Forbidden (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) (24 page)

Snow White paused. The weight of everyone’s expectations hung upon her shoulders. But she was squeezed out of every feeling that made her human. There was nothing left but a vague emptiness.

“I need to sort this out by myself.” Even her voice sounded like it was coming from a barrel. “I . . . don’t think I can be with anyone right now. I won't be following you to your mountain. I need some time away.”

She could see the despair and love shining from Aein’s face. “But where will you go?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“Snow White,” Nevue said, “are you sure about this? Would you like one of us to come with you?”

No, she wasn’t sure. She just needed to come to terms with this backwash of unsettled emotions. “Your destinies lie in that mountain,” she finally said. “I will have to chart my own.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Nevue came forward to hug her. One by one, the Bambenga followed until only Aein was left. He stood there, his red left limb hanging from his human arm like a tumor. Even as she looked at it, his human skin was beginning to creep above the edges of the red appendage. The unnatural healing of his earthly flesh at work again. It wasn’t fair.

“I am sorry I hurt you,” he said. “I never meant to.”

Snow White lifted her chin. I am a princess, she told herself. I do not have to stand for lies. Her silence was resolute as she continued to stare him down, allowing him no impasse.

As Aein turned to slink away, Snow White felt a large chunk of herself tear out with him.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

All she wanted to do was to lie down and sleep her nightmares away, but Snow White made herself plod back to Ursk. Her mind was too enveloped to think about anything right now but placing her feet on the track – left, right, left, right – one after the other. Her body sagged. The night closed in around the flickering torch she brought with her, the very one Aein had burned his hand upon.

This will not break me, a haunted voice whispered. Aein’s beautiful face danced, and she blinked him away and hardened the shell around her heart.

A shadowy figure loomed before the arc of light.

“Halt, lone traveler,” said a clear, sweet voice. The blind girl with many daggers appeared, the very redness of her smock a contrast to her milky eyes. “Mother Chiva has instructed me to aid you.”

Snow White was too drained to say anything.

The girl continued, “I am Ghost. You intend to journey to Ursk, where you have a mission.”

“You know my mission?” Snow White said, surprised. “I don’t even know it myself.”

“It will be clear to you as soon as you reach the city. Mother Chiva knows you have chosen this path for yourself and she does not wish you to go without protection.”

Snow White had neither the energy nor the inclination to question this. She just nodded, her head almost lolling on her slumped shoulders, and trudged ahead. It would be good to have Ghost as muscle, seeing as in her current state, she would be easy fodder for any attack. It would also be good to be accompanied by someone who couldn’t see the possible monster she was going to turn into. Snow White felt the chill of the night in her bones. She pulled her cloak closer around her neck.

In about an hour, they reached the outskirts of Ursk. They went straight to the Citadel. The city guards here wore blue livery and cropped blond hair. Chiva was right after all. She did have a mission. Somewhere on the journey to Ursk, her resolve magnified, enforcing the steel in her spine.

The guard at the Citadel’s gate was taken aback. Despite the smudges on her cheeks and the dust in her hair, Snow White stood tall and queenly.

“I seek immediate audience with your king,” she said. “I have to something to tell him that impacts the fate of your kingdom.”

It was a good thing the guard spoke a smattering of German. “What . . . is it concern?” he said, unable to take his eyes off her face.

“The invasion of Lapland by a deadly enemy.”

#

Autumn came to Lapland. The trees were ablaze with brown and red and crimson and gold. The evergreens sprouted everywhere, and the wild grass rippled in the wind as though invisible snakes coasted through them. Glacial lakes that mirrored the sky dotted the landscape and provided a sweet source of water for the thirsty travelers. The autumn breeze was fresh and crisp with the scent of pine, flowers and hunger. The very air itself was charged.

Aein rode beside Nevue. They were guided by Nevue’s map. The mountain destination was marked very clearly on it with an ‘X’, courtesy of Chiva. ‘MT. NORDSTROM’ was inked on the side of the ‘X’, and below it in smaller letters: ‘The Pass of Doubt’.

Since leaving the village, Aein had spoken very little. The Bambenga, although cautious, left him mostly alone.

“You are entwined with our destinies whether we wish it or not,” Nevue said. “We will not harm you if you do not harm us.”

Aein’s mouth twisted in chagrin. “I am still the same man with whom you sailed from Skiva to Ursk. I broke bread with you. Fought by your side. Showed you kindness when none would. What makes you think I would harm you now?”

Nevue had the grace to hang her head. “Things have changed.”

“Only your perception of me has changed. I have not.”

Nevue glanced at his left hand. “Can you blame us?”

Indeed, a full human hand – pink and startling in its perfection – flexed in the red appendage’s stead. The new skin was as smooth. He had to give kudos to the Sporadean biologists; they knew what they were doing.

The enormity of what he was about to do floored him. Here he was, a traitor to the Sporadean cause. The one he loved most in this world wanted nothing to do with him. The natives he was trying to save were leery of him. The things he thought he wanted most back home – a chair at the Redwood Table and Gnomica – floated away from him infinitesimally.

He had never felt so alone. He wondered if he would have the strength to continue. And bitterly, he contemplated:
for what?

Were these natives even worth it?

They rode on for many days. Meanwhile, the moon was waxing. During the nights, the Northern Lights blazed in the sky in a shimmering veil of green and amber. Aein lay on his back to gaze at them, thinking of home. Every time self-pity dug its talons into his side, he winced and shifted his body.

Throughout the journey, Aein got to know the Bambenga better. Besides Nevue, Ravanne, Maise and Flyx, there was Calastra, the most beautiful woman in the tribe.

“So she reminds us again and again, shrilly,” Ravanne said in chagrin. As the days wove by, she warmed up to him. Almost like old times.

