Harvi- The Revised Edition

Harvi's p.o.v-

I keep thinking about the smell. Looking frantically around with hollow eyes, piles of dead bodies lying around on the ground.

They were my people, my clan, my family - brutally killed.

What once smelled like salt and wet earth and the particular sweetness of the berries Mera used to dry on her roof every summer has now turned barren.

My island turned into a bloodied playground of the Arkadians.

I stood in the middle of it. Losing all sense of consciousness - the shouting, screaming, raging horses with soldiers riding them, bloodied swords and spears cutting through the air.

Their metallic armour caught the sunlight while their ruthless faces were hidden behind their helmets.

My blade was in my hand, and I couldn't remember deciding to hold it. My breathing was too shallow to pay attention to the ruckus happening around me.

Jastav was dead.

It was all running inside my mind.

"Seize that bloody savage!" An angry voice shouted from a distance.

I didn't turn toward it. I waited. I waited for my death to come.

The soldier who grabbed my upper arm had the particular confidence of someone who had never once had a person fight back.

I felt the weight of his hand; the assumption in it was louder than his previous words.

The rage surged through my veins, and before I knew it, I put my blade through the gap in his armor, catching him completely off guard.

He screamed while I felt nothing. That frightened me more than the screaming did.

"Eithes!" The other soldier wailed his name like a widow calling out to her dead husband.

In my peripheral vision, I saw that man running toward us, but I was ready to fight to the death. Even though I knew it was going to be totally one-sided.

I closed my eyes for the last time. Picking up whatever strength was left within my bones, I swung my blood-dripping sword when that man attacked me with his own.

The clang of metal on metal rang out across what was left of our ground, and I blinked. For a moment, I tried to sense the pain, but it never came. My blade remained in my hand, yet the man who had attacked me let out another painful wail.

He was clutching his deeply cut arm and looking toward the source that had blocked his attack. Out of the same confusion, I did too.

There he was. Death itself, sitting on his horse several hundred meters away, watching me with the particular stillness of someone who has seen everything and been moved by none of it.

I didn't know what happened next - I felt a sharp hit at the back of my head, which almost instantly knocked me out.

*

I woke up with a sick feeling in my gut. My arms ached, my legs were sore, my whole body throbbed, yet I couldn't breathe out a word - as if the air itself had been knocked out of my lungs.

I barely registered the light coming through the small slit of a window.

I tried to bring my arms closer together, but something heavy prevented it. My groggy eyes adjusted slowly and focused.

I felt myself... chained. Chained to the wall.

Both of my wrists were clasped in iron handcuffs, pressed against the cold stone. I was almost on my knees.

"She is awake." A voice spoke - not commanding, not malicious. Just flat.

Before I could see who it was, the door rattled open, making me squeeze my eyes shut against the sudden flare of torchlight.

"Clean her up and bring her to me." Another voice, monotone, and then footsteps leaving.

I didn't understand what was happening until I felt pinching and hushed, sharp instructions.

I flailed my arms in panic when I finally registered it - a pair of women dragging my almost naked body, scrubbing at my skin without warning, without permission.

"Behave." One screeched when I wrenched my arm away.

The other hit me when I kicked her for touching me. I got beaten for it - but I made sure to throw hands and draw blood as much as I could.

The soldiers had to drag us apart when they saw how bloodied and messy things had gotten.

But I was angry, and my adrenaline was through the ceiling. I managed to withdraw a knife from one of the soldiers who tried to manhandle me and cut him open with it.

Of course, I was no match for an army, and soon I found myself being kicked around the floor.

"ENOUGH!" A voice roared - and every person in the room dropped to their knees.

Since I was too weak and too beaten to do anything else, I fell to the floor with tears and blood running down my face.

I passed out, but not before seeing the face that had started to haunt me for the rest of my days.

*

I hissed when I woke up again and almost instinctively tried to pull away.

"Careful, miss, or you will end up hurting yourself more." A gentle voice reached me.

I didn't know I was crying until I heard his soft shush.

