Bride to the Cursed: a Snow White retelling

Chapter 23: The Shattering

Geoffrey's plan had been to hop on a boat and travel the seas for as long as it took to numb the pain in his heart. Away from pretentious nobles, away from politics, away from the life of privilege thrust upon him at birth, going where the wind and the seas took him.

For a time, he drifted from shore to shore along the southwestern coast of the kingdom, enjoying sights a crown prince would never have had the time and freedom to venture out to see, setting foot in villages he'd never known existed, meeting people who'd never even heard of him. Life was different. Simple. Fulfilling, and free.

Everything changed a couple of moons ago. He could still recall that fateful night when the moon shone full and bright. Geoffrey sat alone on the top of a cliff, enjoying a flask of cheap ale that tasted more like horse piss, when darkness gradually eclipsed the moon and consumed it whole for one brief minute. In that minute, the smell of salt in the air transmogrified into a nauseating scent of rot and death, the winds ceased howling, and in the distance the unchanging rise and fall of the sea fell still. Still as death. Still as the seas should never be.

Yet the darkness was soon banished, and when the moon appeared once more, everything returned to normal, and Geoffrey was forced to put that minute of strangeness down to a figment of his imagination caused by fatigue and intoxication. But that night, he believed, was when it all began.

Word came of fishing men and boats who went missing. Not many paid mind to it. The seas were as beautiful as they were cruel, and lives lost to unpredictable waves were as common as they were tragic.

"But after a while, people started going missing from the streets, too." Geoffrey clasped his hands together on the council table, his shoulders hunched as he sighed. "At first, it was the urchins, the elderly, the sickly; the easy pickings. Stolen in the middle of the night. That was when townsfolk in the south started paying notice."

The spacious council room was filled with Dane's own advisers and military commanders, and the senior members of the entourages from Ilien, Meltec and Uviel. Yet with all the bodies present, the group was respectfully quiet as they received the grim news Geoffrey brought.

"They must've grown stronger over time, because the next thing I heard, entire fishing villages were razed to the ground overnight."

Several sharp intakes of breath sounded from around the room, whilst everyone else remained solemn and grim.

Geoffrey looked up next at Prince Everett across the table, his brow gently furrowed. "Not long after you arrived within our borders, I heard talk that your people had also noticed disappearances with your boats, and I..." He bowed his head and focused his one good eye on his own hands, gripping them together so hard the veins popped. "I wrote to your brother."

As crown prince for many years, Geoffrey had had regular exchanges with the heirs of other kingdoms. It came as no surprise that he'd formed a friendship with the deceased Crown Prince Caspian of their neighbouring kingdom.

"I told him that we experienced similar troubles," Geoffrey continued, his voice shaking as he continued glaring at his tightly clasped hands. "I urged him to investigate. And he... he..."

"Trusted you." Prince Everett kept his eyes downcast as he spoke slowly, "It's not your fault. My brother would've made the perfect king for Ilien. Eventually, he would've gone out there, with or without your bidding."

Geoffrey nodded. "He was braver than me. Had always been. I didn't hear from him for days, and then... I was staying at an inn, on a hill just outside of Port Basville when it happened. When they came," he said quietly.

At the other end of the table, Prince Jyu stiffened, his back held ramrod straight at the sound of the place where their ships sunk to the depths. "Those... things?" the prince asked.