Stolen Princess

2. Only Fools Go Into The Forest

Only fools go into the forest.

At least that's what our nursemaid told me the first time I'd run away to the dark abyss of trees and shadows.

Some said it was haunted, but others listed the deadly beasts that prowled just beyond the magical border. This invisible line is what protected our king from the Dark Forest's dangers.

Maintained for generations by the King's wizards, the enchanted line in the earth never changed, even as many times as I bolted back and forth across it over the years. Sometimes I was looking for reprieve... Once or twice I was looking for death... but the forest had always been just that once I crossed into the closeness of the evergreens and their underbrush. Just a forest.

It was quiet, eerily still even when it rained, and cold in the middle of the hottest summer day. There was something wrong with the place - there was no getting around that. But Alek was afraid of the Dark Forest, so were my sisters and most of my father's knights.

And how's that saying go? The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

When you have as many enemies as I do, you're bound to make friends with an evil forest full of monsters before it's all said and done.

The unnatural chill of the air fell around my shoulders in what could've been an affectionate greeting as I crossed over the magical boundary and kept running.

The tears had dried to my face by now... but tears or not I would need to give Alek a few hours to cool off before I showed my face in the castle again.

I trudged forward through my forest, the eeriness almost unnoticeable, especially against the throbbing pain of my dislocated wrist.

If I waited until dark, I could sneak to see the old priest, Gaius. He asked too many questions, despite probably already guessing at the answers - but he fixed whatever it was every time I came to him for help.

Lost in my own thoughts and absently swiping my nose against my sleeve in decided misery, I didn't notice that I wasn't alone until I was already in full sight of the clearing.

"Oh!" I yelped as my eyes landed on two hulking figures, hunched together beside the smoking remnants of a fire. I was instantly pinned by a pair of predatory yellow eyes - larger than any human's, and I froze in their gaze.

"Whoa!" he growled me to a halt, a wicked-looking crossbow balanced against his shoulder faster than I could snap my gaping mouth shut in surprise.

"I - I -"

"Who are you?" he demanded, rising from the ground like a trained hunter. And I - the rabbit in every moment of my wretched life - stayed glued to the spot, mouth popping open and closed in stupid shock.

"Wait - you're -" his perfect, forest green brow crumpled in confusion as he stared back at me, and I wondered just what it was about me that he found so odd.

I gulped again, searching for words, for my name - but this creature before me had me so offsides that I couldn't seem to find anything to defend myself.

"You're a girl?" He said it incredulously like I was claiming 'not guilty' in a court of law. His features, strong and sharp in his forest green skin, crumpled in confusion.

"Of course I'm a girl!" I cried, stamping one foot in my frustration.

Of all the things to say to a person - the only person I'd ever encountered in the Forest - and he'd been taken aback because of my ridiculous hair? Men.

"Sorry," he chuckled, his face melting from predator to breathtakingly handsome in an instant.

My stomach flipped and a breath caught in my throat as I took in the layers of inky black tattoos that wrapped around both of his arms, disappearing into his simple leather jerkin and reappearing once more at his neck. He was tall, so much taller than any man I'd ever met. But then again...