Once Upon A Rose
Chapter One
The world was white. And bitter, bitter cold. Exhausted, he drooped in the
saddle, unable to do more than trust his horse to continue to trudge forward.
Always forward. He knew that to stop, even for moments, in this cruel and
keening wind would mean death.
The pain in his side was a freezing burn, and the only thing that kept him from
sliding into oblivion.
He was lost in that white globe, blinded by the endless miles of it that covered
hill and tree and sky, trapped in the frigid hell of vicious snow gone to icy
shards in the whip of the gale. Though even the slow, monotonous movements of
his horse brought him agony, he did not yield.
At first the cold had been a relief from the scorching yellow sun. It had, he
thought, cooled the fever the wound had sent raging through him. The unblemished
stretch of white had numbed his mind so that he'd no longer seen the blood
staining the battleground. Or smelled the stench of death.
For a time, when the strength had drained out of him along with his blood, he'd
thought he heard voices in the rising wind. Voices that had murmured his name,
had whisper ... read full excerpt from Once Upon a Rose ebook
