As soon as the First Princess finished speaking, a sound like air hissing from a punctured bladder—a thin, rasping laugh—slipped from the Crown Prince.
“I see. Presenting the Empress with that wretched girl’s corpse would not be half bad at all.”
The sheer thought of it seemed to thrill him, his laughter deepening into a cruel chuckle.
Reaching out, he gripped Lord Shearkan’s shoulder with heavy fingers, leaning in with a low murmur.
“Fine. If you wish to be so stubborn, I will not stand in your way. Go on, then. Comb the crags all night long searching for her.”
With a forceful slap to the Commander's shoulder, the Crown Prince turned and strode off across the disarray of the camp. Following behind her brother, the First Princess cast a calm glance toward her betrothed.
“Then I leave the child in your care.”
The moment the royal pair departed, the search party struck out toward the north.
Edric gripped a torch in one hand, cutting through a forest drowned in suffocating dark. His chest tightened with dread that the wyvern’s tracks might have washed out during their pointless delay.
“Watch your step. Rush like that, and you will pitch headfirst into the ravine yourself.”
The senior knight at his flank, Sir Theoric Hart, spoke in a hushed, anxious voice.
Edric did not answer, giving only a sharp nod as he raised the flame to cast light upon the broken dirt track. Soon, jagged rocks and a shearing drop loomed past the straight trunks of the conifers.
“It is here.”
At Edric's gesture toward the descent, his superior, who had trailed them without a word, stepped out like a shadow.
Edric stepped aside to let him survey the edge. After sweeping the depths of the ravine with the firelight, Varkas unhitched a hooked chain from a pouch at his hip.
Wedging the anchor deep into a rock fissure, Varkas dropped down the near-vertical face. Edric kept the light pinned on the drop until he saw the Commander touch down, then swung his own weight over the edge.
Fortunately, the valley floor was not excessively deep. Finding footholds along the protruding rock, Edric raised his torch high to signal the men waiting above. At the flare of light, the remaining knights began their descent.
After watching them steady themselves, Edric turned to inspect the floor.
The impact of the beast's fall had sent tremors through the canyon wall, scattering boulders and slides of shale across the basin. Picking through the rubble would cost precious time.
Edric scanned the pitch-black basin with an anxious eye, vaulting over a fallen slab. After scrambling across the uneven earth, he caught the silhouette of a dark mass rising against a scree pile.
He drew the flame closer.
‘…It seems I have found the right spot.’
The carcass of the wyvern, one wing charred black as if scorched by flame, lay splayed across the rubble.
Fearing the Princess might be pinned under the creature’s bulk, Edric circled it carefully, only to halt when he spotted a figure standing a short distance away.
Raising the torch, he saw Varkas standing beside a massive boulder. Edric sprinted toward him without pausing for breath.
“Commander! Have you found—!”
Edric’s shout died in his throat as his eyes found the limp, pale form lying on the ground.
The torchlight trembled in his hand, washing over the woman’s bloodless face and tangled hair. Edric choked out a quiet sound of dread when he saw the fragments of rock crushing her lower half.
He had known her chances of survival were negligible. He had braced himself for the worst. Yet seeing her so utterly broken chilled the blood in his veins.
He moved toward her on unsteady feet.
Her upper body was relatively whole, but her legs were mangled beneath the weight.
Seeing her left leg pinned under a slab and turned at an unnatural angle, Edric pushed a heavy stone away. As it shifted, a loose slide of rock tumbled over it.
Despair shadowing his face, Edric jerked his head up to plead for help. But the words caught in his throat at the sight of the mask-like stillness before him.
Varkas stood rigid, quietly watching the woman. The vacant gaze, stripped of any human warmth, sent a shiver through Edric’s marrow.
He knew the Commander and the Second Princess were bitter enemies. But had they not grown up together from childhood? How could a man look upon such ruin and remain so unyielding?
Edric’s voice cracked with raw desperation.
“What are you doing?! Please, help me!”
Yet Varkas did not shift an inch.
Flushed with hot indignance, Edric turned back and leaned his weight against the stones pinning her legs. Just as he shoved against the rock, a faint sound—like an injured creature gasping for air—cut through the dark.
Edric snapped his head around.
Under the flickering torchlight, the pale face twitched. For a moment, the strength went out of Edric's knees.
Relief washed over him like a wave, and he cried out.
“She is alive! She is breathing!”
As if roused by his voice, her eyelids fluttered open, showing clouded, unfocused eyes. She was hovering on the edge of consciousness.
Edric scrambled upright. They had to carry her to a healer without delay.
He reached down for the torch to summon the others, but halted as a faint shadow of a smile parted the woman’s bloodless lips.
Edric froze. From her cracked, red-stained mouth came a whisper so thin it was almost lost to the wind.
“Varkas…”
His eyes widened at the faint plea, just as the man who had stood like stone sank to one knee beside her. The woman’s gaze drifted toward his impassive face, settling on him as though seeing a solitary thread of salvation drawn through the dark.
“I… I knew it. I knew… you would come.”
As her eyes curved with fragile relief, tears escaped beneath her lashes, tracing trails down her colorless cheeks.
Flames cast dancing shadows over the Commander's features as he looked down at her. The torchlight glinted in his hollow gaze, yet he seemed distant, stranded in some deep, submerged silence.
A strange hesitation gripping him, Edric reached out and caught the man’s arm.
“Are… are you well?”
Varkas raised his head, looking at him. A small crease appeared between his brows, as if the question made no sense to him at all. In truth, Edric could not have explained why he asked it either.
Why had the Commander looked so broken?
Before he could make sense of that familiar, stone-cold face, the rush of boots echoed from the rocks behind them.
Jerking back to the present, Edric lifted his torch high. Spotting the signal flare, several knights broke into a run toward the site.
END