Cursed Prince (Night Elves Trilogy Book 1)

by C. N. Crawford

  I could toss the stone across the cemetery yard and try to escape this stranger—but like the High Elves’ wands, the stone needed time to recharge its magic. I’d seen how fast this man could move. He’d be on me within moments.

  So, I held out my right hand, muttering, “Skalei.” When the dagger appeared in my palm, I pointed it at him. “What do you want from me?”

  He took another step closer, pale eyes twinkling like I delighted him. But when I spoke, he winced, nearly imperceptibly. I had the sense that he liked how I looked but hated my voice. In any case, my own freezing feet were quickly pulling my attention away from him. I was only wearing socks in the snow.

  Even if I could escape, I wanted to find out what the deal was with this guy. Could he help me avenge my people, perhaps?

  I lifted the dagger higher. “Stay where you are.”

  But Skalei, I realized, was a stupid threat. Stabbing him hadn’t slowed him down before. The curve of his lips told me he knew this, too. Amusement flickered in his eyes.

  He took another step closer.

  Blood trickled from where my finger had been severed, staining my palm and wrist. My mind raced, internal alarm bells ringing loudly, telling me to run.

  But he’d been protecting me up there, hadn’t he? Shielding me from the hexes. Maybe he looked like a god of death, but he’d kept me safe, in his own way.

  So far.

  If he wanted me alive, maybe that was my leverage. There was only one way to find out. I pressed the edge of the dagger to my wrist. Bluffing, obviously, but I’d see if it worked.

  “Don’t come any closer,” I said. “I want to ask you a question or two, but I want you to stay where you are.”

  He stopped moving, shadows whipping around him. His body looked tightly coiled, like he was about to leap for me, but he didn’t make a sound.

  Now, I could hear nothing but the whistle of the wind through the oak that arched over us. When the tendrils of darkness drifted from his face again, it felt like someone squeezing my heart. He really was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, and yet there was something distinctly wrong with him.

  Without making a sound, he reached up and snapped a twig off the frozen oak.

  I let out a long breath and took a step back. Then I watched as he wrote in the snow, scratching the words I WILL HELP YOU.

  I lowered the blade from my wrist. “With what? Who are you?”

  MARROC, he scrawled in the snow.

  It was an old-fashioned name, one from perhaps before Ragnarok. “Your name is Marroc?”

  He nodded.

  “Why can’t you speak?” Immediately, I wondered if it was a rude question, then decided I didn’t care.

  I’M CURSED, he wrote.

  Ah… well, that explained it. The black magic that whirled around him, the fact that he scared the shit out of everyone. Didn’t explain his otherworldly speed, though. Didn’t explain his interest in me—or what he was.

  “Why did you save me?” I asked. “Why did you protect me from the hexes?”

  He dropped the branch in the snow and moved for me quickly.

  I lifted Skalei, but then I heard the now too-familiar buzz of a spell whistling through the night air. I dove to the side just as the spell hissed into the snow mere inches from where I’d been standing. A shadow passed over the graveyard, and I glanced up to see a moth-mounted elf swooping above.

  I was about to throw the vergr stone when Marroc grabbed me, scooping me up in his arms. His wood-smoke scent wrapped around me like a caress.

  Then, like an icy night wind through Boston’s trees, he ran, holding me tight to his chest. And I let him—because I still had a million questions for him, and I needed answers.

  The moth was long behind us, but Marroc clutched me in an iron grip as he raced through the city. Cold air nipped painfully at the nub of my severed finger.

  At first, he seemed to move without purpose, needlessly redoubling his tracks as he raced around Beacon Hill, but then I realized it was a stratagem. With his bizarre path, he was making it virtually impossible for the High Elves to track us.

  Eventually, he started down Commonwealth Avenue, away from the center of the city. I felt the muscles moving in his chest and shoulders as he ran—it was so strange, the way he didn’t breathe or make a noise as he moved. And yet he was so solid, like a marble statue of a god.

  “What’s the plan, Marroc? Where are we going?” I didn’t know why I bothered asking, when it was obvious he couldn’t speak.

