Prologue
Belle stumbled forward, her hair falling in dirty sheets before her eyes. The blood that had been flowing from her hands had finally dried, and she was too crazed with fear to notice that their dull aching had ceased as well. Her eyes searched the skies; where was he? she asked herself. She had been distracted for only a minute- could he really have left her so quickly? She sank to the ground, the fear gripping painfully at her heart.
She wiped her nose with her sleeve unthinkingly, and cursed her eyes for being dry. If she were normal, she told herself, then she would cry. She would have been an elegant sobbing heap on the floor of her castle, not a wild animal in a forest she had never been in. She would have been raising their son, instead of searching the sky for a speck of white that was her son's father. She would be governing her people, instead of having her sister in law, the woman who had hated her for so long, do it.
But she wasn't normal, was she? This forced a grim smile to her dirty lips, a rare thing that she was unused to. Misrak had told her that once; and wasn't that the reason he had said he loved her in the first place? She thought back to it, and felt life surge back to her in realizing that that was what he had said, after all.
As though he had heard her thoughts, the speck of white appeared against the gray sky. Belle laughed with relief, and got achingly to her feet. Pushing the grimy hair from her face, she continued.
Seven years has almost passed, she told herself, and then this will all be over.