Two
...?
(his lips curled in smirk,but the true disgust was in his eyes-a hard,glittering disgust)
Her Mom
(standing at door with a cunning smile)
🐰
“Please,” she begged, her voice a broken stutter that betrayed the seismic fracture in her soul. “D-don’t send me away. I’ll t-try harder. I’ll f-find it, I promise.”
It was then that her mother—the woman she had called mother for eighteen years—had leaned close, her face not contorted in anger, but in cold, calculated disgust. The words that followed weren’t shouted; they were delivered in a venomous whisper, each one a shard of glass plunged into Sylvie’s heart.
Her Mom
“Try?” the woman hissed. “You cannot *try* to be what you are not. The magic isn’t dormant, girl. It is **absent**. You are a flaw. A barren branch on a noble tree. A **curse** upon this family’s name. The only truth you have ever been told is your name, Sylvie Burrowes. For we are not your blood. You were a misplaced hope, an investment that failed to mature. Now, your failure leaves with you.”
The revelation was more brutal than the cold. It wasn’t just exile; it was erasure. She was not just powerless; she was also parentless. She was not just abandoned; she was a transaction that had gone bad.
The door did not simply close; it **slammed** with a finality that shook the very core of her being. The carved wood, once a symbol of shelter, was now a cold, unfeeling barrier. Sylvie stood frozen on the threshold, her hands clutching the hem of her dress.
The first icy raindrop hit her cheek, a cruel mimicry of a tear. Then another. Soon, a freezing drizzle began to fall, mingling with the hot, salt tears that streamed down her face. The world, once familiar and safe, had transformed into a grey, weeping nightmare.
🐰
Now, wandering blindly into the thickening veil of snow and rain, the truth echoed louder than the howling wind. The ancient, gnarled trees of the Blackwood seemed to lean in, their branches like accusing fingers. Each sob that wracked her body was a puff of mist in the frigid air.
Sylvie Burrowes
“It’s m-my f-fault,” she choked out to the uncaring darkness, her stutter making the confession even more pathetic. “I’m s-sorry. I’m so s-sorry I was a d-disappointment. I’m s-sorry I wasn’t enough.” She blamed her own existence, for the calculated cruelty that had festered in that house for years. The cold was seeping through her thin clothes, but it was nothing compared to the glacial void spreading from her chest, freezing her from the inside out. She was utterly, completely alone, a single, fragile heart crying in a vast, frozen world that had no place for her.
Not a league away, the silence was broken by the steady crunch of a warhorse’s hooves on frozen ground. Astride the powerful beast, Rhyse Pendragon was a king carved from the same shadows that lengthened around him. One hand rested on the pommel of his sword, the other held the reins loosely, his body moving with the ingrained rhythm of a rider despite the sharp, throbbing ache in his side. A fresh wound, earned in the proving grounds, had torn open during the long ride, and a dark stain bloomed against the dark leather of his jerkin. He wore the pain like he wore his crown—as a private, burdensome weight.
His thoughts were not on the cold or the injury, but turned inward, a relentless council of war. The challenges of his new rule stretched before him, a map of alliances and animosities more complex than any forest path. His golden gaze was fixed on some distant, unseen point, seeing not the snow-laden pines but the skeptical faces of older, cunning lords who saw only a boy on a throne. The quiet of the woods was a temporary reprieve, a place to let the mask of unwavering strength slip for a moment, his brow furrowed not in anger, but in the profound isolation of command. He was utterly lost in the storm of his own thoughts, a king seeking a path forward, unaware that his and the forest's most fragile secret were about to collide.
Sylvie Burrowes
harsh, guttural cry ripped through the wind, jerking her from her despair. Then another, closer this time. Sylvie’s head snapped up, her tear-filled eyes wide with a new, primal fear. Above, through the veil of snow, three dark, ragged shapes circled. Vultures. They had caught her scent—the unmistakable, vulnerable smell of a lone bunny, a creature of prey, lost and weakening. A fresh wave of terror, cold and sharp, washed over her.
Her flight was a desperate, stumbling thing. Twigs snapped under her feet, and thorny branches tore at her arms and dress, as if the forest itself sought to claim her. Whimpers of pure panic escaped her lips, each one a tiny, terrified prayer. The heavy beat of powerful wings sounded just behind her.
The shadow of one of the scavengers darkening the snow as it swooped low, its talons grazing her hair. She cried out, a raw, strangled sound, and tripped over a hidden root, falling hard into the frozen slush. The smell of damp earth and her own fear filled her nostrils. This was it. This was how it would end—not by magic, not by a grand fate, but as food for carrion birds, alone in the cold.
Sylvie Burrowes
There was no conscious thought, only the primal need to be smaller, faster, to *hide*. A shimmer of displaced air passed over her, and where the young woman had stood, now cowered a small, silver-grey bunny. Her clothes pooled around her tiny form. The world exploded in size and sound, the howl of the wind now a hurricane, the scent of predator overwhelming. A terrified whimper became a thin, high-pitched squeak.
Sylvie Burrowes
She tried to run, a frantic, scrambling hop, but her limbs were leaden with fear. One moment, a bunny was staring death in the face. The next, a girl on her hands and knees in the snow, gasping, naked and shivering violently amidst the tatters of her discarded dress. She scrambled backward, a raw, human cry of terror finally tearing from her throat as she raised her arms to shield her face from the striking beak, utterly exposed and defenseless.
𓃮
A sharp, terrified cry—distinctly female—cut through his brooding silence. It was followed by the aggressive shrieks of carrion birds on the hunt. In an instant, the razor-sharp instincts of the predator he was at his core. His head lifted, his eyes narrowing, every sense focusing on the source of the sound. The isolation was gone. There was only the hunt, the threat, and the undeniable pull to answer a cry for help he didn't yet understand.
Author Bunny
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