Only The Stars Can Know by ViragoLuna
Summary: The Princess is kidnapped by a band of evil raiders and taken to a far, far away land to settle a base and set up a ransom for her. Upon nearing their destination the caravan is attacked and she is the only one to escape with her life. But could her savior be worse than the raiders?
Rating: R
Categories: Aladdin
Characters: Other, Jasmine
Genres: Action/Adventure
Warnings: None
Challenges: None
Series: None
Published: 09/04/05
Updated: 11/18/07
Index
Chapter 1: Prologue
Chapter 2: One
Chapter 3: Two
Chapter 4: Three
Chapter 5: Four
Chapter 1: Prologue
Only the Stars Can KnowPrologue
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A/N: Yeah, so if you know me just a wee bit, you know that I have a HUGE soft spot for crossovers. So here is another one. Only this time I am trying to go a bit odd here... yeah. So this is an Aladdin/Prince of Persia Crossover. I hope I did ok! Just shoot me a review and let me know!
This chapter is really short only because it is the prologue, I hope to have the rest of the chapters longer.
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She thought she was living a nightmare, perhaps not truly thought, but seriously knew that this had to be the single worst moment in her entire life. The fact that it was much, much longer than a moment made it all the more terrifying. Not even when Jafar stole Genie and overtook the palace, betraying her father, was she this frightened. All she could do was chant in her head that somehow Aladdin would find her soon and save her like he always seemed to do.
But as the weeks turned to months and the Raider’s caravan slowly pulled out of the desert that belonged to her father and into areas that she had never seen before she began to doubt that he was ever coming. Yet some how, each day, she found strength inside of her and refused to cry out in pain when the beatings started.
They were not allowed to rape her, so their leader had said, so instead they hit her, threw her and kicked her when she had not the strength to stand. Her only solace was that out there, months across the sand dunes, her love was worried about her and doing everything he could do to find her. So in the darkened night only the stars were the witness to her silent tear of despair.
She lay on her back in her thick wooden cage, dirty and smelling of sweat, blood, and everything else that unpleasantly clung to her soiled clothes and skin, the salty proof of her misery leaving marks down her bruised cheeks. Her large dark eyes opened wide, praying to Allah that if she could have nothing then let her have the peace of the beautiful stars that passed no judgment upon her weakness. For she sincerely thought herself weak, what kind of princess cries herself every night because of the trouble that had befallen upon her? Only the weak cry. Right at this moment she thought herself unworthy of everything that she had come by in her life. Would Aladdin still love her if he saw the tears upon her face right at this moment?
Screams of other women, those who were not as fortunate as her, echoed through out the night causing her to want more than anything to shut her eyes and ears to the horrors that they were facing. Yet she would not, she would suffer with them. Suffer this way just because it was the only thing she could do. Cry because she had seen those women walking in the baking heat while she rode in the wooden cage. Cry because they suffered terrors that she had never faced and at this point, it would seem she never would have to face. Cry because those poor souls had forgotten how to or the strength to show such emotion had left them. Cry because she could.
Cry because she was human.
Cry because she was weak.
TBC...
Chapter 2: One
Only the Stars Can KnowOne
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A/N: La, la, la, la!!! Here is the first chapter! Thank you soooo much for the review Jess! Here's another one fer ya! Sorry it took so long to update, but for some strange odd reason, it wouldn't post! SORRY!
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Once again it was the horrid screams that woke her, terrified shrieks that turned her blood cold in her body. It was differently pitched and mixed in with the screeching woman where the shouts of dying men. She was no innocent when it came to the cries of the dying, no matter how much she wished it she could forget the sound a human makes when he is gripped from the hands of life by violence.
“Kill the prisoners!” one caravan raider shouted above the sounds of war, “He must not reach them! He must not get the princess!”
Her eyes widened impossibly large and she reached out her hand grabbing through the thick posts of her cage to grab a poor girl by her hair as she ran past. “NO!” the woman, no more than a child, screamed and trashed about, thinking this the end of her miserable life, “LET ME GO!”
“Silence!” The princess hissed, “I’m not going to hurt you! Please!” She pleaded to the girl when she turned and face her with a horrific expression, “Please help me,”
The body that she held onto gave a sudden jerk and she opened her mouth to scream, spraying the princess with her blood as she coughed before slumping to the ground in a broken heap.
