Masked Prince - Nikolai Andrew Page 0,3

did.

Nellie had begun to thrash in the mud, every movement of her massive body causing my leg to hurt more and more. I feared—even suspected—that my leg was broken. But no matter how much I was hurting, it was no use crying out for help.

It was market day, and that meant we had even fewer passersby on the road than usual. I could scream and scream until I was hoarse, but nobody would come and I would only frighten Nellie more. The last thing I needed was to create more panic when she was looking to me for calm.

Of course, my father should have been there, and I should have been in the village selling our wares. But instead of tending to the work that was rightfully his, he’d wandered off two days earlier and was now probably three towns over and three-sheets to the wind. Best to save my energy and keep my focus on getting myself out of this mess.

I comforted Nellie, hoping she’d roll onto her other side in her own time. Laying there, helpless and nearly crushed, I silently cursed my father for putting me in this situation, then chided myself for blaming him.

None of what had happened was his fault. And while I might have hoped that he would be better for my sake, I couldn’t really blame him for the hurt he’d been living with these past few years.

Still, birthing calves wasn’t the sort of thing young women should be doing on their own, but I had done it more times than I could count. The only job I was supposed to do on the farm was milking the heifers, but over the years I had taken on more and more responsibilities as my father had fallen deeper and deeper into his melancholy.

Nobody else would tend to the livestock, and so it was left to me. In truth, it was all fascinating to me, but I often found myself far outside of my knowledge or experience, unsure what to do or how. I carried the weight of our entire livelihood on my shoulders. As one of the few royal freehold stables and farms, it was of the utmost importance that everything at least appear to be running smoothly and prosperously.

If the royal council, who oversaw the freeholds, discovered that this whole endeavor came down to a nineteen-year-old milkmaid who was leagues out of her depth, we’d be stripped of our tenancy in an instant. For the royal family, appearances were everything. So long as everything appeared to be in good order, that was all that mattered.

Things were most certainly not in good order at that moment. Nellie needed help this instant. Her breathing was becoming increasingly labored and panicked.

“Shhhh, shhhh,” I told her, scratching behind her ear to calm her.

It had no effect; it even seemed to upset her more, because she started not to roll away from me but rather further onto my body.

When she began to roll toward me, I heard the sound of footsteps squelching in the mud. I knew straight away it wasn’t my father; whoever it was, was moving too fast and with too much purpose to be a drunkard.

Struggling to turn my head, I was confronted with an absolutely enormous man, crossing the muddy farmyard with huge strides. From where I lay, he looked like a brawny giant, ripped right from a fairy tale. His arms were as big as my legs at least. His neck was like an oak trunk. His bare forearms rippled in the sunshine, wrapped in massive muscles and interlaced with a network of pronounced veins.

It was hard for me to get a sense of his face, shrouded as he was in an oversized hood. But whoever he was, he was huge. Few human beings would be able to shift a full-grown cow in labor… but he just might.

“Hold still,” he said, squelching through the mud, leaving bear-sized footprints behind him. His thunder-like voice sent every nerve in my body twitching, some I hadn’t known existed until that moment. “I’ll be right there.”

Nellie was as startled by this newcomer as I had been, and thankfully she attempted to turn her head to face him, shifting some of her weight off of me momentarily. Cows, like horses, have an immediate sense about a person’s intentions and nature. Close as I was to Nellie right then, I could feel her every movement and response.

Even in her distress, she wasn’t alarmed by this stranger—exactly the opposite. His