Cursed Prince (Night Elves Trilogy #1) - C.N. Crawford

Chapter 1

Marroc

Endless solitude. That was my existence. Day after day. Year after year. Decade after decade.

Sometimes the guards looked in on me, but mostly, they kept their distance. They feared me. Even if they couldn’t see me in the shadows of my cell, or under the smoke whirling around my face, they knew what I was. They felt the evil spilling off me.

Pale skin, eyes that shone like flecks of ice, my body smoking and smoldering—with just one glance at me, they knew to keep their distance. That I’d been cursed, my soul ripped from me.

My heart hadn’t beaten in a thousand years. My vocal cords had burned away; I hadn’t uttered a word in all that time. Since I didn’t eat, the guards didn’t need to feed me. I no longer needed to breathe, though I continued to do so out of habit. So I was left here in complete isolation. The only sound was the irregular drip, drip … drip of water from the rocks above me.

My companions were the granite under my feet, the iron bars, and the rat who slept by my side. I’d named him Gormie, after the elf king who’d locked me away nearly a thousand years ago.

I’d had all that time to mull over my fate.

But time had become murky and confusing. Sometimes, it seemed like yesterday that they’d thrown me in here. That first day, I’d hurled myself at the bars, bashed my skull against the stones. Cursed as I was, I’d hardly felt a thing. Only the dull thrill of killing the guards—of grabbing them by the shoulders, pulling them toward the bars, my teeth piercing their flesh. I killed one after another, draining their souls through their blood.

They never learned.

So, I waited. My body might be damned, but my soul was intact, far away from me. Bound in gold and magic, it remained hidden outside the walls—waiting patiently for its match.

The one destined to free me.

Chapter 2

Ali

My muscles were completely stiff, both from nerves and the cold. It was nearly one a.m., and my teeth were chattering so hard that I thought I might chip one of them. Pretty sure I’d been lying on the same patch of roof for nearly six hours, battered by wintry winds. At least I had a faux-fur-lined coat to keep me warm, and boots to match. And being in the forbidden realm aboveground always sent a rush of adrenaline through my veins.

In any case, cold or not—I had a bank to rob tonight. As one of the chief assassins and thieves of the Shadow Caverns, my jobs weren’t always cushy, but they were necessary. Robbing from the High Elves—killing when necessary—these were the only tools I had to help free my people.

“Ali, how’s it going?” Barthol’s voice sounded in my headset.

“Cold up here. Just trying to stay warm.” I pictured my brother Barthol leaning against the wall of the alley on the opposite side of Silfarson’s Bank. Out of the wind and a lot warmer than my rooftop perch. Of course, he’d also be wearing his cave-bear jacket, his hands stuffed deep in its pockets.

“You ready for tonight?” he asked.

Not really. “Absolutely.”

Lowering my face, I peered down the sight of my crossbow and over the tip of the anti-magic-hex bolt. I had the crossbow trained on the window across the street, just above the gold sign that read Silfarson’s Bank. While the bottom half of the old office tower was gilt and ornate, its upper floors had fallen into disrepair centuries ago, iron girders jutting out at odd angles like broken fingers. Icicles encrusted from them, glinting in the faint moonlight.

The crossbow’s sight was like ice against the edge of my eye socket. What I really wanted, desperately, was to be at home with a hot cup of tea and my collection of ancient romance novels.

A bit of dread was spreading over me like blooms of frost, and I took a shivering breath. I started to hum, trying to calm my nerves.

“Ali, what’s that tune?” asked Barthol. I suspected he sensed my nervousness. “I like it.”

I smiled. He and I had the same taste in music. “Something I found on an old flash drive I bought on Newbury Street. Don’t know the title, but the file was called RickRoll.mp3.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of Rick Roll. He was super popular before Ragnarok. It’s wild that you have music from a thousand years ago, isn’t it?”

I was obsessed with the world before Ragnarok, when Boston’s streets had thronged