  Without so much as a glance in my direction, he swept past the crumbling brick ruins of Boston University, then crossed over the bridge into Cambridge. With my arms wrapped around his neck, I took a moment to study his face.

  It had been harder to see him before, with the cloud of shadows around him, but now I had a close view of his sharp jaw line and cheekbones. Thick, dark, straight eyebrows and eyelashes the color of jet. Skin was pale as ivory, eyes the color of a cloudless sky. His full lips were set in a determined line, and he had a distinct dimple in his chin. His dark hair hung over his shoulders, glossy in the moonlight.

  I tore my gaze away from him again, looking over his shoulder. “It’s not safe here.”

  A slow slide of his gaze was the only acknowledgment that I’d spoken. His lip curled a little. Again, I got the impression that he hated it when I spoke. His arms tightened under my legs, and he showed no signs of slowing down.

  As we drew closer to Central Square, I spotted the first draugr shuffling out of an apartment building. The undead creature was small, and based on her bleached hair with pink tips, I guessed she’d been a woman, once.

  As we raced past, I could have sworn that she clutched an empty wine glass in her emaciated fist.

  “This part of the city is infested with draugr,” I warned Marroc. “It’s not safe.”

  He only continued on, deeper into the streets of Cambridge.

  When I looked over his shoulder again, I saw a group of undead following, shuffling along behind us like drunk college students. Which, really, they could have been a thousand years ago—undead from an ancient era, when nearby Harvard and MIT had still been functioning.

  Luckily, my cursed prisoner friend was too fast for them, and he seemed indefatigable. The icy winds kissed my cheeks and whipped my silver hair around me.

  We raced down Massachusetts Avenue, past the remains of Cambridge’s city hall, into Harvard Square. Snow swept around in squalls, and icicles hung from dormitory windows in Harvard Yard.

  But there were even more draugr here, and dread crawled up my neck. They were crawling from shadows around the Harvard campus. Around us, the undead called to each other in low, whispering voices.

  Marroc slowed to a stop in front of an impressive building, four stories tall and built of brick. I read its name on the lintel: Sanders Theatre.

  Behind us, the draugr closed in, silently wading through the snowdrifts.

  Panic made my heart race. “Marroc! We need to keep moving.”

  He dropped me, and I slid down his enormous body. Then he grabbed the steps of a fire escape bolted to the wall of the theater. With a screech of tearing metal, he ripped the stairs from the side of the building. Before I could move, he had lifted me up by the waist and placed me on the remaining iron platform above him. I was now ten feet above the ground, out of reach of the draugr.

  Before I could ask what the plan was, he turned and ran into the darkness. For whatever reason, the draugr weren’t interested in him, only in me. And I stood above them like their queen.

  On the frigid platform, I leapt to my feet, looking out at the ragged undead army as they spilled into Harvard Yard. The bluish, gnarled bodies of the draugr were everywhere. They moved in the shadows, giving me no free space to throw my vergr stone. Even if there was somewhere I could throw it, they would surround me while I waited for the stone to recharge. From here, I could see no escape routes.

  Their rheumy eyes all fixed on my position. A shiver
rippled over my body as I searched fruitlessly for a way out.

  Nothing.

  Why the Helheim had Marroc brought me here only to leave me among the dead?

  Chapter 12

  Marroc

  What in the gods’ names had become of Midgard while I’d been in prison?

  I hadn’t expected it to be quite this bad. In Cambridge, there wasn’t a single living soul apart from the Night Elf. Only the undead inhabited the streets of the old city.

  Now, as I raced down Peabody Street, I thought of her strange silver eyes. I’d never spent any time around her kind. I hadn’t even gotten the chance to ask her name yet—or to carve the question in the snow with a stick, as it were.

  And there it was again: that unfamiliar feeling, long buried. Fear. It was that ember simmering a little hotter—a need to get back to her.

  But first, I needed to retrieve my house key, and I couldn’t let the Night Elf see where I’d hidden it.

  That was the lie I told myself.