“Naughty, naughty, Little Princess,” the raider cackled as he torn his jagged blade from her cooling, bloody body, “Now it’s your turn!”
She saw him raise his sword to strike her down and she shut her eyes, not bothering to dodge the blow. Just seconds before she had be desperate to save her own life. Now all she wanted to do was end it. End the beatings, end the crying, and most of all if she died now she wouldn’t have to face her weakness and Aladdin would never have to know that she had wept to the sky every night.
A grunt forced her eyes open just as she saw a wicked blade pull out of the evil man’s body and come at the side, completely severing his head from his disgusting body. His neck pumped out gory amounts of blood as it fell, causing the sky to look as if it was weeping the purest of crimson. She stared forward and all she could she was the dead and dying all around her, her unable to be apart of it because her cage protected her. Weather it was made of stone or wood, she realized, it always protected her from receiving the horrors of life, but yet made her a witness to it every day.
Blue flashed in her vision, cold eyes, the color of ice and the color of a demon stared right back at her. His cloak pulled over his face so she could not make out his features but those eyes would be in her memory forever. Every inch of his exposed clothes and skin was covered in the same color that stained the sand around him, it dripped off him streams and just as soon as he appeared, he was gone. Flashing through out the destroyed camp and killing everything that his demonic blades could touch.
Her heart pounded in her chest and for the first time in her life she knew the cold dread of complete terror. It dug its bitter claws into her heart and it squeezed until she was gasping for breath, each intake a choking sob as countless bodies around her died by the double blades of one man.
Tears streaked down her cheeks, begging her to blink yet unable to tear her gaze away from the brutality laid so clearly before her. She watched as he, with all the ease in the world, kicked up the raider’s own weapons and threw them at the backs of the fleeing. Sometimes the daggers or swords would settle deep into their spines with a sickening thump. Sometimes an axe would take off a flailing arm or leg. Sometimes one of them would completely take off a head, causing the severed part to fly dozens of feet from where the body would fall.
He used everything around him as a weapon. He jumped off of the sides of still burning wagons, using his foot to propel him towards his enemies diving at their middles as he spun. His deadly toothed blades shredding inner body parts to the softest of cream as he came out the other end only to land gracefully on his feet, as if he was performing some morbid dance. She was horrified, she was fascinated, and she was held in one place by her fear of him.
His twin blades stabbed through the stomach of his last attacker and he moved his arms with ungodly speed and strength, cutting the victim in two before turning to her and once more looking with those inhuman eyes. “You are the Princess Jasmine,” his voice was soft and kind, one of the nicest voices she had ever heard, “Word of your kidnapping has reached even to our lands.”
Her hands fisted tightly to her chest as she gasped for air, “You... you... killed all of them!” She sobbed as her knees gave out beneath her and she crumpled to the hard wood of her cage, “By Allah, you answer my prayers only to send me into the hands of this demon.”
Those blue eyes, eyes of a color that she had never seen before seemed to glow in the light of the desert moon, “Were they not your tormentors?” that oh so kind voice asked, “Are you not happy that you are safe?”
She throat let out a strangled cry, “The women!” she wailed, “The women that I heard all those things being done to at night... You killed them too!”
He took a small step towards her, holding out a hand palm up as if to calm her, “No. The marauders got to them before I could get any to safety.”
She lifted her head and looked to him, “You are not... here to kill me too?”
“No, Princess, I have come to save you.”
She felt herself falling into oblivion, the nothingness surrounded her for the first time in weeks, only this time she welcomed it. After all, she was oh, so very tired, but the back of her mind screamed at her to run from this man who had spilled so much blood with such ease. That spoke to her in this oh so kind voice. This devil that had spawned from the deepest depths of Hell to come and torture her.
“The... cure that is worse... than the... disease,” she mumbled before darkness completely over took all of her senses.
TBC...
Chapter 3: Two
Only the Stars Can KnowOnly the Stars Can Know
Two
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The pounding in her head seemed to intensify with each passing moment and the glare from the heated sun behind her eyelids made it all the worse. She rolled her head to the side and moaned, her voice harsh and broken even in her own ears. She hated to imagine what it sounded like to others. Others that were no longer there, she reminded herself. It was just her and her rescuer. The man with the kind voice to disguise his evil heart and those dead blue eyes.