"It's fine, miss. You're fine. There is absolutely nothing to worry about." He spoke like a caring father.

Gentle and kind. Like Jastav.

I hiccuped when the memories came rushing back. My people. My Jastav. All dead.

Murdered.

"Sshh... sshh... It's fine, miss. It's fine." He kept repeating it quietly.

I tilted my head to look at the figure standing beside me.

That kind man was old, gentle, and unhurried.

"Who... who are you?" I asked.

The man looked up with a small smile spreading across his old, wrinkled face. "This servant is a maester of the Arkadian Kingdom."

I didn't speak. I noticed the wooden ceiling above me and the bed I was lying on. Everything felt like it was moving again.

"Where am I?" I asked.

"You are safe now - that is what I can tell you, miss." He answered, glancing at me before returning to cleaning my wounds.

He disappeared and came back carrying a wooden bowl of green concoction.

"Drink it." I eyed the poisonous-looking potion with suspicion.

"Drink it, miss. It will help with the pain." He urged gently.

For some reason, I trusted this man enough to let him feed me something that looked like poison.

I was ready to die by gentle hands rather than face the barbaric prince again.

He helped me sit up, and within three gulps, I downed the most disgusting potion I had ever tasted - the kind that opened your eyes with tears and sent a fist of coughs tearing through your chest.

"Hmm... you will be better within the hour." He hummed quietly.

"Thank you," I said after a moment.

I saw how his face almost looked surprised by those two words.

He nodded.

"Word of advice, miss - and I know it is not my place to offer it. But do not, under any circumstances, defy the Prince, if you want to live." He spoke carefully while I looked at him with uncertainty still sitting heavy in my chest.

The door opened, and the maester quickly put distance between us and straightened.

"Your Highness." He bowed.

And for the first time, I saw the monster who had burned our land to the ground.

My eyes stayed fixed on him as he entered.

He wasn't wearing the golden-red armor from the field. Without it, he looked younger. That made me angrier. He was barely older than Huigon, son of Marki, who was only two years older than me.

But his stance was nothing our people carried. It was commanding, soaked in arrogance, built to demand submission from every room it entered.

"How is she?" His voice was deeper than I had expected.

"The miss is doing fine, Your Highness." The maester answered only because he had been directly asked.

The prince finally looked at me. I saw his strange, stormy greenish-blue eyes. He was pale, his golden hair pulled back.

He looked like something that had never been cold in its life because it had always been the coldest thing in any room.

"How many days until she is back on her feet?" He asked as though I were not in the room.

"A few days, my Prince." The maester kept his words short.

The prince raised an eyebrow and gave a small nod - a cue.

The maester understood immediately. "She needs complete bed rest and meals. She is severely dehydrated and has fractured her wrist."

Now that the maester said it, I could feel the full weight of the fatigue. I looked down at my left hand - sure enough, it was carefully wrapped.

"You may leave," the prince announced.

"Your Highness." The maester bowed and scurried out without a backward glance.

The prince turned toward me while I lay still on the bed.

"You harmed my men, my soldiers, and my maids." He began.

I kept looking at him. He clenched his jaw when I said nothing.

"I do not repeat myself, savage." He gritted out.

"Why?" I asked instead.

He gave me a look of genuine surprise - as though he had not expected an answer at all, let alone a question thrown back at him.

He tilted his head slightly, waiting for me to elaborate.

So I did.

"Why did you kill my people?"

For a moment, he didn't speak. He only stared at me with an expression I couldn't read.

"You will not speak unless asked." He said it in a tone that carried the full weight of someone who had never once had to repeat an order.

The only thing I had left to hold onto was my death wish.

"Then kill me," I said.

He didn't expect those words. The silence that followed confirmed it. A look of disgust moved through his face as his eyes swept coldly over my figure.

"You shall get your wish fulfilled sooner rather than later." He bent down and grabbed my throat, making me flinch hard.

"But first, that savageness needs to be tamed." He never applied enough pressure to choke me - just enough to send a warning that needed no further translation.

He left me there with those parting words.

____

End of chapter 1...

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