Elaris Ashwyn's Arc

Chapter 1 of 12

Elaris Ashwyn had carried the secret for eleven years, and tonight it nearly spilled out to a stranger. She caught herself just in time, closing her mouth over the words. The old woman by the fire had asked only where Elaris came from. Elaris said nothing true. She never did. She pulled her hood lower, hiding the purple hair and silver eyes that marked her half-elf blood, and moved on into the trees. She walked until the campfire light died behind her. Then she stopped and pressed her hand to her chest. Beneath her shirt hung a silver chain. On it swung a ring set with violet stones, one word carved inside the band: Ashwyn. Her name. Her real one. The name of a royal house that thought her dead, and a house she had run from before she understood what she was running toward. She had never spoken it aloud to anyone. The weight of it pressed harder every day. She wanted, just once, to say the truth to someone and watch them not flinch. But trust was a knife she had felt turned on her too often. So she stayed alone, and the secret rotted inside her like a splinter under the skin. A raven dropped from the dark and landed on her shoulder. Obsidian. Black feathers, violet eyes, the only creature she let close. He nipped her ear and made a low sound. "I nearly told her," Elaris whispered. "A woman I met an hour ago." Obsidian tilted his head. He could not answer. That was the trouble. She could confess anything to him and change nothing. Obsidian took off suddenly, wings beating toward a stand of glowing red flowers. Elaris followed, dagger already in her hand. Among the blossoms crouched a small figure dressed in leaves and moss, no taller than her knee. A forest sprite. It was tangled in a hunter's snare wire, one leg caught tight. The sprite looked up at her with sparkling eyes and did not scream. It only reached toward the wire and then toward her, asking. Elaris knelt. She sawed through the snare with her blade until the wire snapped. The sprite pulled its leg free and rubbed it. Then it did something no person had done in years. It touched her hand, and warmth spread up her arm like sunlight. In her mind she felt the sprite ask, without words: Who are you? Elaris froze. The question was the same the old woman had asked. But this creature owed nothing to any king or court. It could not sell her. It only wanted to know. "Elaris," she said. Then, before her fear could stop her, she lifted the ring from her chest and showed it. "Ashwyn. I was born a princess." The words left her body. Nothing broke. The sprite smiled and squeezed her hand. For the first time, Elaris had said it aloud, and the world had not ended.