She forced herself to move, rolling and pushing up on her hands and knees with all the strength she could muster. Her arms trembled at the effort but she refused to give up, she had shown enough weakness in the past months to last her and her entire kingdom a life time or two. She took a deep breath and once more made herself move; stopping only when she was on her knees her bottom resting on her ankles and feet. Her headhung off to the side, not ready to move yet and colors swirled around her vision from underneath closed lids causing her stomach to turn.
Strong hands gripped her shoulders, the hold firm and powerful yet the callused fingers digging into her skin did not hurt. She could not feel the bruising force through the other aches that rolled down her body in thick waves.
“You should rest some more,” her rescuer told her, his voice soothing to her ears even though the thought of him and what he had done caused her blood to run cold. He had the voice of an angel to disguise the demon that he was.
Her head rolled to the side and she lost the energy to even open her eyes and look at him, “Must... get away...” she rasped her voice dry and her lips crackedwith the effort to move them.
Thecool touch of ceramic touch her parched mouth and water lightly splashed on her parted lips. She lifted up a weak handand tried to knock the jug away, “No... Poison.”
Shefelt the water again and then a sigh of irritation, “I would not save you Princess, only to poison you later on.” He paused and laid a hand across the back of her neck, trying to tilt her head back so she could drink easier, “You’re dehydrated and more than half starved. Your father would hate it if I had to return a corpse to him.”
She swayed as she knelt there, “Father...” she was about to say more but the liquid poured slowly into her mouth and she involuntarily swallowed. The water tasted better than anything she hadevery tasted before and soon she was gulping the much needed drink eagerly. She tore her mouth away fromt he cool jug with a gasp, turning her head to the side to breathe deeply, just laying the comfort of the darkness behind her eyes. If she never again looked at him, perhaps it would be fine to think of him as not the monster that she had first witnessed. Perhaps if she replayed those words enough through her mind one day she might even believe them.
She felt him move her and that’s when she realized that she was cradled in his lap,his arm supporting her back and neck as she drank. She whimpered, once more ashamed of her weakness, as she reached and gently touched the side of her face, feeling the thickness of her own blood caked onto her skin. She hissed and tried to move, weakly pushing him away, “Bath,” she mumbled through her swollen and cut lips.
“If I leave you, Princess,” he said, his voice a quite whisper, “do you promise not to try to run off.”
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried not thinking about the fact that if she was strong enough that was exactly what she would to. She shivered and resisted the urge to push him away again before giving him a slow nod.
He didn’t answer her and she didn’t comment on the fact that it was fast becoming night in the desert and probably difficult to see her answer, yet he gently placed her back onto the thick blankets that rested under her. She didn’t hear him leave but the heat that came from his body slowly faded and she knew that she was left in the dark. She took a deep breath, the air crisp and comforting in her lungs, as she opened her eyes and stared at the only thing that gave her any solace and pasted no judgment onto her battered soul.
The stars shown with all the brightness in the world and the moon glowed with unearthly beauty even in its half-full form. Please, she prayed, please, Allah save me from this demon. She knew she probably no right to ask her God for anything else, he had, after all granted her one wish already. Be careful what you wish for, someone once told her, you may get it, but it might not be what you really want.
Footsteps softly padded into the thick sands and she felt her heart pounding in her chest, threatening to break free. The man that was with her would never be so loud, if he walked away with out a sound why did he not return the same way?
The intruder knelt beside her and gently pulled the blanket that covered her downto her mid thigh. She tightly shut her eyes and forced her body to relax hoping that the person would think her dead and leave at once. Arms tightly corded with compacted muscle lifted her with care and ease as if she didn’t weigh a thing. Aladdin never lifted her with such gracefulness before. His right arm slipped around the back of her shoulders, mush like her savior had done when he made her drink the water. His other handgently slipped one the sleeves of her tattered clothes off her thin shoulder,exposing it to the night sky. She stiffed despite her efforts to play dead and began to struggle. A scream rose in her throat but her body was so weak and torn it escaped her as a pitiful howl.