Too bad she was the only one.

“Is she really that beautiful?” Aein said.

“See her bottom?”

They sat a distance away from the campfire beneath the Aurora, which was streaking purple tonight. Calastra danced around the fire.

“It’s . . . pear-shaped,” Aein observed.

“Exactly. If you have a bottom like hers, you would be the prey of all the men in the Bambenga tribe.”

“I think you are all too consumed by physical beauty.”

“And you are not?” Ravanne scoffed. “You who have the face and body of Apollo himself?”

“Who is Apollo?”

“Never mind.”

Aein noted that she wisely refrained from mentioning Snow White.

At the campfire to which he was not invited, slender Omeny danced as if the ground were covered with eggshells, so mincing was she in her bare feet. Her cheeks were tattooed with blue sigils of her tribe.

“She did that to spite her mother,” Ravanne said. “She has other tattoos on other parts of her body as well, all done to anger her parents and bring shame to the man they would have her marry.”

Dio was singing a strangely beautiful melody that trailed with the sparks hissing from the fire.

“She sings the most beautifully of us all,” Ravanne explained. “Singing is a prized art much desired among the men of our tribe.”

“The men of your tribe seem shallow,” Aein remarked.

“As are all men.”

So the men in this world are not worth saving but the women are, Aein mused. Careful, he warned himself. You have no right to judge anyone. He wished he could stop the seesawing of his emotions towards the natives. He hated to think it was all because Snow White left him.

#

Snow White was in her stepmother’s secret antechamber again, crouching in the closet with the door half open.

Queen Isobel stared at her sister, Imogen, in the mirror. The sleeves and pleats of Imogen’s long black dress were black feathers stitched together in a complicated fabric.

“Alive and well, is she not, sister?” Imogen mocked. “Needless to say, Snow White is still the fairest woman in the land. In all that time you thought she was dead, the seconds bleed away. Soon, there will be grey in your hair, creases at your eyes, brown spots on your cheeks. Perhaps you should give it up, sister, and accept defeat.”

“No.” Fire flashed in Isobel’s eyes.

“Let me be you, sister. Let me take to wing and fly to the farthest reaches of Lapland to kill her.”

“Just as you killed Esmeralda?”

“I killed Esmeralda?” Imogen let out a peal of laughter. “Sister, you are sorely mistaken. It has always been you who have been the murderer. I am nothing but the voice of your better half.”

Confusion flitted on Isobel’s features. The mirror rippled, and Snow White saw a toddler running through the Enchanted Forest. Sun dappled on the little girl’s giggling face as she stumbled over a log.

“Esmeralda! Daughter, be careful!” called a younger Isobel, running in her skirts behind the child.

Esmeralda fell on her elbows and picked herself up, still giggling. Isobel swept in from behind her and twirled her into the air. They both fell onto the leaf-strewn ground, laughing.

The mirror shimmered like water down a sheet of glass. Esmeralda was in her teens now, her beauty startling. Black hair fell in a shoal around her shoulders. Her blue eyes were large pools in her pale face. She balanced a bucket of water on top of her head, treading her way carefully back to the house.

Isobel watched her from the window. Her hands gripped the ebony sill with such strength that her knuckles bled white. On a side table lay a silver-backed brush with several strands of mahogany hair between the hard bristles. A single strand of grey hair was tellingly interlaid within. Beside the brush, a glistening half-red, half-white apple sat next to an immaculately polished carving knife.

“No!” Isobel’s voice cracked as her fists struck the mirror. “I didn’t kill her. I wasn’t trying to kill her that day. I was going to merely scar her face and do it gently!”

“Spoken like a true mother,” Imogen mocked. “Where is she now, your precious daughter?” Her dress was transformed into a pure reflection of Isobel’s own garb: a red and green chiffon gown that fell like petals to the floor.

Isobel looked down at herself and saw that she was now wearing Imogen’s black winged dress. The black feathers began to burn and fuse with her skin. Isobel screamed as she tried to pluck them out. She fell onto the floor. Her spine twisted and her neck whipped back and forth.

Snow White watched in horror as black feathers sprouted from her stepmother’s cheeks and hair. When the metamorphosis was complete, a large black raven flew through into the twilight, silhouetting the setting ball of the sun.

“Snow White.”

A hand touched her shoulder.

Snow White awoke in fright, the dream still vividly playing in her head. Ghost knelt beside her on the low bunk. Around them, the caravan rocked as six horses pulled it with great speed. They had been travelling day and night to Rova, the capital, with the city guards.

Ghost’s eyes peered unseeing at a point beyond Snow White’s head. “We will be arriving in an hour. You have to get dressed.”

Of course. Hastily, Snow White flung her feet out of the shaking bed. A clump of her black hair was left on the white pillow. She frowned, her hand snaking to her scalp. When her hand came away, a few black strands dangled from her fingers.

Warning bells rang in her head. Whatever was happening to her as a result of her alien blood was happening fast.

CHAPTER TWENTY

In Rova, the king’s castle sat atop
a hill. Townhouses lined the city streets, their designs rudimentary compared to the more ornately decorated ones in Snow White’s kingdom. The castle wore battlements and walls ten feet thick. Snow White’s caravan trundled through the castle’s gates and stopped in a square surrounded by brown brick buildings and towers.

The guards from Ursk who had accompanied them alighted from their heaving horses. In their haste to get here, they had taken turns to sleep. They changed several horses during the journey, even flogging some nearly to death.

Snow White smoothed her cerise gown. It was worked with painstakingly embroidered winter flowers. Her hair was done up, as befitting a princess, though several strands still dangled from her head. She sighed. She had done her best, but her efforts were never going to fool anyone who knew a spit about grooming. She wouldn’t have made the effort anyway if she didn’t think it would help her cause.