The Lost Prince - Sara York

Chapter One

Crave Woods blew out a breath and melted into the dirt, sliding deep underground as his body adjusted to the cramped space. He traveled along mole tunnels made the night before, then moved on to holes created by now dead roots. He passed by a groundhog burrow and then a few snakes. His near-liquid body slipped through the tiny spaces reserved for air, water, and ground-dwelling animals, but not humans. Humans didn’t do this, only freaks.

He traveled quickly, dodging rocks buried so deep no one knew they existed. He snuck past Old Man Bernard’s place where his father buried bodies years ago and then made his way around the pond on the edge of town where other children learned to swim before slithering up toward the sky in the middle of a densely wooded area. Once in the open, he drew in a deep breath as he shivered, knocking the remaining dirt from his clothes and hair.

His family hated how he transformed and became liquid enough to travel through the densely-packed soil at their feet. He didn’t really turn into liquid, instead he was more like a shape-shifting goo that slid through open spaces in the dirt, leaving almost no trail. Or perhaps he compressed. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but whatever he did, he kept it secret now.

Long ago, he stopped doing tricks in front of his family when they threatened to turn him in. Now, at twenty years old, they didn’t pay attention to his eccentricities, or they flatly denied his other side existed. More alone than a part of a family, he lived in a small shack he’d built on his own down a narrow path, behind a large wooded area about a mile from the main house.

He counted himself lucky that Iris and Bran allowed him to stay on their property. They weren’t his birth parents. Someone had dropped him in the forest when he was only a few weeks old, and Bran had found him wrapped in a blanket. He was younger than their oldest son and older than their youngest. They had two daughters between his age and their youngest. He counted them as siblings, but like their parents, they rejected him as he grew into his oddities.

Crave considered investigating who he was, but he liked his simple life. Or he was at least used to the simple tasks Bran asked him to do. He worked tending the fields and gathering wild berries and other fruit to sell in a stand at the side of the road. The tourists who traveled to delight in the old-world nature of their small village often tipped him. He kept the cash, not telling Bran about it.

Rejection burned deep through his veins, branding him from the inside out. His birth parents hadn’t wanted him and dumped him in the forest. Now, defective as heck, his new family didn’t want him either. He tried hard, hiding his curse from everyone in town. He hadn’t melted into the ground in front of anyone in ages. Iris and Bran spoke to him as though he’d outgrown it all. Every once in a while, he’d see them studying him, looking like they wondered if he was still a mutant freak. He would be the first to admit it was odd how he shifted into a nearly liquid state and traveled underground before he came out from the dirt looking normal. There was no one else who did things like what he did. So what could he assume other than he was a mutant freak?

Returning to human form, his clothes intact, money in his pocket, and only a small amount of dirt in his hair, was easier than it had been in the beginning. The first few times he’d ground slid as a child, he’d forgotten about his clothes. That lesson had been learned fast. Now he knew how to carry them with him while he navigated the subterranean world. He’d even carried a pack with him before. He’d never brought along another human, but he figured he could if he carefully navigated.

The day was bright, and he blinked at the sun, trying to shield his eyes as he stumbled out from the trees and ran right into a man wearing an expensive suit and dark glasses.

“Oh shit,” Crave said as he stepped back and almost fell. The man reached for him, but he steadied himself without the other guy’s help. He didn’t know this guy, which wasn’t surprising since few of