Cursed Prince (Night Elves Trilogy Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  “Don’t move!” The elf’s melodious voice floated across the hallway, angelic and forbidding.

  The air near my cheek hissed as a spell whipped past my head, narrowly missing me. The High Elf wasn’t messing around, but I wasn’t about to obey his command. I took a step forward, dagger in my hand.

  His golden eyes pierced me from the other end of the hall as I stalked closer, every one of my muscles tense and ready.

  “Stay where you are!” he called.

  I wasn’t following his instructions. For one thing, it’d take him a few seconds to recharge his wand. And for another, if he caught me, I’d be as good as dead.

  So, I threw the blade. It sank into his chest, and he fell to the ground, clutching his heart.

  I muttered, “Skalei,” again, and the dagger returned to my hand, now slick with his blood. It was a good thing I had it back, too, because I could already hear more High Elves heading my way.

  I stepped over the High Elf’s body and rushed closer to the manager’s office with the broken window. At the edge of my vision, I saw another High Elf round the corner behind me, blond hair streaming off his shoulders.

  He raised a wand. Magic buzzed in the air, and a burning pain shot up my leg. I had no idea what kind of spell that was, but I was sure I’d find out soon enough.

  My leg felt like it’d been dipped in boiling water, but I made it back into the banker’s room, slamming and locking the door behind me. I cursed when I realized I’d left my crossbow and the knapsack I’d been filling with relics in the vault.

  My heart was a wild beast. So far, the robbery had turned into a complete disaster.

  With a boom, the door shook. The High Elf outside was battering it so hard that I thought it might break.

  I shoved my hand into my pocket, grinning when I felt a sharp chunk of stone. At least I still had the vergr crystal.

  I hurried to the shattered window, reared back, and threw the crystal across the street. It soared over the road and landed on the snowy roof where I’d been hiding before.

  A High Elf’s fist slammed through the wooden door. It was time for me to get the Helheim out.

  I shouted, “Fara!” And magic whipped over my body.

  I reappeared on the roof, crouching to peer at the flashing lights beneath me. Silfarson’s Bank, it seemed, did not mess around when it came to apprehending thieves. High Elves swept through the air, mounted on moths as big as horses. At any moment, I’d be spotted.

  I needed help, and I needed it fast. I pulled on my headset. “Barthol, are you there?”

  “Ali!” he whispered sharply. “What’s going on?”

  “Can you help me get out of here?”

  “Are you okay? What happened—” A strange, strangled sound cut him off.

  “What? Barthol?”

  “Run! Run!” he shouted frantically, before cutting off again. My headset filled with the hiss of static.

  I whirled and sprinted over the rooftop even as I tried to work out what was going on.

  Then I heard a noise that explained everything.

  “Ghhhroooooarrgh!”

  My blood turned to ice, and I froze where I was. There was no mistaking the hunting cry of a troll. Born in the hearts of mountains and made of living rock, trolls were the size of maple trees and virtually indestructible.

  The troll pounded the snowy street just below me. The building on which I stood shuddered as the creature barreled through the exterior wall. The whole structure began to shake, and I wondered if it would collapse.

  Shit. Only sunlight could stop a troll, turning them to solid rock. But by my calculation, dawn was at least four hours off, and this thing was tearing through the building fast. Screams pierced the air, residents shrieking as the troll tore through the lower floor.

  How did it know where to find me? It was at this point that it occurred to me what had hit my leg earlier—a tracking spell. The troll would know exactly where to find me, wherever I went.

  Quickly, I scanned my surroundings. A building of similar height stood across the street to my left, and it looked like the best escape route. I started to run, but the roof juddered beneath me, and I sprawled flat.

  Like a cannonball punching through the side of a ship, the troll burst through the shingles behind me. It was a deep, speckled gray, and it glared at me with tiny eyes that glowed like lava.

  “Bllllrooooooahhh!” As it howled, molten saliva spewed from its mouth.

