Transmigrated Into The Body Of The Cursed Prince Wife-Chapter 267: Bloody war

Ave could barely keep her eyes open, but she forced them to remain like that with the thoughts of being strong for Lucian. Alden carried her around as they followed secret corners Ave had never known existed in the palace until now. She had no way of knowing about them because she didn’t grow up here.

Seraphina and Alden navigated the paths and sneaked past guards, who were on high alert, looking around. They had briefly stopped in the first prince’s chamber, where he put on proper attire and then handed his coat to the cold Ave, giving another to Seraphina as the dawn weather was freezing cold.

She wore the coat and watched from the side as the first prince moved swiftly around the room, picking up his weapons. He tucked a sword into the sheath at his waist and placed different kinds of daggers at various angles of his body. Then he picked up a bow, but as if contemplating something, he dropped it.

Ave hurriedly told him to give it to her as she watched him drop it. He turned to look at her with an arched brow as if wondering what she wanted the bow for. However, he didn’t question her and handed it to her along with a pack of arrows. Done with taking everything they needed in the room, they began to head out again, with the prince carrying her since her injured legs would slow them down were she to walk by herself.

Ave’s feelings toward the first prince had always been neutral, as she knew little to nothing about him apart from the fact that he was the Empress’s puppet.

She had viewed him as a heartless brother who controlled his sister’s life the way he wanted. His cold gray eyes were scary and reminded her of frost. His demeanor was always indifferent, though his voice didn’t match his masculine harshness. His voice was as soft as his face was hard—a breezy voice that held no thickness that would scare off someone like his face did. And now, as he treated her like a worried elder, she couldn’t help but see him in a new light.

He had wrapped her up in his coat and even made sure she was fully clothed before he carried her again. She wondered what his relationship with Lucian would be like now if she told him the first prince was not that bad. Ave thought, trying to keep her mind distracted from the sleep pulling on her like a magnet.

Alden took her and Seraphina to the top of the palace rooftop, where they could see the view of the palace grounds and beyond the border walls from afar, as the palace was the biggest and tallest building in all the land of Pendragon.

Standing on the rooftop offered them a view of the lands far away. The wind was howling even more strongly at the top, and he told them to crouch down against the wall in the shaded corner so no one would see them and to also get shelter from the falling snow and howling wind.

Alden walked to the edge of the roof to look into the distance toward the border. The sky was slowly brightening up as they had taken so much time leaving the palace and getting up here. He tried to see into the distance through the falling snow, and though his view wasn’t that clear, he saw what he was searching for. Another troop of soldiers were heading from the border at full speed on their horses. He didn’t have to see them clearly to know that his brother was leading them here.

He had just woken up from a month of sleeping. He was exhausted, starving, and wanted nothing more than to get back his sister, but he knew that to do that, he would have to help Lucian bring down the Empress. They were still a distance away and would take a few more hours to get here. Thus, he needed to make certain his men were ready.

Ave watched as Alden turned and walked up to them where they crouched in a corner of the rooftop under a shade that kept them shielded from the falling snow.

Seraphina was crouching away from her and hadn’t spoken a word since they’d left the room where Alden had been. Now, Ave tried not to say anything and instead watched as the first prince squeezed down to where they were to talk to them.

"I will have to leave you two here. I need to prepare my men. Lucian is coming—they’ll get here in no time. From how things are in Pendragon, the men have set some traps for his troops. I need to deflect those traps from the inside. I need you to remain here until the war and everything is over, understood?" he questioned as he looked from his stepmother to his sister-in-law, making sure they understood the gravity of the situation and wouldn’t jeopardize it by stepping out into the open of a war.

Ave nodded. "Be careful," she told him, and he stared at her with his brows drawn together without saying a word.

He stared at her for some time before he nodded and then began to move away. But then, as if he’d suddenly thought about something, he stopped and retrieved two daggers from where he kept them inside his coat and gave them each to hold.

"Protect yourselves if you must," he told them as he looked at the bow Ave was clutching to herself. "I hope you know how to use that. Use it if you must." He smiled at her, causing Ave to blink in disbelief as she’d never seen him smile before. He had dimples just like his sister and straight white teeth with two bunny-like teeth in the front. He looked ten times younger and more dashing than he did when he carried his cold expression. He left before either of them could say anything.

