salvation Archives - Page 6 of 6 - Kristen Anne Glover

{6} Come

Day 6 of 31 Days: From Enemy to Heir

Click on the image above to begin at Day 1

Everything Obscurity had ever believed was crumbling around her. She did not know what to feel or what to think, only that the world was spinning in her head.

Obscurity needed a rescuer, but she wasn’t convinced she wanted his kind of rescuing, especially if that meant going with the prince to that far-off kingdom.

She looked at the castle and realized she knew nothing about it. What was it like there? All she knew was that it wasn’t what she thought it was. But everything it could be was just as terrifying as what it wasn’t.

So she held on to the one thing she had: her will. She was not ready to go willingly.

Obscurity hardened her look. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked. It was a threat more than anything. Perhaps the prince wasn’t a tyrant. But what was he? She didn’t know, but she had to be stronger than the terror she felt inside until she figured it out.

The prince squinted up at the sun and then looked down at the cracked earth. He drew a long, leafy stem into the dust with his toe and answered slowly, “If you stay here, you will die,” the words sounded like agony on his lips. “But you can come with me, and I will make sure you are well cared for. Or…” he paused, making flowers bloom where his feet touched, “…or, I could take you back to your husband.”

“He’s not my husband,” she answered hotly, still remembering the feel of that man’s fists upon her crumpled body.

“No.” The prince stopped his idle drawing and looked her right in the eyes. “No, he is not.”

He looked away again and said quietly, “None of them are.”

Obscurity was stunned. She could not move and she could not open her mouth. Her only thought was that she was standing before this man naked, fully clothed but naked, and she had nothing to hide behind but her own shame.

“Is this what you want, then?” she stammered when her words found her again. “You want to judge me? Well, you are right! I have nothing to hide. I am a wretch, and everything I have done in my life has been wretched. I couldn’t even die today. So go ahead. Pile on your guilt and shame if that’s what you intend to do. I can take it.”

“Obscurity,” he said sternly, and she blinked because she did not remember telling him her name, “the guilt and shame you carry is not mine. You feel guilty and ashamed because you are.”

Wild, desperate, she screamed at him. “What do you want? What do you want with me?”

“I want to take it away. I want to take you home.”

They were the simplest words, but they stabbed the deepest because she did not deserve them.

Why would he take her when he knew who and what she was? There must be some mistake. “You have decided to give me a home in your kingdom? Me?” she whispered, half-choking on the words.

“I decided it before you ever opened your eyes.”

She turned away from him quickly because it pricked her hard and she could not stop the tears. I should just run away now, she thought. I should go back where I belong. But as soon as she thought it, she realized she did not belong there anymore.

“Will I ever be able to go back?” she asked, looking back over the same road that had brought her there the night before. Her citizenship was to a country that had done nothing but mistreat her. But it was all she knew.

“You will not want to,” the prince said with a smile, and she noticed how unlike the Enchanter’s smile it was. There was no hidden meaning, no evil intent, no eager hunger. It was only, purely, love.

Suddenly, she saw the prince for who he really was. He was love.

Obscurity felt that love washing over her wounds and eroding her will. She could not stop the trembling in her hands and she was sure she was going to vomit if she did not sit down.

“I’m asking you, ‘Come.’” He stretched out his hand one more time, reaching down into the dirt for hers.

But she could not reach for it. All the years of sorrow and pain boiled up and overflowed. Heaving and sobbing, she collapsed at his feet, completely undone.

She was his.

{5} A Rescuer

Day 5 of our 31 Days series: From Enemy to Heir
Click on the image above to begin at Day 1

Obscurity did not expect to open her eyes again. She had always feared death until that very moment when she realized it was winning the chase.

That is when she saw the good of it. She would simply close her eyes and cease to exist. Where was the fear in that? The pain would disappear, along with the failure, the torment, and the heartbreak. She would slip quietly from obscurity into oblivion.

It was a small step to make for someone who had been nearly dead her entire life.

But pain woke her. Her body screamed. She was dead. But she wasn’t.

Slowly, her mind woke to the betrayal. Where was death? Where was the oblivion she had been promised?

She had failed. That was all there was to it. She had failed to end it all. Even when she was handed the opportunity, she had messed it up, just like always.

Bitter tears welled up inside her and she groaned because it was not over, it was just worse than ever.

Then a thought came to her, like a whisper in her ear. There was still a chance she could succeed, and quickly. Surely there was a sharp rock or a poisonous plant somewhere nearby. She knew she had the courage to do it, if only she could find the right tool.

Obscurity forced her swollen eyes open to look around, and gasped.

A man was leaning over her.

He spread his shadow over her while the rising sun, already scorching, burned a halo around his head. “What has happened to you? Are you injured?” His face creased with the weight of concern.

She crouched back, searching her mind to see if she knew him. She felt that she should, if she could just think. Something about him seemed so familiar.

The man was dressed like a beggar, but his face, though plain, was not marred like one. He had none of the brutal marks that came with living in a land of dragons.

I should know him. I should know him, her mind insisted. But it could not come up with the secret.

“Please, come with me,” he was saying. “I can help you if you come back with me.”

Those words snapped her back into the present. “Come back with you where?” she sputtered.

