Chapter 2.
[Sebastian's POV]
" Steady now girl's! We're almost home free!" I kept my eyes fixed on the edge, my jaw clenched so tight that my teeth ached, and I urged the horses onward with a final, desperate cry.
The horses, brave creatures that they were, seemed to have already realised our pitiful fate on their own, rather than obeying, they actually dared to try and stop out of fear of their own lives.
But the momentum of the heavy carriage was too great. They cried in alarm the moment they missed their footing at the edge of the cliff.
They both let out terrible high-pitched cries of terror that was cut short as their body masses dropped down below, their legs scrambling uselessly against the empty air. And with them, the carriage was pulled along as well, lurching violently as the front end dipped over the edge.
I felt a sickening lurch in my stomach, a moment of weightlessness as the world tilted, and then I was falling, my hands still tightly clenched along the reins, the wood of the seat digging into my back as the carriage plummeted.
The wind roared in my ears, the world a chaotic blur of white and brown accompanied.
Having watched me vanish from the mountain path, the horse riders hurriedly pulled their mounts to a stop, inches from the edge of the cliff.
Though barely, I caught a fleeting glimpse of their dark figures against the grey sky before the world below rushed up to meet me. A loud crash was suddenly heard right after, a sound that seemed to shake the very mountain itself, followed by a profound and unsettling silence, broken only by the whisper of the wind.
One of them, The leader of this bastard group , a Knight captain I once knew as Garrick, dismounted before walking over to the edge.
When he stared down at the decimated carriage sticking out of the snow far down below, its wooden frame shattered and broken like a child's discarded toy, he stared in silence for a long, drawn-out moment, his breath misting in the frigid air.
He was probably looking for any sign of movement, an indication that someone might have survived such a fall. Finding none, he turned to glance at his companions, a grim satisfaction settling on his features.
"Our mission is done," he said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "Let's report back to her Highnesses." He added, to which they all nodded in unison, their faces as cold and unfeeling as the snow that surrounded them.
Once he got back on his horse, he whipped the reins and sped back from whence he came, disappearing into the white curtain of snow, with the others following after him like shadows, leaving the wreckage behind, soon to be buried by the still falling snow.
********
Several moments after they'd left, far down below in the deep, soft snow that had, against all odds, cushioned the impact just enough, a blood-stained hand jolted out of the snow.
A hand that very much belonged to me.
My entire body screamed in protest, a symphony of pain that radiated from every joint and muscle, but I was alive.
Miraculously, I had actually survived the fall, spared perhaps by the deep drift that had broken my landing and the angle at which I had been thrown from the carriage.
But even as I crawled my way out of the snow, gasping for air that burned my lungs, I didn't feel at ease.
Relief was a luxury I could not afford. Rather I got up, feeling a surge of anxious energy that momentarily overpowered the pain, before hurrying to scour the wreckage around me.
The carriage was a total loss, a heap of splintered wood and torn fabric half-buried in the snow.
The horses lay still and silent nearby, a tragic sight that I forced myself to look away from. Even as the biting wind threatened to freeze my breath over, I continued to dig and dig through the debris, my heart hammering against my ribs with a fear that was far more potent than any I had felt during the fall.
If she was dead, then my own survival was meaningless. I would be a fugitive with no one to vouch for my innocence, a hunted man with a price on his head, and my quest for vengeance would end not with my hand delivering the final blow, but with my own body swinging from a gallows. I dug frantically, my fingers numb with cold, until I saw it.
Her flawless face resembling that of a fairy. Though her eyes were closed and her complexion was pale with blood dripping from the corner of her lip, a sight that should have filled me with a grim satisfaction, it instead sent a wave of something I refused to acknowledge washing over me.
I quickly dug her out of the snow, my movements urgent and rough as I brushed the white powder from her shoulders and hair, checking for a pulse at her neck with trembling fingers.
' Good, she's still alive. ' It was there, faint but steady, to me it was another miracle in the midst of this disaster.
As for why I was doing such for the very woman I had proclaimed the target of my vengeance, it was simple.
I knew that allowing her to die here would only seal my fate. While I hated her with a passion that had sustained me through years of servitude, I didn't want to die alongside this wicked witch. If she were to one day die, then it would be by my own hands, a personal reckoning for the suffering she had caused.
But until then, I knew I had to keep her safe, and protect her from every other threat, until I could clear my name and face her as myself, as Sebastian, the son of a ruined family, and not as the loyal servant she believed me to be.
With a grunt of effort, I lifted her unconscious form into my arms and began to trudge through the deep snow, away from the wreckage and into the cold, unforgiving wilderness, with nothing but the bitter wind and the weight of my own conflicting desires to keep me company.
The heavy snow proved difficult to navigate through. Gritting my teeth, I decided to head downwards.
Hopefully I would be able to find a cave or perhaps anything that could suffice as shelter, I refused to let myself give up hope. At least not yet.
I stared at the woman in my arms in silence, my heart brimming with coldness, I refused to die until the moment I made her suffer dearly for all she'd done to me, only then would I be satisfied.