A Princess Torn (Alys Book #2)

Chapter 7

A bead of sweat rolled down her spine as she tucked her hair back behind her ears. Being that it was an early fall evening in the grasslands of Balear, it was still quite warm out.

Zaiden ran ahead, slashing at the tall grasses with his sword.

"Get back!" he shouted, motioning for her to wait, "Don't come any closer, Your Highness. I don't want you to break a nail!"

"Oh hush," she feigned offence and ran forward, dragging her own sword across the grasses, "I can't leave you to be slaughtered on your own!"

The two siblings laughed as they twirled around slashing and making war cries. It had been a couple of weeks since they had had the time for leisurely play. Their father, who usually got cross with them when they ruined any of the harvest fields, had allowed them to play in only a small area of the fields of the flatlands inside the protective walls of mountains that made up the Balearian border.

The two siblings soaked up their time spent at the summer palace.  Though Country Palace was not as grand as High Cloud Palace, it had more areas to explore and places to play than the other. The two siblings often had more opportunities to slip away from duties and go off together.

Exhausted, they flopped onto their backs on the beaten-down grasses.

"I much rather this to lessons on foreign practices," Zaiden commented, bringing a giggle from his sister.

"You don't like learning about Sherwood's wedding ceremonies? Or Catesh's trading system?"

Zaiden winkled his nose, "I don't much care for the customs of marriage in any kingdom. I prefer a life of freedom."

She laughed, "I think you'll change your mind one day."

"I doubt that."

"At least you get to pick whom you marry."

Zaiden propped himself up on his elbows and looked questioningly at his sister,

"I thought you were happy about your plans to marry one day?"

She watched the white puffy clouds move across the sky as her hand moved to grasp the sapphire gem on a chain around her neck.

"Oh, I am." She replied quickly, "Especially because I can stay here in Balear. Staying with you and father is definitely a positive."

Zaiden nodded and lay back down on the grass, "And at least he is used to our customs. Imagine how weird it would be to marry someone form Marniac or Tarkam. Women do not even have basic fight training there."

She half laughed, but it was more out of disgust than amusement. Her brother definitely had a point there. 

"The sun is setting," she remarked as she looked up at the sky beside her brother, "Father will want us back in the palace."

Zaiden swatted the air as if that fact did not matter to him. But they both knew that they would be forbidden to play in the fields if they failed to return when their father had told them to.

The younger boy bounced up, and she followed suit. She bent down to pick up her sword and felt something move past her shoulder.

She froze, wondering if her brother was planning a surprised attack. But when she met his eyes, they weren't playful anymore. They were sharp with fear.

"Was that..."

"An arrow." He finished for her in a hushed whisper.

She stood back up slowly, searching among the shoulder-high grass around them.

Before she could spot anything, another arrow sailed past her head.

"RUN Lynnie!" Her brother shouted as he took off into the grass and disappeared. Without thinking, she followed.

Her brother weaved in all directions, but she knew that they would never be able to escape whom ever was hunting them if they stayed in the grasses.

"Get to the trees!" she called to Zaiden as she ran, but he shook his head, "It'll be dark soon! We'll never find our way out before nightfall!"
"They can track us in the grass!" she knew she should not be wasting her breath and energy by yelling, but they had to get out of the fields.

Zaiden must have agreed with her reasoning, because he turned and headed straight for the thick tree line. 

She caught up to run beside him.

"We need to ditch the swords," Zaiden puffed as they neared the edge of the forest.

Every instinct told her that that would be a bad idea. If they got corned, they would need their swords. But they were slowing them both down. As two more arrows sailed past them, she knew that their swords would be useless in their current situation.

She threw her sword to the side as far as she could while still running; if their attackers did not know they had thrown away their swords, that would be a slight advantage. Zaiden did the same.

As they entered the forest, everything got darker.

"Watch your step!" she warned her younger brother. Zaiden ran a head of her, pulling her by the hand as they weaved through trees. She flinched as an arrow whipped past her shoulder and nicked her brother's.  It dug deeply into the trunk of a tree.

"Run Lynnie!" he yelled desperately, even stronger fear filling his voice.

We are going to die, her thoughts screamed in her head, we are going to die, and we do not even know who our attackers are.

It did not even make any sense. Their guards should have been guarding them as they played in the fields.

Her foot struck a root and her eyes briefly met her brother's as he looked back at her in horror. Her hand slipped from his as she fell to the side and started to tumble down a hill through bushes and darkness.

"Keep going!" Her brother yelled somewhere far away from her.

She climbed to her feet as soon as she stopped falling and started to run through the dark forest again. She could hear voices now, calling back and forth to each other.

They've separated.

As she ran in the darkness, she yelled out to the men who were pursuing them, hoping to distract them from going after her brother.

"You cowards!" she yelled as loud as her winded lungs could as she stumbled in the darkness, "Attacking us with our backs turned!"

"Over here!" a man's voice called from behind her.
Fear spiked through her body and she picked up her pace. Again she lost her footing in the darkness and started to fall.

But it was different this time. She was not tumbling down a hill but falling downward.

Her last thoughts before she met the ground were the realization that she had run clear off a cliff, which meant they had been running for far longer than she had thought. She struck the ground and her head hit a hard surface. Darkness instantly set in, and the yells of the men pursuing her above the cliff faded with her consciousness and her memory.