He needed Anya’s cooperation to go home.
Something told him that if he reached out to someone to ask them to open a portal for him, they wouldn’t. They’d probablybe too scared to even talk to him, considering who he was. More than that, he was starting to realize that Anya wouldn’t hesitate to hurt anyone who helped him against her wishes, which wasn’t something he wanted to happen. That meant that if he wanted to open a portal, he’d have to be smart about it, which meant not antagonizing his mother, which in turn meant spending as much time with her as she wanted him to.
No matter how uncomfortable it made him.
So, he’d resigned himself to spending his meals pushing around his food and listening to her talk about whatever she was working on. He knew that she was hiding a lot. She probably understood that if she didn’t, it would give him one more reason to refuse to stick around. She didn’t understand that he wouldn’t stay, no matter what she offered. He wouldn’t have wanted to stay even if she were the best person in the world. This just wasn’t his home. No, his home was in the human realm, with his brothers, and he wanted to go back.
But he couldn’t say that out loud, so like always, he kept his mouth shut. That was, until the screaming started.
“What’s going on?” he asked then.
“I don’t know,” Anya said as she got up from her chair and moved toward the door.
Justin didn’t. He wanted to know, but he wanted to be safe even more. He should have known he wouldn’t be allowed to stay behind.
Anya stopped moving and gestured at him. “Come with me,” she ordered.
That didn’t mean Justin wasn’t going to try to stay out of whatever mess was happening. “No, thank you.”
The way Anya looked at him then gave him the creeps. “It wasn’t a suggestion,” she said. “It was an order. You need to learn how to deal with this kind of thing.”
“With what kind of thing? You don’t even know what’s going on, and why would I need to learn to deal with it?”
“Youwillbe king eventually, Justin.”
Justin opened his mouth to tell her that he had no plans on doing so, but she glanced toward one of the guards standing by the door, and he knew that if he didn’t want to be forced to follow her and dragged around, he’d have to obey.
No matter how little he wanted to.
He got to his feet. “Fine. I’ll come with you, but I’mnotbecoming king.”
Anya ignored him. She strode out of the room, Justin almost having to run to catch up with her. The guards moved with them, and he could feel them watching him. He wondered what they thought of him standing up to his mother. Did they fully support her, or did they work for her because they didn’t have a choice? What did they think of the way she led her territory? Were they guards because they agreed with her, or because it was either that or letting their families starve?
Justin couldn’t ask any of those questions, but he wished he knew more about these people. At the very least, he needed to know if they’d be on his side if he needed them to be.
Probably not.
He was pretty sure that the only person on his side in the palace was Mynor, but unfortunately for both of them, Mynor was stuck in a cell. There would be no way for him to help Justin if anything happened.
Anya moved with conviction. It was clear that she was used to being obeyed and that people feared her. Justin just had to look at the guard who almost fell on his face when he turned the corner of the hallway opposite them and saw Anya moving toward him.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Someone tried to get to the prisoners,” the guard said. “We caught them.”
“All of them?”
The guard looked like he was about to piss himself when he shook his head. “At least two escaped, possibly more. Mynor’s associate got away.”
Anya’s expression went cold. “You people can’t even do your job, can you?” she asked in a deceptively gentle voice. “Have you at least managed to keep the prisoners we already had in their cells?”
The guard glanced at Justin, looking unsure, but he answered Anya’s question. “No one was freed. We stopped them before they could reach the dungeons.”
“Good. Put our new prisoners in with the old ones and get the interrogators.”
Justin knew what that meant. He wasn’t even surprised, especially after seeing the state Mynor was in. “You can’t do that,” he said.
The guard looked at him like he was nuts. Maybe he was. He didn’t think anyone had ever stood up to Anya the way he was, and he might die because of it, but he had to say something. She was ignoring the fact that he didn’t want to be king and that he definitely didn’t want to be like her. Maybe he should force her to see the truth about that.