“Easy, Princess,” he spoke to her in a soothing voice, “relax, if I do anything wrong, just let me know.”
She whimpered at his puzzling words and cursed him in her mind for scaring her into thinking he was someone else. A cool wet cloth touched the skin of her neck and ever so softly he began to clean the grime from her body. Twice he had to getup and leave to her empty and refill the bucket that he was using but she had not the strength to ask him where he was getting all the water in a middle of a desert.
He never once touched her in a way that left a sick taste in her mouth and when he stared to wash her legs she found herself drifting into her dreams. Fight it as she might, when he placed his hands upon her feet she was fast asleep.
TBC...
Chapter 4: Three
Only the Stars Can KnowThree
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A/N: Wow, been a while, hasn't it? ANYways! To answer your question, Yes, this IS a crossover between Aladdin and PoP (the video games.) Sorry for not clearing that up sooner! I'll try to up load more chapters in the next few days, but no promises. For some strange odd reason it seems very hard for me to uplaod chapters... Its like they get lost somewhere out there...
Thank You so much for all the lovely reviews!!! I simply heart you all!!!
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Once more she woke, just a small opening of her eyes before the soft rolling of the horse’s steps across the sand lulled her to sleep once more. Twice she woke again and caught a glimpse of sand dunes, then small mountains before coming fully back to her senses. Her body still ached and sand had caked its self on the corner of her eyes, but she had felt better than she had in months. The sun was setting across the horizon and off in the far distance she could vaguely make out the outline of a tent.
“Is that where you live?” she asked shifting around in the saddle to look upon him as he held her to his chest. His face was hidden in the deep cowl of his cloak that protected him from the cruel sun’s kiss, but those demonic eyes burned as bright as before.
His body made a huffing movement, as if he was laughing at her. “No Princess, that is just our next stop. An old wise man lives there.”
She lifted her arms and shoved his chest, “Let go,” she demanded, trying to use her authority against this peasant, this killer who had touch her with such ease.
He laughed outright this time, “If I do that, Princess, you would fall and probably break another bone. I haven’t spent days patching you up only for you to break your neck.”
“That’s an order!” she hissed, trying to sound threatening when she didn’t feel the least bit dangerous.
He shook his head and didn’t say anything else, he only loosened his hold that he had on her and continued to plod the horse along at its easy pace.
It was far past sunset when they reached the entrance on the large tent and even before her savior could announce their presence a voice called from within.
“I see that you have found the Princess. Her father will be most pleased.”
The man opened the tent, pulling the thick cloth wide to let her enter first. The inside of the tent was grand indeed. Lush rugs and carpeting covered the floor in thick folds, bending colors to the various candles lit throughout the inner room. Shelves decorated each wall and jars of all different shapes and sizes littered them reflecting off the red-orange light. She felt small and insignificant standing in all the richness in her tattered, torn cloths. She pulled her blanket tighter around her and stood straight, trying to look as regal as possible.
“She needs medicine and a place to completely rest. Her body has been beaten severely.” He spoke as if she was not there, “The Princess will not make the journey to her or the Necromancer’s kingdom alive.”
The old man stood, his back to the two of them and slowly walked over to one of his many shelves. He slowly scanned it, his fingers brushing over the different shapes before he carefully selected a few and returned to once more to his sitting place.
The man that rescued her lightly touched her back, urging her to go forward before walking to the nest of pillows and settling himself down across from the old man. She took a deep breath and carefully stepped her way to the two men, trying to keep an eye on both of them at the same time. She didn’t trust either one of them. As she found out over the years, just because someone appears to be old and slow moving doesn’t make them any less dangerous.
“The Necromancer that you seek is quite feisty indeed,” the wise man was saying, “Are you sure that you want to do this, my Prince?”
She thought her eyes would bug from her head as the old man addressed her savior. The younger of the two nodded before pushing back the hood of his worn brown cloak. It was the first time that she had fully seen his face. He had none of the boyish features that Aladdin possessed, his jaw was strong and his small goatee gave him the appearance of being older than she first thought him to be. His eyes shown brighter against his sun darkened skin than they did under the cowl of his cloak, a feat that she thought was impossible to make. There was a scar that traveled half way down the side of his nose and ran across his left eyebrow creating a small gap that some how completely fit the way the rest of him looked.
