Dan Davis - Vampire Knight (The Immortal Knight Chronicles Book 4) by Dan Davis

Author:Dan Davis [Davis, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-23T03:00:00+00:00

***

The cave was empty when I woke in the morning. A lamp was burning on the table but a slither of daylight lanced across the rear wall of the cave from some unseen crevice amongst the folds of the rock roof high above.

Tentatively, I felt my way to the exit and emerged, blinking, into green and orange sunlight. The woodland came right up to the opening and the understorey layer had presumably been allowed to remain dense as a form of concealment.

In no more than my linen shirt and with bare feet, I pushed through off the side of the track to void my bowels. As I was kicking the leaf litter over it, the young woman came crashing through the undergrowth with a bundle of firewood slung over her shoulder, her fair hair unbound, flowing as she bounded past. She wrinkled her nose but otherwise paid me no heed. It dawned on me that I had taken a shit on what amounted to her doorstep and I hurried after her.

“Good morning, good woman,” I said. “May I carry that for you?”

She glanced over her shoulder but kept going until she reached a chopping block in small clearing and then dumped it all on the carpet of brown and yellow leaves littering the floor.

Dappled sunlight fell across her hair as she bent to the bundle.

“Allow me, madame,” I insisted, dropping to one knee as I untied the bundle and eyed the axe stuck into the block. “Is your husband abroad this morning?”

She pursed her lips in a most fetching manner, then tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. It seemed that she understood no French and I did not even bother attempting English. I doubted a commoner such as her would understand much Latin.

Commoner though she must certainly have been to live such a life, she was as pretty as a princess. Although, I had seen plenty of princesses in my time and few enough could hold a candle to that girl waving a bee away from her face that morning in the Black Forest. Perhaps I was love-sick for Cecilia but that girl was strong, womanly, and made a dutiful wife even in a ridiculous dark cave in the woods and I was struck by the outrageousness of it all.

Where was her family, I thought. What on Earth was this Priskos doing with her?

I took up the axe and she stepped back as I swung, splitting the log in one blow.

“We were not properly introduced, madame. My name is Richard.”

She bit her lip and looked down, clasping her hands.

“Would you tell me your name, my dear? Where are you from? May I ask how you came to live here?”

The woman looked around. A cold wind gusted through the canopy with a sound like the breaking of waves. After a moment, she opened her mouth to speak to me but then clamped it closed, threw her head down and hunched her shoulders.

Priskos strode toward us from out of the undergrowth.

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