“I’m not going to tell you anything!” she screams.
I don’t reply, pulling her towards an adjacent hallway where a single door awaits—made mostly of wood but fortified with metal. She tenses in my hold though she already knows what to expect—or sheshould. I suppose that’s the thing with living on the edge of fear for weeks on end. Rationale and logic lose out to what-ifs and hypotheticals. When your mind is the only thing keeping you company, it’s easy to get lost in it.
I had assumed Rhea had fallen victim to hers, being all alone in that tower. Well, mostly alone. Her escape with the secret mage prince had taken upallof my free time.The prince.What a fucking shockthathad been to learn. I was lucky that I had found something untrustworthy about a guard who worked his way so quickly up the ranks. I doubt him finding out what I had spent years building would have been anything other than disastrous.
Metal hinges creak as I throw the door open, releasing her when she steps past the threshold and out of sight of the other prisoners. Her arms hug her torso as she slowly looks around at the different torture devices filling the room. Swords, daggers, chains, and ropes. Whips and needles and blindfolds and any other thing a man might conjure up in his nightmares—or dreams, depending on how depraved the individual is—can be found. I lock the door after I shut it, ensuring we’ll be left alone, before turning to face her.
A single large flame gem is embedded in the ceiling above us, its light shining down on the crown of her head and illuminating her amber eyes. We keep the silence between us as I take a step towards her and reach out my hand. Her hesitation is expected, but it still sends a wave of panic through me when she lingers before finally placing her delicate fingers on my own. Together, we walk back to the corner of the room where an ancient arched door is stationed.
I’ve oiled its hinges well enough that they are silent when I open it and duck my head, leading us through an old corridor. I have no idea why there is an underground tunnel that connects a now unused wing of the castle to the dungeons; I’m only grateful that, on one of my secret explorations, I found it. The space is pitch black, its ceiling low enough that I have to bend at the waist as we shuffle down it.
I keep my hand wrapped firmly around one of hers. The fingers of her other hand drag across the stone above, creating a whisper of noise that lets me know she won’t accidentally hit her head. The smell of dust and mold mixing into the stagnant air is pungent, and when she coughs behind me, I pick up my pace, knowing her heightened senses are only growing more irritated the longer we are in this space. Finally, light frames the edges of another arched door a few feet ahead.
“Wait here,” I whisper before letting her hand go and carefully opening the door.
Though I don’t expect anyone to be here, I grip the hilt of the dagger strapped to my thigh and slide the thin blade free. Another set of well-oiled hinges keeps the door silent as I pull it open, the light of the flame gem I placed here pouring out into the dark tunnel. When I see that the room is empty of people, I sheathe my dagger, exhaling roughly.
“It’s all clear.”
“Thank the gods.” She steps into the room, and I quickly close the door behind her, locking it in place though we’ll only be here for a short time. “Please tell me that you have clean water for me to wash in?”
I snort and walk over to where a canvas cloth hangs from a rafter beam in the low ceiling, pulling it back to reveal a small basin tub I had filled with fresh water prior to retrieving her. “It’s not warm—”
“It’s perfect,” she interrupts, her golden skin flushing before she ducks her head. “Thank you.”
I bite back a smile, double checking that there is soap, shampoo, a towel, and a fresh change of clothes for her before crossing to the other side of the room. With my back to the tub, I unstrap the breast and back plates of my armor and set them on the ground before sitting on an overturned crate. Pulling a whetstone from my pocket, I unsheathe a second dagger. Water splashes behind me, and my grip on the stone tightens.
“You do know that it’s slightly unsettling that you’re sharpening a knife while I’m vulnerable in the bath, don’t you?” she asks, sloshing more water onto the wooden floors.
My lips twitch as I continue my movements. “First, if you hear the sound of the blade against the stone, you’ll know I’m not trying to sneak a glance at you.” She makes a noise that almost sounds like a laugh. “Second, of the two of us,you’rethe least vulnerable. Last time I checked, I couldn’t shift into a large fox.” She scoffs at that but makes no further comment.
It is progress, though, from the first time I had tried talking to her. She had been brought directly from the border where they captured her to the dungeons, completely naked and with an arrow still sticking out of her thigh.A shifter, the guards that shot her had said.The second surprise related to Rhea’s escape. How the princess had managed to hide a fuckingfoxin her tower, especially with the king’s random visits, I will neverknow. Though it seems that she was always poised to hold secrets, tobea secret—something more myth than real if the king had his way.
I have made my own assumptions about her. Ones that I’m still unsure could be disproven, even with talking to the shifter female. Rhea is technically the rightful heir to the throne of the Mortal Kingdom, which makes thingscomplicated.Still, shame coats the back of my throat, and I struggle to swallow it back down. I had made many tough choices over the past few years in my pursuit of something better for this kingdom and its people, formyself, andI know that I will have to make even more in the coming future. However, the one that still haunts my dreams, the one choice that may forever be irredeemable, is how I did nothing while Rhea was beaten by—
“I assume you brought something to eat?” Her voice is closer than before. I stop my use of the whetstone, placing it back in my pocket before sheathing the dagger.
“Are you decent?” I ask, hoping she doesn’t catch the roughness to my voice.
“I am.”
Waiting another few seconds before I turn around, I lift the large satchel from my body and walk over to our makeshift table. Two upended crates are set between two rickety chairs that I’m still not convinced won’t snap under our weight. They were left over from whatever this room was used for before it was forgotten.
She towel dries her hair while walking to the chair opposite my own, sitting in it more delicately than she had the first time we came here. The clothes I brought for her had been the head maid Tienne’s doing, and luckily, they fit her well. Maybe too well, as my eyes linger for an extra moment on her curves before I pull them away.
“I’m sorry that it took so long for me to come back again,” I tell her, taking out a parchment-wrapped sandwich for each of us, two canteens of water, and a few apples. I try to never go more than three days between our visits, but this time, I had nearly doubled that.
“Is everything alright?” she asks, working her snow-white hair into a braid.
I lift my eyes to meet her gaze, tucking a few rogue strands of my own shoulder-length black hair back behind my ear. It’s a nervous habit that I can’t quite seem to stop around her. “Since I know you’re asking for yourself—”
“And for her,” she interjects with an angry bite of her sandwich.
I take my seat carefully, holding my hands up in front of me. “Of course. Onbothaccounts, yes, I believe things are fine. But the king has been working on something that he’s keeping close to the chest, and I haven’t been able to get him to tell me yet what it is.” Dolian was already paranoid, but Rhea’s escape had compounded that madness. He trusts me more than any of the other guards, but that doesn’t mean that I am privy to everything. A fact that frustrates me to no end, as it is pertinent that I know what he is planning at all times.
“You don’t think it’s related to getting her back?”
I shake my head though I’m not entirely sure. “It could be, but he’s been very vocal about his ideas for forcing Rhea to come back to this kingdom. He was convinced that thepresenthe sent her would do the trick.” It hadn’t, and when days had gone by with no response from Rhea or the Mage Kingdom, Dolian had raged upon every person he could find, leaving a mess that I was forced to clean up.