  Covering my face with my arms, I knew then that I was one hundred percent, completely and utterly fucked.

  Still, I flew to my feet, sprinting toward the rooftop to my left. As I neared the edge of the roof I was on, I threw my crystal across the gap between the buildings, then teleported myself in a flash of magic. I snatched the crystal off the icy surface.

  The troll leapt after me, howling. With a splintering crash, it landed about ten feet away. The creature must have weighed at least a ton, because its bottom half instantly disappeared under the shingles. Trolls were big and strong, but not good for chasing people over roofs.

  Unfortunately, the moth-mounted elves had no such limitations, and I soon heard the hiss of hexes whizzing past my head. I ran as fast as I could, darting under water tanks and behind chimneys as I tried to stay out of range.

  But the next roof was… not there. I skidded to a halt before a three-story drop to a white expanse of snow, speckled with a few barren trees—the frozen remains of Boston Common. I’d be totally exposed if I went down there.

  My knuckles were white over the crystal. Stuffing it into my pocket, I began to turn back, but the troll was closing in on me. The bricks were crumbling beneath its weight, but not before a stony hand shot out and snatched me around my waist.

  As its other hand reached for me, the roof finally gave way.

  There wasn’t time to contemplate the disappointment, the failure to save my people. Already, we were crashing through wood and plaster, screams erupting around us. Something cracked the side of my head, and pain shot through my skull.

  Four stories and three seconds later, we landed with a deafening crash. Pain rocketed through my body and I tasted blood in my mouth.

  Fuck. This job had meant everything. This job would have meant freedom for my people, finally.

  I tried to stand, but the troll was already pulling me through the building’s wreckage. As an elf, I was sturdier than a human, but I was still in rough shape, and I hung limply in the troll’s grasp. It began to drag me into the center of Beacon Street even as dizziness bloomed in my mind.

  My body slid and scraped over the freezing pavement. I scrambled to remember what I needed to do next.

  “Goott herrrr,” the troll growled. Its molten spittle hissed on the icy street.

  You got me. But you’re not taking me alive.

  “Skalei!” The dagger appeared instantly in my hand, its blade black and lethal. I might have failed my people, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. I swung hard at the troll’s forearm, but my dagger barely chipped his skin.

  The troll grunted, then lifted me in the air by my arm and slammed me onto the frozen asphalt. Agony ripped through my bones.

  With its stony fist pressing down on me, there was nothing more I could do. Within moments, the High Elves were locking iron handcuffs around my wrists.

  Chapter 5

  Ali

  A guard tugged on the chain connected to my manacled wrists. The whole situation had me walking at an awkward sideways angle. At this point, I could only hope they did not know I was a chief assassin. With any luck, they simply thought I was simply a thief.

  My body had taken a battering in the past hour, and I winced with every step. Since they’d blindfolded me, however, I had no idea what my surroundings looked like. Footsteps echoed, and the air smelled of moss, dank rocks, and death.

  In here, it was far too hot to wear my coat, even if the fur was fake. Sweat trickled down my neck.

  Best guess was that I’d been ta
ken to the Citadel. In the years following Ragnarok, when my people had been imprisoned deep within the earth, the High Elves had constructed a colossal fortress in the center of Boston. A thousand feet high, its stark walls were interrupted only by the heads of marble gargoyles. Pale gold spires ringed the tip of the tower, like a crown atop Beacon Hill.

  It had always seemed so clean and beautiful—a fortress that shielded the ornate and mysterious world of the High Elves. I’d never been inside it, but I imagined lots of glittering parties and gilded ceremonies.

  The elves called it New Elfheim. But to everyone else, it was just the Citadel, the seat of their power. All I knew was that it was part temple, part prison, part castle. It housed priests, prisoners, and royalty all within the same looming fortress.

  Whatever the case, it was a constant reminder that High Elves now ruled the city, and that my kind wasn’t part of it.

