Better Left Forgotten

(just to clarify, whenever ~then~ appears its referring to pieces of Vlamira's past. ~Now~ means the present)

*vlamira*

~Then~

They took the city when I was five and my sister nine. They descended from the heavens turning the sky black with the burning ash of our homes and the waters red with the blood of my people. My mother hid us beneath the floor boards. I remember the desperate fear that glinted in her eyes and the way her urgent voice seemed to be weeping when she told us not to come out for anything, no matter what we might hear. When she turned to leave my small hands grabbed her skirts begging her to stay with us but she pried my fingers away and told us, “I’ll come back for you.” We never saw her again.

Together my sister and I had crouched in the darkness, until the screams from the outside world finally stopped and all that remained was our fearful shallow breaths and the heavy silence that pressed in above us. I don’t know how long we stayed like that. It might have been hours or maybe even days. In that dank dark hole time did not exist. It was just us and the silence. In the end it wasn’t our mother who came back for us, it was a stranger. When he opened the door that entrapped us in our endless time loop of despair, it was as if he were opening the very door to the sky. When he roughly grabbed us and drug us screaming and crying up the stairs I realized that it wasn’t the doorway to heaven he had opened, it was the very entrance of hell. The hell my sister and I would endure for many more years to come.

~Now~

It wasn’t until the next morning that I finally came to my senses. Following Lucian back was a mistake and when the opportunity arose, I would take my chances and run. When Lucian had told me I was his mate, I was taken by surprise. It was only now that I was beginning to grasp the entire weight of what he spoke. Lucian was a king. A werewolf king at that and I knew that once he had recognized me as his mate and spoke his acceptance of me, then he would never let me go. I would be stuck in a world of kings, blood and control for as long as I lived. I wanted out before the soul mate bond spoke to him any louder. From the time I spent in FireTree pack, I knew that werewolf love was intense to the point of overwhelming. He would want to control everything that is me and understand all of who I am. His love would make him crush my legs so that I couldn’t run away and smother my senses so that all I could see, hear, and smell was him.

Even though I knew he would not harm me, I did not want to be suffocated by his possessiveness or be controlled by an entire kingdoms set of laws I would be expected to follow. I promised myself I would never allow my life to be in someone else’s hands. I would not live in fear again.

The room I stepped out into was empty, the bed neatly made and a fire already blazing in the fire place. I quickly scanned my surroundings immediately suspicious. When I confirmed that I was indeed alone, I began a closer inspection of the room I was in.

It was not without its luxuries but its furnishings were tactfully done, the decorations beautiful but not overwhelmingly extravagant. Ignoring the beautifully woven tapestries hanging from the walls and the intricate fragile vases that adorned the fire place mantle, I wrapped my fingers experimentally around a large golden candle stick holder and tested the weight of the object. It was heavy in my grasp and I practiced swinging it a couple of times. Deciding it was good enough, I tucked it in my pants and made my way to the door.

Leaning forward I pressed my ear against the smooth mahogany wood and listened carefully to the outside world. My delicate hearing picked up a couple of noises further down the hall and I concentrated harder until their words were clear.

“…..heard she had hair the color of silver.” A hurried voice whispered. “That’s what you heard? I heard she’s a witch! They say that if you look into her eyes, she can turn you into stone.” Another voice answered and the other woman gasped as if the news was so shocking she had lost the air in her lungs.

Tentatively, I urged the door open and peered into the hallway. The two voices I had heard were further down the hall and I took the hallway that branched away from their frantic whispers. The walls around me were lined with paintings of stern faced men and women I assumed were past kings and queens. Other than their leering stares, the hallways were quiet. Empty of everything but of the sadness the walls kept whispering to me.

At the end of the hall, I paused again listening for the people of the castle. I knew I would soon come across others and I wanted to be aware of them long before they became aware of me. Holding my breath I concentrated again to the sounds around me and allowed the wind to send me its quiet murmurings. Footsteps and carefree laughter danced along the air currents in broken fragments telling me that werewolves were drawing closer to where I crouched.

Slipping the golden candle stick holder from its hiding place, I gripped it with steady hands and waited for the inevitable. The voices soon drifted apart telling me that the two had split up. I listened carefully to the set of footsteps that approached my hiding spot. I pressed myself up against the wall, my heart pounding in my chest as my fingers tightened around my weapon. I stood as still as the wood against my back, molding myself into the background.

It was a rather large man that stepped around the corner. He seemed to be in a good mood and even whistled a little while he walked. Those breathy whistles masked the sound of my feet as I made my sudden assault. I leapt at him with the quickness of a hummingbird and swung the candle stick at the back of his unsuspecting head. He fell to the floor and I almost missed the quiet groan that rolled from his lips as he quickly fell unconscious.