To the old man’s words he gave no comment, just stared at him hard as if he could see right through his soul.
He sighed, his voice a rasp in his throat, “As before, I have never been able to stray you from your quests. Even if they will coast you your life.” Then he gave another wave of his hand as he prepared some powder, grinding different amounts of the substance that gathered inside of the jars. “You may rest here until the Princess is fully healed,” he seemed to think for a moment before adding, “Shall I contact your father and let him know that his son is well?”
He nodded his hair brushing against his slightly unshaven face, “Yes, please.”
The old man bowed his head, “Of course, My Prince.”
He stood and walked to her, offering his hand in a kind gesture to help her to her feet. She was grateful, yet she could not bring herself to touch him. Instead she stared up at him with surprised dark eyes, “You can’t be a Prince.”
He laughed out right at her, his chuckle sliding against her skin. She suppressed a shiver, refusing to let his deep voice affect her so. “And why is that Princess?” he asked, his hand still reached out to her.
She opened her mouth and thought of all the cruel, harsh words that she could speak as to why he couldn’t be a prince, but none of them left her erratic thoughts. “Who are you?” she finally asked, settling on the basics before anything else erupted.
He laughed again and this time it caught her off guard, goose pimples sliding across her flesh. His laughter died shortly and he simply just looked to her, “I am the Prince of Persia,” he stated, as if it were every day knowledge.
She swallowed thickly, “I am... that far from my own land?” She dreaded the answer but her heart would not rest unless she found the truth.
He nodded, his strange blue eyes burning with sympathy, “Please Princess, you must rest.”
She hung her head and she knew she was farther than she could have ever imagined yet she could not take her first steps home until she recovered, she could feel her body slowly weakening and she knew she was becoming gravely ill. She could not take the first steps to her wellness because those steps included her reaching out and taking his hand. That was something that she couldn’t bring herself to do, even if it meant she was that much closer to her home. She couldn’t take him up on his offer to help because she refused to believe herself that weak, and every act that he had done since her rescue just weakened her more. Made her self loathing all the more powerful.
She shook her head violently at him, pleading with him to leave her in her pitiful misery. Instead, his arms wrapped around her and he lifted her once again as if she was the most fragile and lightest thing in the entire seven deserts. She loathed the touch of his arms around her, carrying her as if she were just a little babe. She whimpered and buried her face into the thick leather armor that covered his chest, hiding her tears of shame from him.
His hold tighten on her, not enough to hurt but enough to secure her to him, “If you need strength, Princess,” he whispered into her hair, “Than let your hold take some of mine.”
It was the kindest thing anyone had ever said to her and she hated herself for gripping him harder, trying to take all his calmness and power into her. She hated herself for loving the comfort that this merciless killer was giving to her.
TBC...
Chapter 5: Four
Author's Notes: ~~~~~~~~~~
A/N: Wow,,,, is anyone still out there.... well if you are, here is yet another Chapter. Sorry about the wait, but I completely forgot that I was posting this story on the website!!! Ah!!! Me and my icky brain!
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He stared down at her with slightly worried blue eyes, ringing the cool water from the thick rag in the basin before once more placing it on her fevered forehead. She slightly jumped at his touch, as if she knew that it was he that had just barely touched her. “She shies from me even in her fevered state,” he whispered to no one in particular but knowing that the Wise Man would answer him anyway.
“I believe,” he said, his voice slightly crackling with his old age, “that she believes that you are her worst nightmares come true, My Prince.”
He frowned, not really knowing what to say to those words, “I have done nothing to her for her to think such things.”
The Wise Man chuckled, it was the first time that the Prince had heard such a sound from him, “She was beaten nearly to her death and out of the darkness came this hideous creature with these unnatural eyes to slaughter away everything in site. What else could she think?”
It was a rhetorical question but he answered the older man anyway, “I don’t know, perhaps because I saved her, she would come to realize that I mean her no harm.”
The other man shook his head, “You are wise beyond your years, My Prince, but yet you are ignorant as a babe when it comes to the emotions of others. Because of what she has been through she feeds off of your strength like a starving child, yet she loathes herself for it. There for she directs part of her hatred towards you, for if not for you she would have not had to face the weaknesses inside of her.”