  The truth was that she unnerved me on a deep level that I didn’t understand, and I wanted to get away from her.

  When her silver hair brushed my cheek, a tiny flame flickered in my chest, like I had a heartbeat again. Like I was alive. It was only when she spoke that I wanted the gods to rise again and freeze everything on the earth just so I could have silence.

  For a thousand years, I’d heard no one speak but the occasional guard. I’d grown used to the solitude, my stone grave in the Citadel. My world was one of ice and stone. And now I was bound by Wyrd to someone who had questions and screams, and who could break easily.

  Mate or not, I wanted to leave her and never return. The dead couldn’t actually love, so what did I care?

  But she had my soul, and that tied me to her for now.

  I tucked my head down as I ran, my dark hair whipping around me in the snow squall. In Harvard Square, the draugr left me alone. They had no interest in someone like me.

  And there it was again—fear, like a phantom, creeping up behind me. Would she be all right where I’d left her? I’d thought so at the time, and now I couldn’t help but worry.

  She had my soul in her body. If she died, my soul died with her.

  And the terrible truth was that if she knew who I was, she might want that to happen.

  Whatever happened next, I couldn’t let her know the truth.

  At the iron gates of the Old Burial Ground, I leapt the spiked fence. Snow was thick on the ground of Cambridge’s oldest cemetery. Only the tops of the gravestones poked through, black curves in a sea of white. The graves were ancient, some from the days when the humans had hanged witches. I scanned the stones, looking for the familiar tomb.

  I’d buried my key among the bones of Reverend Benjamin Wadsworth. I didn’t have any particular affinity for the old president of Harvard; it was simply that his grave was tomb-shaped, with a flat capstone atop an open chamber—the perfect place to stash something that needed to remain hidden.

  But as I surveyed the cemetery, I couldn’t find it.

  The last time I’d been amongst these stones was nearly a thousand years ago. Had the tomb disappeared?

  Clouds slid over the moon such that I could hardly see. The Night Elf wouldn’t have this problem, would she? Her strange silver eyes would be able to pierce this darkness effortlessly.

  I ran to a snowdrift, but when I brushed the snow away, it revealed only fallen yew branches. Another drift hid the grave of Washington Allston, whoever the Helheim he was.

  A bloodcurdling cry echoed in the distance. I paused, listening. The draugr were calling to each other in their horrible voices. I needed to hurry.

  At last, I found the old reverend’s tomb, buried under a drift in the shadows of a frozen oak. With a single swipe, I brushed the snow off the lid. I skipped the inscription, instead ripping the ancient slab away. Amongst a frozen pile of bones rested an iron key. My key.

  I snatched it from the grave.

  In the distance, the draugr howled, and fear trickled over my bones again. She’d be all right, wouldn’t she? From what I’d seen, she was fast and cunning, and she had some sort of spell to travel through space in an instant.

  I paused as an idea came to me. Quickly, I turned back to the grave, frowning down at the skeleton. After a pause, I snatched up one of Wadsworth’s femurs.

  With the winter winds whipping over me, I sprinted back toward the theater where I’d left the Night Elf.

  As I ran, I tried to remember those buried memories—the flickering images that had come into my mind when I’d been close to my soul. Something with birds, I thought. Ravens.

  As a warm spark lit in my frozen chest, a new image flickered.

  I needed to get back to her, to that light she held within her body. I picked up speed until I was faster than the wind, a shadow in the white snow. As I ran to her, dread slid through my blood at the sight of draugr milling around, their eyebrows frosted with snow.

  I sniffed the air. There it was, under the scent of the draugr. The faint odor of gasoline.

  I turned to a great pile of snow, the remains of an ancient automobile, and punched my fist through it. My hand slammed though snow, then ice, then metal, until it reached the SUV’s gas tank. I ripped it out, throwing it on the street in front of me. Thousand-year-old sludge, that once had been gasoline, sloshed on the asphalt. I hope this is still flammable.

