THE PRINCES

The iron smothered her. It had snuffed out the

fire in her veins, as surely as if the flames had

been doused.

She could hear the water, even in the iron

box, even with the iron mask and chains

adorning her like ribbons of silk. The roaring;

the endless rushing of water over stone. It

filled the gaps between her screaming.

A sliver of island in the heart of a mistveiled

river, little more than a smooth slab of

rock amid the rapids and falls. That’s where

they’d put her. Stored her. In a stone temple

built for some forgotten god.

As she would likely be forgotten. It was

better than the alternative: to be remembered

for her utter failure. If there would be anyone

left to remember her. If there would be

anyone left at all.

She would not allow it. That failure.

She would not tell them what they wished

to know.

No matter how often her screams drowned

out the raging river. No matter how often the

snap of her bones cleaved through the

bellowing rapids.

She had tried to keep track of the days.

But she did not know how long they had

kept her in that iron box. How long they had

forced her to sleep, lulled into oblivion by the

sweet smoke they’d poured in while they

traveled here. To this island, this temple of

pain.

She did not know how long the gaps lasted

between her screaming and waking. Between

the pain ending and starting anew.

Days, months, years—they bled together,

as her own blood often slithered over the

stone floor and into the river itself.

A princess who was to live for a thousand

years. Longer.

That had been her gift. It was now her

curse.

Another curse to bear, as heavy as the one

placed upon her long before her birth. To

sacrifice her very self to right an ancient

wrong. To pay another’s debt to the gods who

had found their world, become trapped in it.

And then ruled it.

She did not feel the warm hand of the

goddess who had blessed and damned her with

such terrible power. She wondered if that

goddess of light and flame even cared that she

now lay trapped within the iron box—or if the

immortal had transferred her attentions to

another. To the king who might offer himself

in her stead and in yielding his life, spare their

world.

The gods did not care who paid the debt. So

she knew they would not come for her, save

her. So she did not bother praying to them.

But she still told herself the story, still

sometimes imagined that the river sang it to

her. That the darkness living within the sealed

coffin sang it to her as well.

Once upon a time, in a land long since

burned to ash, there lived a young princess

who loved her kingdom …

Down she would drift, deep into that

darkness, into the sea of flame. Down so deep

that when the whip cracked, when bone

sundered, she sometimes did not feel it.

Most times she did.

It was during those infinite hours that she

would fix her stare on her companion.

Not the queen’s hunter, who could draw out

pain like a musician coaxing a melody from

an instrument. But the massive white wolf,

chained by invisible bonds. Forced to witness

this. There were some days when she could not

stand to look at the wolf. When she had come

so close, too close, to breaking. And only the

story had kept her from doing so.

Once upon a time, in a land long since

burned to ash, there lived a young princess

who loved her kingdom …

Words she had spoken to a prince. Once—

long ago.

A prince of ice and wind. A prince who had

been hers, and she his. Long before the bond

between their souls became known to them.

It was upon him that the task of protecting

that once-glorious kingdom now fell.

The prince whose scent was kissed with

pine and snow, the scent of that kingdom she

had loved with her heart of wildfire.

Even when the dark queen presided over

the hunter’s ministrations, the princess

thought of him. Held on to his memory as if it

were a rock in the raging river.

The dark queen with a spider’s smile tried

to wield it against her. In the obsidian webs

she wove, the illusions and dreams she spun at

the

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