The Prince shook his head, “She is far from weak, I have seen others go through less and emotionally suffer more. If anything she is the strongest woman that I have ever known.”
The old man blinked his tortured eyes, “Kaileena?”
“Yes,” he answered, “The Empress was indeed strong, yet she let her fear rule her. Let it consume her soul entirely so she never wanted to listen to reason.”
“And now you hunt this Necromancer,” he stated, as if his words alone could sway his Prince from his path.
“I must seek away to stop Persia from being destroyed,” the Prince said, his hand reaching out and taking the rag from her forehead to rewet it. “The water is becoming warm, it will soon serve her no purpose,” he whispered, as if to change the subject.
“As I have said before I will not force you to sway from your path, Prince, I have learned in the past that act is impossible. Yet I do tell you this,” the old man continued, slowly rising and walking to the door, his cane making no sound as it tapped against the thick rugs, “every time you do something to make your life perfect, something always happens that makes you want to change things. Nothing is perfect, My Prince, above all else Life is never what you want it to be.”
The Prince’s hand clenched in tight fists, “Persia was nearly destroyed because I killed The Empress. If somehow I could bring her back, then perhaps...”
“Perhaps she will once again hunt you,” the old man’s voice was slightly muffled from the heavy curtain that he lowered as he walked from the room, leaving the Prince alone with the Princess.
He sighed and picked up the basin of water, heading towards the exit and into the main chamber of the large tent not surprised in the least when he found the open space empty. Even ‘til this day the Prince did not know where the Old Wise Man kept himself at night. There were no other detachments or separate sections that he could see save for the one that currently housed the ill Princess.
He sighed once more and walked to the tent’s opening; the heavy material slightly flapping in the desert wind as he loosened the knot that kept it closed and stepped into the night air. It was thick and heavy with heat and a rare hint of humidity as if it had just begun to rain. He sighed and walked over to the small wooden structure that kept the drifting sand out of the stone well slowly dumping the lukewarm water as he went. He lifted the latch that held the door shut as the breeze picked up causing dust to cling to the corners of his eyes and clutch onto the thickness of his hair. He reached up and shook his fingers through dark uneven strands and vaguely reminded himself that he need a trim as his gaze drifted to the sky trying to take in the beauty of the stars. Not even the moon shown through the dust that gathered, the upcoming sandstorm threatening to block out the entire world with its wrath.
“Perhaps it really was for the better that we stopped here,” he muttered to himself, his words lost in the growing wind. He shook his head quickly refilling the basin with cool fresh water before hastily walking back into the large ordinate tent.
SS
If this was what it was like to die, she wished that she could never again experience it. Her insides clawed with unknown ice, its fingers gripping her inner most soul and ever so slowly it sucked the life from her. Her hands itched to reach inside of herself and make the pain go away while her skin seemed so intensely hot that it would start to melt from her bones. She thrashed in her grave of darkness, the void dragging her deeper and deeper into oblivion making her limbs seem heavier than humanly possible.
She forced her hand to reach above her as she fell ever so slowly, clawing at anything that might be there to stop her agonizing descent into emptiness. Out of the darkness he came, his own hand reaching out and tightly gripping her wrist. She gasped and whispered his name, her voice lost with in the void yet grateful that he had finally come to take her away from the horrors that had befallen upon her. Her eyes opened and through the pitch blackness she saw his hold on her, it was the only thing that she could make out in the putrid air. She tried to grab him back but for reason she didn’t know her fingers never could get a hold on him, they keep on slipping, her arm starting to feel numb from the effort.
She sighed as his face came into her vision, still boyish and handsome as ever. She whispered his name, trying to get him to hear her and for a while she thought that he had, his serious looks of concern melting into a radiant smile. She smiled right back at him, trying to show her gratitude in her gaze for she knew that he could not hear her inside the darkened abyss.
Her smile slowly melted as she took in his eyes, eyes that once held life in them were now dull and emotionless making his smile seemed almost sinister. With renewed strength she grabbed her arm that he held and tried with all of her might to rip from the hold he had on her. A wave of dread swept through her as his grip tightened, his nails digging so deep into her flesh that thin crimson spider webs of blood began to trail down her arm. Her scream of terror was lost, the void absorbing all sound save for the harsh and cruel laughter that began to bubble from his lips. His boyish face twisted and turned in the darkness, melting features until he became some horrible illusion that once was her love. She tugged on her caught arm fiercely; almost screaming again as once blunt nails grew to razor sharp claws and tore brutally into her already battered skin.