  Clearly, I wasn’t being taken to the royal section of the building. Even with a blindfold covering my eyes, I’d been able to work out that much. High Elves didn’t live in places that smelled worse than a sailor’s armpit. No, it was straight to the prison blocks for me.

  Crushing disappointment pressed on my chest. I’d been so close to saving my people. The task had been to go to the bank, to steal the safe deposit box. And something in that box would lead us to Galin. He was the sorcerer who had locked the Night Elves underground, and I longed to kill him. His death would break the spell and lead to our liberation.

  But it seemed I’d fucked it all up. Which item was even the right one? Would’ve helped if they’d explained that.

  I felt like the tip of a blade was piercing my heart. When I was little, Mom always told me that was my destiny, that I’d bring the Night Elves into the light again. Before she’d died in the subterranean caves, she’d said I was the North Star, and I would guide the Night Elves to freedom. And I'd always believed her.

  My thoughts shot back to Barthol. Fear streaked through my nerves when I pictured him pressed facedown in the snow, handcuffed by High Elves. I could only hope he’d escaped, that he’d made it back to our safe house.

  I couldn’t let myself think of any other possibility or I’d fall apart completely. So, I shut a mental steel door over my worst fears and tried to focus on the sounds around me.

  The creak of ancient hinges pulled me out of my worries as the guard pushed open a door. As he tugged me deeper into the Citadel’s depths, my right side brushed against a damp wall.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “You’ll see soon enough,” the guard replied, in that annoying singsong voice that seemed to be universal to High Elves.

  Truthfully, tonight was the first night I’d ever encountered High Elves face to face. They were the mortal enemies of my kind, Dokkalfar, Night Elves. And now, the blond bastards ruled Midgard, what had been world of men. They killed my kind on sight, or for sport.

  When they weren’t slaughtering Night Elves, the High Elves were imprisoning us in caverns under the ground. Every Night Elf like me had dreamed of freeing our kind. And I’d nearly had the chance…

  There it was again, that frosty bloom of regret spreading over my heart.

  But revenge against the High Elves would never be easy. Here in Midgard, we were outnumbered. Barthol and I had spent the last year planning the robbery. We’d kept a low profile, sleeping in abandoned townhouses, scrounging food on the streets. We’d steered completely clear of the High Elves the whole time, never getting too close. Never risking death until we had to.

  The guard slowed, and I heard him suck in a sharp breath. Something had him on edge. He stopped, fumbling with his keys. Judging by all the jangling, it sounded like his hands were shaking. What did he have to be scared of?

  A low growl reverberated in the cellblock, and the sound slid right through my bones.

  It was like nothing I’d ever heard. The hunting cry of the troll had been terrifying, but at least it’d sounded dumb. This growl was barely audible, yet somehow managed to convey a brutal savagery. It was a strangely haunting sound, shivering over my skin and turning my veins to ice.

  The guard ripped the cell door open and pushed me to the ground. My knees bit into the cold, jagged rock, and I tried to stand, but the guard pressed a foot to my back as he undid my handcuffs.

  Again, that low, quiet, forlorn growl slipped over the stone like wind howling through trees.

  The guard gasped. He was terrified.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer as he ripped the blindfold from my face. I rolled over to look at him, catching golden eyes wild with terror. Then he stumbled back out of the cell, slammed the door shut, and ran down the corridor and out of sight without looking back.

  I was left alone in complete darkness. Not that I particularly cared. Night Elf eyes were magically adapted to a life underground.

  I squinted, studying my surroundings. Unsurprisingly, a row of thick iron bars separated me from the corridor’s glistening stone floor. Jutting from the wall behind me was a granite slab, covered in straw. My bed, apparently. No sign of food or water.

  My instincts told me to stay back, that something deeply unnatural and evil lurked nearby.

  And yet—curiosity had me shifting closer to the bars, peering between them and into the corridor. I scanned the narrow hall, counting ten cells in the block, five on each side. Iron rods barred each of them from floor to the ceiling. From this vantage point, I could only see into the cell across from me, but it was like the darkness was thicker there.