Ave looked down at the dagger he gave her and then looked at the other woman beside her. She didn’t hold the dagger and kept it on her lap as she stared at it. Then, as if sensing Ave’s eyes on her, she turned to her and then hurriedly looked away as if frightened to meet her gaze.

Sighing, Ave said, "You don’t have to be afraid of me. I am not evil. I am no different from you, only that I have powers that set me apart."

When her words still didn’t make the woman look at her or relax, Ave gave up and decided to let her be. The people of Pendragon had all grown up believing witches were evil and untrustworthy creatures, and Seraphina seemed to be no exception, even though they had navigated the dangerous palace together, and Alden had seemed to come to terms with her being a witch because she saved his life.

Consort Seraphina was a young, beautiful blonde woman, and from what Ave had heard, the lady was just thirty-five years of age, having married at a very early age. One would never guess she had teenage children based on her looks before, but everything she seemed to have gone through in the past month after the Emperor’s death had made her look the part.

Though still beautiful, she was as wary as a cat as she sat away from Ave, trying to keep to herself and pretend she wasn’t sitting next to a witch who appeared more harmless and human than what they had all been taught about witches and their spells since childhood.

They remained sitting there for who knows how long until Ave couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore and fell asleep.

She woke up to loud drum sounds that startled her awake, only to realize she had fallen asleep, and her head was now resting on something soft.

She turned and realized it was Seraphina’s lap, and the woman was also sleeping in a sitting position while allowing Ave to lie her head on her lap. Another sound of the drum startled the other woman awake before Ave could even think of the kind, motherly gesture.

Everywhere was brightened. However, the sleep she had didn’t help her feel much better but rather worst. Her injured thighs were not healing as fast as her injuries used to, and she knew it must have been because she had healed the first prince when her powers returned to her. Whenever she healed someone, she suffered from one thing or the other.

She pushed herself to sit up at the sound of another drum that rang out in the palace.

"That is the sound of the war drums," Seraphina whispered panickedly as they heard the thunderous galloping sounds of horses and the roaring of men that followed the sounds of the ten war drums.

"Lucian is here!" Ave said with certainty as she felt it in her. Her husband was near—how near, she didn’t know, but she could feel it in her guts. Whenever he was near her, her stomach felt funny, her lower abdomen throbbed slightly, and her heart seemed to quicken its beating rate. She might not have shared the marked emotions like he shared hers, but she had another way of feeling him. Lord, how she’d missed these funny feelings!

Ave thought with a faint smile as she pressed a hand to her chest. The sound of war could be heard from where they were, and unable to help herself from peeking below to see what a real war looked like in reality, she crawled on her palms and knees on the snow-covered roof to the stone wall at the edge to look down, while Seraphina whispered for her to be careful.

Ave looked below, and a gasp left her mouth at what she saw. She’d read about war and heard stories of it. Many wars were known to happen on the borders and battlefields, but due to Empress Elara’s greediness, she had brought the war to the lands without caring who it might affect because she wanted to kill a man who had proved to be unkillable to her for years.

Her plans would have worked out had Ave remained in that room. She would have gotten Lucian under her sword if she had her, but now that things didn’t go as planned, blood covered the white grounds, and screams could be heard from the distant villages as innocent people got caught in a war that had nothing to do with them.

And in the palace grounds, the clashing sounds of swords and ripping flesh filled the surroundings. Ave could smell blood and death from where she watched. She had no idea which were Lucian’s men as they clashed together—the Pendragon soldiers fighting each other, many being Alden’s men against Edward’s men—and people fell dead to the ground.

Heads were ripped off, and limbs were severed like paper. She could see large wolves ripping apart men like leaves, and the sight of blood and death suddenly made her feel sick again. Bile rose to her throat until she turned to throw up, but nothing came out as her stomach was empty. It was when she wanted to move back that she finally caught sight of who she wanted to see.

Her husband.

Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him in fascination. He wasn’t in his human form—no, he was in his Lycan form, and this was the very first time she had ever seen him in the clear light of day.

He was large, larger than any being down there, and he moved at a speed of light that her eyes could barely keep up with. He killed three or four men at once. When she watched him rip off someone’s head with his teeth, a shudder went through her body and caused her to gasp softly in horror. Then, as if he heard her, he looked up at her and stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the battle to stare up at her.