Fan Fiction ❯ Silverskein ❯ Prologue

It was the night of her brothers' birth she left her world. Her mother gave her own life to them in passing and cried out--gasped for her daughter at the last- her princess. They thought to look for the sister royale then; idly as they prepared themselves to tell the king, and they did not think much of it when she was not in her bed, in her chamber, in the corridor.

"You see," said the shadow from the princess' side as she pressed her face against the glass, looking into the room. "They hardly think to look. They do not miss you."

Words then did not come to combat the insidious shadow. Words of the proper sort would not come for years, but she learned then the despair of his voice in her ear. Indeed it was only the truth; they did not miss her this night of her brothers' birth. Twins! So grand a thing, odd and unheard-of! And she knew their names, for her beloved mother had whispered into her ear when she would not even tell her king. The little princess bit down on her lip then, on the verge of whispering the words into the night. No, Mother had given her the secret, and she would not share.

"They do not miss me," the girl agreed at length, and her voice was nothing more then a chill in the wind. "I see." She slipped her small hand into that of her companion, the insidious wraith at her side. He laughed softly, and perhaps he whispered promises in her ear. She did not hear. Her mind was cold as the gale they rode, faster and faster back to his shining home. They set down together just beyond the gate to his beautiful castle, and he was no longer a shadow but a tower of a man, taller even than her father who she'd seen once or twice. And his eyes were as dark as the midnight shy, and as bright as all the stars. She could not look at him for long. She bowed her head until his long finger forced it up again, and she stared sightlessly into his deep eyes.

"Princess," the man breathed. It was a sound like a hiss of triumph or a sigh of sorrow. For a moment she saw a flicker of the future in his eyes, and she knew then who she would be.

It was many years later she saw her brothers again, full grown with families and a duel rulership even as she remained unchanged. Looking in on them, again with the shadow-man at her side, she felt restrained as though a window of glass again separated them from her home. "They have grown so fast," she whispered to her companion, and he nodded silently. "They do not know mother's names," she muttered to herself, but the man heard and he knelt to her level to better hear. Instinctively she again bit her lip to keep from trembling. She never liked it when he looked at her that way, with his starry eyes impatient and demanding. He was always gentle with her, but she doubted it was the same on the inside.

"There are different names?" he asked softly, probingly. Before she could think of a way out of the question she was nodding, and it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him.

"Mother told me what she would call them. I remember."

"Will you tell me?" and he called her then by that name of theirs, the mocking-word she did not understand. She shook her head fiercely and slipped away from his hand on her shoulder.

"I want to go home," she told him then. "I have no brothers. I am your Princess." She'd learned early that he liked it when she said that. It was affirming his strong hold on her, though she was too young, then, to understand. Again, it was not for many years she would understand her companion. It was not until she stood nearly as high as he and her brothers had perished and their twin-kingdom had blown away like dust on the wind that she began to understand. She stopped hiding the resolution and the anger in her eyes, when she realized what they had made her. She sought time away from the people she'd come to know as her own. She was not one of them; she was human…and mortal.

"We cannot stave off your death, Princess," Shadow told her once in the fountain garden. "It is too late now, and our purpose is lost."

"I am not lost," she told him flatly, and smiled dully as he realized his mistake. She had learned the word games and the evasions. She was a master, almost.

"The original purpose only, my Rose," he told her. "You are a firebrand there's no use controlling."

"I'm glad you've come to see that after all this time," she told him. He was very tall, and she'd stopped growing at a level with his chin. It never felt as though she looked up at him anymore. Indeed, she rarely did look anymore. There was nothing more to see than there ever had been. She was mortal and she had aged, but the people were ageless and they remained unchanged. She'd noted long ago that it would be their downfall, their inability to change. They adapted on the rare occasion that they had to, but it was never really--

"You miss your family?" He asked gently, and it was the nearest thing to kindness she'd had from him in years. She'd begun to think it was only she who knew compassion…

It began that day, in the fountain garden. Her surprise had startled her into looking at him, and she saw then why she had begun to carefully avoid his gaze. He was beautiful, achingly so, and as he slid that long finger beneath her chin, as though she were a child still, and bent in for the kiss that she realized why it was so painful to be with them, and why she stayed. Shadow, her mind whispered, and then the sun was gone, and the stars, and there was only darkness. Shadow.

A sliver of sunlight slid between her eyelids and she woke, startled. Already her mind was rejecting the memories, disturbing the last shreds of the dream. It was done and past. She was free of them now, though they still came to her in her dreams and--

"Good morning, Rielda." The man across the clearing was tall and pale of skin and hair. He looked as though he never saw the sun, and the sun saw him and shone all the brighter for his ignorance. He was almost transparent with the light and she realized then it was his glowing that had woken her.

"I said I was done with you," she grumbled. He knew she hated the mornings and conversation and wanted food before anything else. She was surprised then to see he held one of his apples toward her. "Please, I have been here only moments and already I can see you are aging in this cursed world."

"It is my world," she said shortly. "My origin."

"Ah. Blessed world, then." She hated the tingle that spread through her body at his words.

"I won't have you intimidating me, Shadow," she replied. "Go on home to your women and your orchards."

"I will," he replied. "I was only worried about you."

"This is my home," she told him, and hated herself for regretting it as she saw the blaze of anger and hurt cross his perfect white features. "I have work to do here. If you would point me in the right direction and be gone-"

Shadow interjected with a bite of his apple, and lazily he pointed away to the north, through the thin trees and denser foliage and beyond. "There lies your way, lady fair," and in an instant he was at her side with a gentle stroke to her cheek and was vanished, like a darkness banished by a shift in the rays of the rising sun. Rielda, for that was her Fey-given name, sighed again and thought of another tumble and a nap before she was on her way, but there was something hastening in even the lazy way that he had gestured, and she knew him well enough to recognize urgency when she saw it. The Fey did care about her "mission" as they so charmingly put it. They liked to think of it as their pet human out on her own in the barbarian wilds in search of making up for lost…generations, but it was something of the same.

At least, she thought as she slung her burden of equipment over her shoulder, they let me go…