  Ripping a strip of cloth from my shirt, I wrapped it round the end of Reverend Wadsworth’s femur, then dipped it into the puddle. I blocked out any worry I had for the Night Elf, raising my hand to trace the rune for fire.

  As I moved my finger through the air, the curse kindled. Nearly instantly, my skin felt as if it were on fire—and it had nothing to do with the spell I was trying to cast. I could still use basic magic with my curse, but it meant that I felt as if I were burning alive.

  I doubled over, my muscles spasming involuntarily, but I continued to write in the air to form the rune. The skin at my fingertip began to glow.

  I touched it to the end of the femur. Instantly, the cloth wrapped around bone burst into flame.

  With my macabre torch, I charged up Peabody Street, toward the Night Elf and the sea of draugr surrounding her.

  She held my soul and memories in her body. She was my mate, and I hadn’t even learned her name yet.

  Chapter 13

  Ali

  The draugr circled, closer and closer, staring at me with yellowed eyes. There were hundreds of them now, dark shapes against the icy landscape. Snowflakes drifted down, dusting their upturned faces.

  I pulled my hood up, the acrylic fur tickling my cheeks. My feet were painfully frozen in my socks now, the frost creeping over my toes. Any longer out here and they’d be going black with frostbite. The only idea I could come up with was taking off my coat to wrap them in it, but then the rest of me would be cold.

  I’d set out to bring back treasure for the Shadow Lords, something that would help free my people. And it seemed I’d be heading to the Shadow Caverns empty-handed, with nothing to show for my adventure but frostbitten feet. If I headed back home at all.

  Marroc had ripped away the lower steps of the fire escape, leaving the bottom platform about four feet above the heads of the hungry corpses. He’d left me safe, but trapped.

  Before, I’d been sure he was protecting me, but now it looked like I would freeze to death above a throng of draugr.

  Right now, I desperately wished I had a way to get a message to Barthol. I breathed out, and mist clouded around me. If I really had to, I could toss the vergr stone over the brick wall to my left, the gate that led into the oldest part of Harvard Yard. But then I’d risk being surrounded by more draugr as soon as I landed.

  They were under me now, clawing at the walls. The only thing that kept them from tearing me to pieces was that their gnarled hands couldn’t grip the smooth brick. Directly beneath me, a draugr in a tattered miniskirt opened her mouth. She smacked her lips with a pasty
tongue.

  With a swell of nausea, I realized she was trying to catch the droplets of blood that dripped from the nub of my severed finger. I gaped with morbid fascination as the draugr standing next to her—a blonde—noticed what was happening. She, too, snatched at the blood spatter as it dripped, trying to get a taste.

  The first one grabbed the blonde by the head, then twisted it. With a crack that echoed through the courtyard, the blonde’s head was gone.

  So much for that dye job.

  The sound reverberated through the cold air, and the draugr began murmuring to each other again. Then they surged forward, crushing each other in their desperation to get at me. Bony hands reached from below. The headless draugr disappeared under the crowd of undead.

  Fear crept up my spine as I realized they were now standing on the bodies of their fallen companions, using the trampled as footstools.

  Desperately, I looked at the brick wall to my right. When I saw draugr streaming through the gate, I knew that path was no good either.

  I told myself that I’d make it out of this fine, that this would all add to the amazing story I’d tell Barthol over beers later. But my breath was coming in short, sharp bursts, and panic was raking its icy claws up my back.

  As I took a step back on the platform, leathery fingers grabbed the metal bars at my feet.

  Frantic, I stamped on the fingers hard, using the heel of my frozen foot. Only a thin layer of icy sock was between me and the undead, but I gritted my teeth and slammed down on them as hard as possible.

  At last, I severed the fingers, but it was too late. Two more draugr were already pulling themselves onto the iron platform. I turned to climb the fire escape, my frozen feet slamming on the metal stairs.

  It occurred to me that if I climbed up to the roof, I might be able to find somewhere I could throw the vergr stone. The groan of bending metal rent the air as I raced up the steps, toward the top of the staircase. At the top, I grasped for the handle of a fire door. But when I pulled on it, it didn’t open.