Not wasting any time I quickly used his clothes to tie his hands and feet together, ripping a strip of clothe away to shove in his mouth. When I was done, I very painfully dragged him into the closest room where he would stay locked away in the closet for some poor maid to uncover. Gathering my lost breath from the physical exertion, I then preceded with my escape plan which I regret to say, was not in the least bit planned.

I was able to avoid any further unfortunate encounters, but the exit from this complex castle eluded me. When I followed Lucian to his room the previous day, it was dark and I had lost count of the endless twists and turns we took too focused on the feel of Lucian’s rough hands in mine. I chided myself for my carelessness now. Cursing under my breath at both my stupidity and my lack of patience, I began opening random doors to rooms I knew to be vacant from the still silence within them. If I couldn’t find the entrance, I would just make my own.

It was the third door that did the trick. Most rooms contained windows that were too small to crawl through even for me, but the third door I tried was filled with books. I was very much pleased to find that the room was also flooded with sunlight that was found to be streaming through beautifully large windows. Looking through their murky glass panes, I discovered just how far from the ground I was. I was at least three floors up, too far up to even hope of jumping down. I sighed from disappointment and almost turned away. Luckily, the wind outside forced the branches of the tree to wave wildly in the breeze catching my attention.

The tree that lay planted in front of the last library window was a large oak with towering branches that reached for the heavens. My eager fingers desperately searched for a latch on the windows and I sighed in relief when they found one. Pushing the window pane up I stepped on the window ledge and carefully estimated the distance between the oak and the window I was perched in. It would be a risky jump, but it was doable. I crawled out on my hands and knees to the tiny ledge that extended a little past the open window. Steadying myself by grabbing on to the two sides of the window, I slowly pulled myself up into a standing position and stared intently at those swaying branches. Gathering up my courage, I sucked in a deep breath and then flung myself into the air.

The first branch hit my chest and nearly knocked the breath out of me. My arms shot out desperately attempting to grab something, anything to stop me from falling. I fell past several branches as others painfully smacked into me and scratched my flesh. Finally, with what seemed like forever, my arms locked around a branch and completely stopped my free fall. I groaned and then used my stomach and arm muscles to hoist the rest of me onto the branch. I had a few bruises and even more scrapes and cuts, but otherwise, I was fine. I hadn’t broken anything and I once again wondered how much luck a person was capable of having. I had surely just ran out.

Resting only until I had caught my breath I then carefully climbed the rest of the way down the tree. When my feet finally touched the ground I began dodging around the trees eagerly headed towards the next step of my new rather rash plan. From my resting place in the tree I had crash landed in, I had spotted a large barn in the distance. The breeze had carried to me the many sounds of animals from it including a means to get away. Horses. I wasn’t sure if a horse could outrun a werewolf but I was eager to try.

*Lucian*

I used to enjoy my rounds around the pack boundaries and how the fresh air always seemed to clear my mind. Now all it made me was annoyed. I had other places I wanted to be. I wanted to be under that beautiful haughty gaze of hers and I wanted her lovely grace to be within reaching distance. The farther my feet carried me away from her, the more frustrated I became.

My pace picked up on my last border sweep, my mood already lifting at the thought of having her close again soon. To my surprise, my path crossed with a couple of guards I had stationed near Vlamira’s rooms. They looked haggard and breathless and their rugged appearance had my blood sizzling in anticipation.

“What are you two doing here? I commanded you to guard Vlamira.” I stated staring them down. Their eyes darted around frantically as they flinched away from the steel in my voice before the smaller one finally forced out, “Ah…that…uh…shes uh….she's...”

“Shes gone.” The other guard interrupted and suddenly the chains holding the beast under my skin snapped. I wasn’t thinking when my hands shot out to the closest person next to me wrapping around his throat and slamming him against the nearest tree. He gasped and coughed as my fingers tightened around his throat slowly crushing his windpipe as his feet thrashed wildly in the air. I couldn’t see past the silver that coated my eyes, the blood lust that consumed my vision.

His life was spared by the quick actions of my subordinates who pulled me away from the thrashing werewolf. I was seconds away from tearing out of their grasps and going for him again when her scent filled my nose. I’m not sure I really even had time to process what was happening before she came crashing through the woods atop a very large red horse.

She lay crouched against his neck, her wild silver hair flashing behind her as the horse she rode flew over the head of her ex-room guard who lay crouched in the snow still shaking from fear at my sudden attack. The horses hooves narrowly missed his face, but unfortunately clipped the tip of his ear instead sending him howling and grasping his now bleeding skin.

We were left in stunned silence as both horse and rider thundered through the snow and disappeared into the trees.

“I think we found her.” Choked out the werewolf I had attacked. He was desperately trying to suck in air as he attempted to stand again. I resisted the urge to kick him back down.

Instead I said calmly, yet the deadly steel that coated my voice was unmistakable, “Bring her back.”