Wicked Chase

♛ Chapter Thirty-Three

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Alastair and I were waiting at the end of the Tunnels for a few minutes before Ronan and Archie made an appearance, along with a handsome man whose stare was as icy as frost.

"You must be Caspian Wintry," I said, giving him a small smile but he merely nodded and bowed. As I kept a careful eye on him I thought of how much his name actually suited him. Wintry - he sure seemed bitter cold.

"Prince of Alecta, Caspian Wintry, at your service, your Highness," the man said, bowing deeply before resurfacing and still his lips were set into a line, a smile nowhere to be seen. I wasn't quite bothered by the lack of friendless but more of his title. He was the Prince of Alecta - the same land Philip Rowstring hailed from. My father had told me about Caspian and that he was the Prince of Alecta and yet I was still surprised as I watched him offering his services up to me. I couldn't decide if I should have felt flattered or if I should have felt sympathy for the man as he wasn't fighting this war for Deidrif or even his own Kingdom. He was fighting this war for his lost friend.

Bowing back, out of respect, I smiled at him as I said, "Princess of Deidrif, Genevieve Salvatore."

He didn't smile back nor did he seem the slightest bit amused as he nodded curtly and said, "yes, I know. Your father has been chatting my ear off about you." I could hear a laugh from the background and I was certain it was Archie's but the way Caspian was looking at me, so serious and grim I couldn't help but feel a little bit of his brokenness. Philip must have been a close and dear friend for him to be affected by his death this much. And my heart twisted as I remembered my mother because I knew what it was that Caspian was feeling - I understood that feeling of helplessness and sadness and that very ugly emotion of grief. It could wreck you if left unchecked and by Caspian's appearance I could tell that his grief was left unchecked.

The real Philip Rowstring's death had broken Caspian Wintry.

"We better get going," my father inserted, filling up the tense and awkward silence that filled the end of the Tunnels. "We can't waste any more time."

The mention of time snapped me out of my daze and taking a deep breath I brushed past Caspian Wintry and joined my father who was already heading towards the boarder of Deidrif in a hurried pace. Time was something that wasn't on our side and it was something that we needed in abundance in a moment like this but because time was limited and all I could hope was that we reached there in time. My mother had to be alive. She just had to.

And as we all made our way to the Royal Garden the image of Thorin slicing my mother's neck with his sword kept bouncing back and forth in my mind - haunting me till we reached the hidden walls of the Royal Garden.

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The wall was large and strangely beautiful with ivy veins draped all over it, leaves and random flowers covering every inch of the wall. There was so much of flora and fauna that it didn't even look like there was a wall.

My father was talking to Alastair and Caspian Wintry and they both listened attentively while Archie was picking sticks and stones from the ground. I stood there, looking at Archie, confused by what he was doing. What exactly were the sticks and stones for? Noticing my confusion, Archie laughed and smirked like he was a genius. "Just watch, Gen," he said before he started throwing the sticks and stones that he had gathered over the wall, but the sticks and stones didn't even manage to surpass the height of the wall because the instant in came within the same symmetry of the wall, it bounced back with so much force that Archie had to jump back so that he wouldn't be hit.