  I squinted, trying to understand what I was looking at. In the back of the cell, where a stone bed should have jutted from the wall, pooled inky shadows that my eyes couldn’t penetrate. As I stared, the shadows began to move, coalescing into something denser.

  The low growl returned, skimming along the rocks and trembling over my skin. Across from me, the darkness seemed to lengthen into the shape of a man. An enormous man, looming over the back of his cell—six foot five at least, big as a god. What was he?

  The hair on the back of my arms rose. Still crouching on the cell floor, I inched back. No wonder the guard had been freaked out.

  Without warning, the man shifted so fast that my heart skipped a beat, a flash of movement in his cell. When the smoke around him thinned, my breath caught in my throat. His tattered shirt revealed a thickly muscled chest tattooed with runes gleaming with magic.

  But from between the tattoos crawled a stygian darkness, like black ink that was also somehow alive. Shadows writhed around his face, so dark and thick I couldn’t see his features until, for an instant, they flitted away.

  In that moment, I saw what lay beneath—a heartbreakingly beautiful face, with cheekbones sharp as blades and eyes the color of a glacial stream. Most of all, his wicked smile made my blood turn to ice.

  He was simultaneously the most beautiful and the most terrifying man I had ever seen, like someone sent by the gods to destroy everyone. But I had no idea what or who he was. He had neither the silver hair of the Dokkalfar nor the blond of the High Elves. Clearly, he wasn’t human—his size and all the inky magic made that clear. So what the Helheim was he?

  Whatever he was, I’d caught his attention, and it sent jolts of fear through my nerve endings.

  With his gaze locked on me, he raised his right index finger and began to cast a strange sort of magic.

  Chapter 6

  Marroc

  With my index finger, I traced sowilo, the S-shaped rune for sun. It was hardly a spell, but even so, the curse roared in my veins. I gritted my teeth and forced my hand to keep moving. When I finished, the air glowed with light, and I could see at last.

  From the cell across the hall, a female Night Elf stared at me, silver eyes wide as saucers.

  There you are, little one.

  She was the one who’d woken me from my sleep. Silver hair cascaded down her back, and her wide cheekbones shimmered faintly under the golden light, her eyebrows and e
yelashes black as jet. Although she wore a furry jacket, I found my gaze sliding down to her body. She wore tight leather pants that showed off her shapely legs.

  Once, long ago, lust for her body would have raged in me as I looked at her. Now, it was a different kind of desire. I wanted to drink her soul, to press my mouth against her neck and drain her completely. Hunger for her ripped through me. Every guard I’d drained in here had been dull, their souls as mediocre as their lives. For a thousand years, I’d been unfulfilled.

  This one, this beauty across from me—her soul would taste divine.

  Every one of my muscles went tense, and I gripped the bars. I couldn’t do it, though—couldn’t let myself get close enough to give in. Draining her soul would be a disaster for me—it would cost me my own life.

  Because from here, I could feel what had happened. She wasn’t the owner of one soul, but two. When she’d stolen my golden ring, my soul had taken shelter within the thief, and she was now its vessel. That was what had woken me in my cell. And I had to do everything within my power to keep her safe—to keep my own soul alive.

  She was the one living creature I could never kill.

  But was that only because she had my soul? She was my mate, too. After all, that was what my spell had commanded: that my mate find the ring, even if she had no idea the part she played in my magic.

  I could feel the mating bond, vaguely. A sense of protectiveness glowed, dull in my chest like a dying ember. Without the curse, it would have raged like a flame. Still, it was amazing that I could feel anything at all. I couldn’t love anymore, but I still felt something for her, dimly.

  And yet fate had truly offered me a poisoned dish. The gods had doubly cursed me with this Night Elf. Once she knew who I really was, she’d hate me for eternity. She wouldn’t rest until I was dead. And possessing my soul as she did, fate had given her the means to kill me easily.