Acotar and Tog [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

The Prince of Disparage

He walked her to the baths. Savoring the silence, there was too much to think about, too many thoughts to organize. Once he dropped her off, he would take flight. Flying had always helped, he felt freed from the cage of life. His father knew that he was never meant to stay in Doranelle, that no matter where he was, not matter how short the flight he was looking forhome. When he was young his dreams were filled with long flights in mountains full of snow and pine. Now those dreams of home were replaced with the screams of the mate he failed to protect. 

The girl didn’t say a word as he opened the wooden door, “These are the female baths. You’re room is a level up. Be in the kitchens at damn tomorrow.”

He shifted without a thought and left the girl to her thoughts, only to enter his own. In his three centuries he had never come across a creature as the one in the barrows. It was different, his magic wanted to recoil from the wrongness of the darkness. When he saw her running from the darkness, soiled and looking like the life had been taken from her, his first instinct was to kill. It was the terror on her face that made his other instincts come alive, the ones long forgotten, to protect.

Even though he had taken this flight countless times, he let his hawk form search for that home of mountains and pines. As lost as he was, as shamed as he was, he held on to that dream. 

_ _ _ _ _ _

It was not hard to find Malakai, it never was. He was either on duty or with Emrys, who always seemed to be in the kitchens. He landed on a branch outside the kitchen and was surprised to learn  that the old man was a storyteller. He waited listening to the end of love story of an honorable prince who saved his mate from an evil fae. He had learned over the years to tune out such stories. It was the useless empathetic advice that he received that drove him to the edge and one of the many reasons he avoided his meddlesome cousins. If he had to listen to one more of them state, ‘it is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all,’ he would most likely rip their throat out.

Malakai had not come across such a creature and honestly Rowan had not expected him to have. They agreed that patrols should be increased, patrols would be of two or more demi-fae and no one was to go near the barrows. He spent half the night writing messages to the other demi-fae in the region, asking about unexplained sightings of darkness or anything else they found odd.

On his way back to his room, he passed the bath, her clothes and boots were still in a pile. He grabbed them and took them to the wash basin. Spoiled. He wondered if she ever had to clean anything other than her weapons.  Still in the darkness she survived today she had relived her darkest memories.

The rhythmic motions of cleaning and polishing her boots brought him back to his own childhood memories. The power of wind had been expected. His warrior build had been expected. The power to control ice had not been. He was eight when his cousin had annoyed him. Eight when he froze the fountain in the courtyard. He remembered how he expected his parents to be angry because he had killed the koi fish. Instead they were supportive, helped him everyday to control his powers. He was eight when his family learned that the power he possessed was more than most. She was eight when her parents had been murdered, what had the girl seen?

It didn't matter, nothing excused the coward she had become. She was not a coward because she ran from the creature, no that was tactical. She was a coward because she would not help him with the creature. She was a coward because she turned her back on her country on her duty. He knew even now she was running from something, because the Princess of Terrasen was a coward and he hated her for it.