Page 7 of Somber Prince

Black sand was uncommon, but not impossible in our world. I’d heard of black sand beaches on volcanic islands. There could possibly be a black desert somewhere on Earth too.

Except that the dunes here shimmered in the moonlight as if studded with diamonds. A breeze shifted the sand with the melodious sound of trickling water. The camels stepped softly on the desert floor, moving along the dunes like a flotilla of ships in the ocean. I’d never seen a live camel before, but I doubted they were normally quite as big or had such soft flowing fur like the one who carried our cage.

While Melanie screamed her head off and I was lost to all the stages of grief, Elaine paid attention. She listened and watched. And she was right. This wasn’t our world. The creatures who took us weren’t humans. I’d never seen a shadow wielding a sword before.

Cold fingers of fear creeped up my back and into my chest, gripping my heart.

“Where the hell are we?”

“We’re not speaking English, either,” Elaine pointed out in a voice hollow with terror.

The realization slammed into me like a wrecking ball. From the moment we got here, we’d been speaking the same language as our captors. Only when I listened to it closely, it didn’t sound like any language I’d ever learned or even heard before.

“Oh God, Elaine…” I gulped, hyperaware of the foreign sounds forming in my throat as naturally as my mother tongue. “What’s happening to us?”

Her long, shuddering breath was her only response as she kept tugging at the rope around my arms to no avail.

The ground appeared to rise on the horizon, blocking the starry skies. For a moment, I feared the desert was bloating, ready to explode on us. As we got closer, I realized a giant hill was up ahead. Overgrown with tall grass, the hill appeared to breathe like a giant animal in slumber when the grass moved with the breeze-like waves in the ocean.

Terraces and balconies were built into the hill with gazebos draped in silver vines. Large, pale moths fluttered around the flowers on the vines. Their silver wings spread shimmering dust, leaving glowing trails in the air.

The hill was buzzing with life. People filled each terrace and balcony, mingling in groups and watching our small caravan approach.

Looking back, I noticed with surprise that the caravan was no longer small. Somewhere along the way, more camels had joined us. Now, the line stretched as far as I could see behind us. Some of the animals carried identical cages to ours, and all the cages had people inside them.

“What is this place?” I whispered, but no one in our cage could answer this question.

The camel stopped, and the men dragged us out of the cage.

Elaine kept close to me, her sweater tickling the skin on my bound arms. “Where the heck are we? And how did we get here?”

“I’m more concerned with how to get the fuck out of here,” Melanie croaked, standing next to us. Her voice was almost completely gone now, but defiance was clear in her expression. “We need to find a way back, and the sooner the better. I have a very important presentation next week.”

A presentation?

It took me a while to even understand what she was talking about. Was she thinking about her work?

That world—our real world—already felt so distant, as if a lifetime had passed. Even the horror of what happened to my father felt oddly muffled somehow, like it’d happened in a nightmare that had already passed.

A tall gate of carved wood opened in the side of the hill on the ground level, and a few riders exited. The one in the front rode a snow-white camel, which instantly set him apart from the rest. Like the others, he also wore a skirt-like garment, a chainmail over his chest, and boots. But his clothes were slightly different.

Both layers of this rider’s skirt were down. The black fabric shone with emerald green in its folds, flowing down the sides of his camel like liquid malachite. The high side slit exposed his leg from the short boot all the way up to his muscular thigh. The mesh over his chest had more gems than metal. It draped from his neck and shoulders down past his ribs, with the precious stones glistening in the moonlight.

As he rode ahead, his long hair streamed in the breeze like black ink, held by a thin golden circlet on his head. In the mass of his hair, several thin braids sparkled with golden rings spread evenly along their lengths.

The general approached the rider and bowed her head.

“Greetings, Your Highness.”

Your Highness?

This was a prince, then? Did he have the power to let us go?

The prince swept the caravan with his gaze. Moonlight bounced off his golden circlet. Two black spikes rose on each side of his head like horns. At first, I thought they were parts of his headdress. With another puff of the breeze, however, one of the spikes flicked like a cat’s ear would twitch in annoyance when touched.

They couldn’t be his ears. Could they? Everything that had happened to us tonight was unbelievable. At this point, I could almost accept that this man had long, pointy cat ears.

The general unclipped her head cover and shrugged the fabric off her head and shoulders, revealing a pair of long, spiky ears of her own. Tall and pointy, they stood upright, like the ears of a Doberman or a German shepherd. Only unlike the lovable appearance of the dogs, the ears made these people look fierce and menacing. Like they were alert and ready to attack.

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