“The day after you arrived—well, your prince arrived—there were rumors about the troops readying for deployment. The Loegrian prince showing up at our gates changed things around here. The army is going to march soon, mark my words,” Nelson says.
“You know, I did notice there’s been an order for more supplies,” says Rosamond. “Tents, bedrolls, waterskins.”
Nelson nods. “Conscripts, too. They’ve sent messengers to all the remaining villages, promising riches to any man or woman who’ll sign up and threatening any villages who don’t provide enough…‘volunteers.’”
“That’s been happening since I got here,” says Bing. “It’s all a lie. There are no riches to be had.”
The group argues some more, trying to discern if there are any other clues to the king’s intentions. They all have different pieces of the same puzzle, but there are gaps in everyone’s knowledge. Their efforts are fractured, relegated to sporadic secret meetings in the wall just to know what someone else in a nearby room might be doing.
Siena keeps glancing nervously at me while the rest bicker. She looks just like my sisters, with that same bright-eyed wonder and innocence that makes me want to wrap her up with a blanket and tell her everything is going to be okay.
But everything isn’t okay. I fear Nelson’s right about Namreth’s sinister plans, and with Dietan’s arrival, it can’t be mere coincidence. Maybe Namreth feels more confident moving to attack Loegria now that Dietan’s been eliminated.
Murdered.
I close my eyes, pushing down my grief at the thought of not seeing him again. Never seeing his smile or hearing his laugh.
The liar.
“But why would the king want to send out his troops?” Tess asks skeptically.
“Well, there’s a war going on out there,” I tell them. They all gape at me. “You didn’t know? Penrith has been on the attack for a few months now. War has already broken out along the Loegrian border,” I say.
Everyone stares at one another.
“How long have you all been here? Trapped in the castle?” I ask.
Bing replies, “Too long. It was either this or join his army. I’ll cut off my other hand before he can make me take lives for him.” My stomach drops. He’s desperate enough not to join Osian’s army that he would do that to himself. “War has truly come to Albion, has it?”
I tell them everything I saw on the journey to Engel. The burnt village we came upon, the chaos on the bridges, the Kilandrar attacks. And I tell them as much of the truth of why I ended up here as I can, without mentioning the Rings. “Prince Dietan hired me to escort him across the kingdoms, posing as his bride, so we could stop the war before it began. But…maybe now it’s too late.”
Without Dietan, without the Rings, I fear I may be correct. I wrap my arms around myself as the grim realization settles over the group. Tess holds herself tightly, her gaze distant. “Many of us have family—husbands, children—conscripted into King Osian’s army. We’ll probably never see them again.”
Lambert folds his arms over his chest. “You’re lucky the king didn’t believe you were really engaged to that prince, or you’d be with him right now in that dungeon, being starved and beaten, too.”
My heart stops.
A strangled gasp escapes my lips, my hands flying to my mouth as my vision blurs with sudden, burning tears.
Dietan’s alive? He’s alive? He’salive.
A broken, breathless laugh bubbles up from my chest. “What did you just say? About the prince?”
“Yeah, the prince. Dietan, I think his name is? He’s in the dungeon.”
“You’ve really seen him?” I ask urgently.
“Blond hair, bluish green eyes, cheekbones? Pretty boy? Yes, I’ve seen him,” Lambert says.
A ray of hope starts to bloom in my heart, even in this dark alcove. “He’s alive?” I repeat.
“Are you not listening? I said he was. But only because Osian wants to play with him first,” says Lambert with a scowl. “He likes to do that. He’s a sadist of the worst kind.”
“Torture?” My eyes burn with tears as I choke on the word. I take several deep breaths. Dietan isn’t dead. He’s being tortured and is in pain. But he’salive.
“Making the prince scream is Osian’s new favorite pastime,” Nelson says. “Happens almost every night. Sometimes he’ll even have prisoners brought into the throne room and torture them sitting up there, instead of going all the way down to the dungeon.”
So that’s what we heard when we were in the dungeon. Torture. The screams from the king’s victims above. Now Dietan is the one screaming.Oh, Harvest Mother.I place a hand on the stone wall for balance. I’d collapse if these walls weren’t so close.