All the while his cruel laughter echoed across her ears, drowning out even the quite humming of the abyss. It pierced her mind with such pain that the wounds in her damaged wrist became a dull ache. More hands grasped her dragging her further down, away from the demented form of the one she loved. Voices screamed in her ears, yelled her name and shrieked so loud that she thought she would never be able to hear again. She forced her heavy eyelids to open wide, focusing on anything but the grotesque figure above her.
Blue flowed into her vision so fast her body jerked, her hands swinging in front of her to hit against bare flesh as she sat straight in her bed of thick cloth and finely woven blankets. She screamed and arms enveloped her, holding her tightly against his strong body.
She sobbed in relief, her hands clutching material of the darkest blue, almost black against the dim candlelight. No words came from her mouth as she just simply held onto him too desperately afraid to let go. He smelt of sandalwood and soap, his unruly dark hair still wet as it brushed against her cheek. His sent surrounded her, gave her a peace that she thought was lost to her for all eternity, and for the first time since she had been rescued she allowed herself to fall into weakness once again. Her hands losing their hold that they had on him, smoothing the wrinkles that she had made in his shirt and burring her face against him. Her nose brushed along the side of his neck, “Stay with me,” she whispered, trying to lay back down keeping her arms secured around his larger frame.
She felt him sigh, his warm breath dancing across the exposed skin of her neck and shoulder, “I cannot, Princess, it would be improper.”
She frantically shook her head, “If you don’t he’ll come back!” Tears threatened to once more flow down her still slightly bruised cheeks. “Please,” she begged, once more gripping the blue fabric.
“Who will?” he whispered softly to her, as if he was trying to sooth the wildest of creatures. His hand reached up and gently ran sword callused fingers through her hair, careful not to snag on any of tangles that had formed during the night, “There is no one else here but you, the Wise Man, and myself.”
She pulled back, to look into his strange colored eyes, her own wide and frantic. How could she possibly tell him, this dangerous cold-blooded killer, that the one person that she had wanted to spend her life with had come to haunt her most horrid nightmares? That he had come to destroy her so that she could never show any kind of weakness again? “You think of me as a weak pathetic little child,” she accused, trying to find some of her lost dignity.
He reached up and brushed disorderly locks of hair from her face, the tips of his fingers barely brushing against her skin. His eyes intensely looked into hers for the span of a few moments before searching the rest of her features, as if he could find the answer within her. “No Princess,” he finally said, “You have been through something so horrid that a lesser person would have perished long ago.”
Her tears broke free and ran down her cheeks, “No, they, the marauders... they didn’t... rape me like they did to the other women and girls.” She broke her gaze with him and focused on something else just know realizing that her hands still rested upon his body, her fingers just barely above the steady, strong beat of his heart.
“And that makes you very fortunate, but not weak and it still doesn’t change the way I see you,” his tone was that of understanding, not of pity or mockery as she expected.
When she did not answer him he reached up and gently took her hands from his chest and placed them in her lap. “I will sit with you until the sun raises and for beyond that if you do not raise with it,” he said, giving her trembling hands one last squeeze before pulling up one of the ordinate chairs and settling on it.
She laid down on her side, curling around her fluffy blanket and pulling it up to her chin as she kept her sorrow filled gaze on him. “You won’t leave me?” she asked, trying not to sound like the terrified child that she felt like.
He shook his head, thick uneven locks of dark chocolate brushing against his jaw line and cheeks.
“You will watch me sleep?” her grip on her covers tightened so much that her knuckles turned white. She waited for him to nod before asking her question, “What about you? Don’t you need to sleep?”
He gave her a chuckle, this one had no warmth behind it, “You are not the only one that has demons chasing you when you sleep. No Princess, I don’t sleep anymore.”
He smiled at her, trying to lighten the mood but the smile was cold and bitter, almost as frosty as the look in his eyes when his was killing, covered in crimson blood, when she had first laid eyes on him.
TBC...