, his voice a low, urgent growl. He didn’t like the look of the lone figure. "We’ll figure it out back at the wing. We need to leave. Now."

He reached out to pull her to her feet, but the world exploded in a swoosh.

An arrow whistled through the air, thudding with lethal force into the trunk just inches from Salviana’s hand. Before she could scream, Alaric had already moved. He was a blur of black brocade and silver thread, his arm wrapping around her waist as he tackled her off the log and behind the thick mass of the upturned roots.

Swoosh. Swoosh. Thwip.

A volley of arrows rained down, hissing through the leaves. Sebastian and Simon were already in motion, their shields raised as they formed a steel wall in front of their Prince and Princess.

"Ambush!" Heappal roared, drawing his own bow and firing blindly into the thicket.

Alaric peered over the edge of the root system, his eyes turning that terrifying, ink-black shade. Through the gloom of the twilight, figures began to emerge from the brush. His heart hammered against his ribs—not with fear, but with a crushing, sickening realization.

These weren’t bandits. These weren’t forest monsters.

Emerging from the shadows were the royal guards. Behind them, through the thinning trees, Alaric saw the glint of Benjamin’s crown and the iridescent shimmer of Lady Charity’s gown. McPherson was there, his face red and distorted, and Morgan, looking less drunk and far more focused. Even the other princesses and the minor lords were closing in, their bows drawn, their faces twisted into masks of mindless, robotic aggression.

"Alaric, look at their eyes," Salviana gasped, clutching his arm.

The royals and the guests weren’t shouting. They weren’t cheering. They moved in eerie, synchronized silence, their eyes glazed over with a dull, milky film. They were the stick figures from her carving—twenty of them, all converging on the two people at the end of the line.

"They’re hunting us," Alaric hissed, his jaw clenching. "The whole camp. Something has taken them."

"Don’t kill them!" Salviana cried out as Samion prepared to loose a lethal shot. "Alaric, if we kill the royal family, the kingdom is over! Something is wrong with them!"

"I know," Alaric growled. He grabbed his bow, but instead of aiming for chests, he aimed for the ground at their feet. "Don’t aim for the heart! Take their legs, their shoulders, or the trees beside them! We need to break their line and get to the clearing!"