Shyshaker Princess

Chapter Three - Silence is Broken

Part One: Snows Fall

Chapter Three - Silence is Broken

POV - Athlaya Hawmere 

The sounds of the pounding hooves against the hard forest floor were nothing compared to the hoarfrost which followed the dappled-grey riding horse, gaining on the beast with every gallop. As if the frost itself was alive. Atop the horse, with tears of tremendous agony streaming down her face, Athlaya gripped the soft leather reigns.

The Queen is dead.

Athlaya was a princess of Ellesmere. Just a princess. But she could still feel the rush of powerful wind that swept from her mother's hands straight into her veins. She could still feel that wind now, roaring in her veins until she was full of raw magic and power.

Yet despite the roaring, despite the monumental blizzard she left in her wake, all Athlaya felt was an empty, aching silence. Not even a chill. Just empty.

The Queen is dead.

The Shuddering Wood had only one large, straight road, worn into being, but it only continued on through exactly half of the forest. The other half was never passed through by Ellesmere citizens.

On any other day, the darkness from the overhanging leaves of the teetering trees would have caused Athlaya to think twice about going into the woods the entire nation of Ellesmere was reared to fear.

But now, with blood streaming down her face and deep glass cuts in her arms, Athlaya was simply too woozy to feel fear.

With all the strength left to her, she held her position on the horse. Her knuckles turned white.

The Queen is dead.

Each word caused her so much agony that her horse's legs moved faster still if only to avoid the painful ice threatening to rise over her legs. The trees either side of the road where swaying dangerous, moved by the snowy hurricane.

The Queen is dead.

Thick branches fell on the path. If Athlaya hadn't been holding the reigns with all that she had, she might have been thrown from the back of her horse.

Indeed, by the time her horse was approaching the invisible line in the forest which no one had set a single foot over for a century, Athlaya's vision was blurring.

Two kingdoms that had been silent for a hundred years.

Yet Athlaya had nowhere else to go but the last place she had ever thought to find herself.

Windhart.

*

POV - Leo Windryell

The seventh prince of Windhart thought that if anything had ever truly deserved to be described as nauseatingly boring, this meeting did. Though it wasn't an official meeting after all. His father, the King of Windhart, had called it a family dinner. It took everything Leo had to avoid rolling his eyes at the thought.

Leo Windryell knew very well that in his family nothing was ever meant with the assumption of love. There was likely another reason entirely for this dinner. Another motive entirely. His father may call him foolish, but that didn't make it true.

Yet he went along with it, not that it would have mattered if he had thrown a tantrum like his youngest brothers. He was not the heir – not even close. What he did had little to no bearing on his father's decision at all.

With the typically lazy swing of his hips, Leo sauntered into the main dining hall in Windhart Castle. It was a cavernous hall, with high ceilings and emerald and silver effect marble tiles. If truth be told, the austere dark wood furnishings had always seemed intimidating, if not a little ghastly, to Leo. Despite the high, arched windows covering nearly the entirety of the wall facing the front of the castle, there was never enough sunlight in the room and candles were always lit in their holdings.