“To my kingdom,” he said, as if surprised by the question. “I am the prince.”

The power of his name threw her back into the shadows and she screamed. Senseless with panic, she scrambled to get away from him, wishing more than ever that she had not survived the night.

She did not fear death, but she feared life with the prince more than anything in the world.

In all of her worst nightmares, she had never expected to be staring into the face of the one who desired to enslave her. But here he was, plain-faced and pathetic, sneaking in when she was at her weakest. It was just like the Enchanter had always said.

He thought he could take her without a fight, she thought. But Obscurity was nothing if not free, and she had just enough stubborn will left to resist the prince’s powers.

Like a wild, injured animal, Obscurity flung herself at the prince. But either her injuries had left her weaker than she knew or the prince was stronger than he appeared.

She could not prevail against him.

And he would not be dissuaded from trying to help her. “You will die if you stay here,” he said, holding her wrists so she could not beat him with her fists.

“What if I do?” she screamed. “It would be better for me to die!”

“Better if you die?” the prince repeated, softly and sadly. She did not understand the look on his face. What did he care if she died?

“What a waste of a precious life,” he said, and she cried out at the words because they stung like slap.

No one had ever spoken to her like that, and it hurt worse than a punch to the face.

Long ago, when her memories where still forming, Obscurity remembered being precious to someone. But it didn’t last because hers was not a precious life.

She swallowed the aching feeling in her throat. “Let me go,” she demanded, though she did not expect her captor to comply.

He dropped her arms.

It shocked her so much she did not even think to run. Truth flashed before her eyes and for the very first time in her life, she began to see through the cracks in the Enchanter’s lies.

He was not a captor at all, but a rescuer. And she, of all people, needed a rescuer.

*Join us tomorrow for Day 6!

{3} Outside the Gates

Day 3 of 31. Click on the image above to start at Day 1.

The savages who pressed against the gates of the prince’s kingdom did not know that only the prince could open the gate to his kingdom. They thought they could force their way in by means of their own strength and brute might.

They were wrong. If they wanted to get inside, they’d have to go through him. Only he wouldn’t open the doors for a banging, cursing mob. They would have to come one at at time, like invited guests, and knock.

Others had come, and the prince had always thrown open the doors and embraced the seeker so quickly and earnestly, he soon forgot any hesitation in the coming.

But there were still so many on the other side who counted the prince an enemy. If only they knew how much he longed to call them friends.

Every day, the prince looked out over that enemy kingdom and was filled with sorrow and a deep, unfathomable love for these people who had declared their allegiance to an imposter. He knew the truth about the beautiful Enchanter, and he knew that every member of that kingdom was marked for death.

So early in the morning, while most of his kingdom still slept, he put on beggar’s robes, mounted an old horse, and rode out the immense iron gates of the castle walls, seeking out a people to save.

That dangerous, dreadful land welcomed him greedily because it seemed to recognize that this prince had the power to undo it all. This prince had the power to break the Enchanter’s spell.

But the people’s eyes had become so accustomed to the beauty of their self-proclaimed sovereign, they could no longer recognize true royalty. Instead of running to embrace him, they received the prince with violence and scorn.

One day, the prince was returning to the castle, bearing on his body the marks of an excursion that had not gone well. The people he met had cursed him, thrown rocks and sticks at him, and tried to pull his horse down off the road. Blood oozed from a gash in his forehead and trickled down his cheek.

Wearily, he road for home just as the sky was beginning to brighten with the day. The early morning light made the road ahead hazy and more difficult to navigate than it was in the dead of the night.

Suddenly, something caught his eye.

The prince thought he saw a creature crawling in the mud along the side of the road. He looked more closely. It was only the waking shadows playing tricks on his eyes.

Or was it?

He guided the weary horse over, cautiously, to get a better look. It was a wounded animal, and it moaned and writhed in misery. The stench of sewage clung to the creature like the mud on its back.

“Poor animal,” the prince said, wondering how he was going to get a wounded, wild beast home on his already-nervous horse.

Just then, the creature looked up, and the prince found himself staring into knowing eyes.

This thing before him was not an animal at all, but a person.

For a moment, the prince could not move. His mind was stunned by the level of filth and depravity before him. No one in his kingdom lived like this. His temples pounded hot with anger against the powers of darkness that created this hell.

He got off his horse.

“What has happened to you?” he asked, squinting through the mud for signs of injury. All he saw was a fierce blackness staring back at him. Every feature of this person was so disguised by filth and misery, it was impossible to tell if the wretch was sick or injured, young or old, or even male or female.

“Please, I have come to help.” He took a step closer, close enough that the stench of rotten flesh rose up and gripped his nostrils. He felt a wrestling in his stomach and fought to subdue it.

Just as he advanced, the creature retreated further into the shadows.

“Come…” he offered, reaching his hand down into the vileness.

At the sight of his pure, clean flesh, this person, this inhabitant of the enemy kingdom, leaped out at him. Baring animal-like claws and half-rotten teeth, it cursed and shrieked and tore at him like the beast it resembled.

That’s when he knew. It was a woman.

*Join us tomorrow as the story continues. Day 4 is up next!

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