“Well, that makes it a little better.” The prince looked about, then took hold of my hand. “Come with me. The melder will beguarded in my chambers. Now get us to the palace,” he commanded the Stav.
I tucked in close to the prince’s side the whole of the journey back. Shouts and the stretch of leather from rushing guards surrounded the outer walls. Doors slammed and locked, the heavy iron around the portcullis clanked into place the instant we passed under the arch.
“Lyra! No, please!” Hilda gripped the bars of the heavy gate, tears glistened on her cheeks, and the watchmen shoved her back with the ends of wooden spears.
“Wait, let her in.” I spun back, trying to shove past the three guards escorting us forward.
“Gates are closed, Melder Bien, we—”
“You can’t just leave her out there.” I looked for Thane to help. The prince wouldn’t leave Hilda, but he was no longer at my side.
Thane shoved a Stav Guard against the bars of the gate. “You’d leave a woman alone in the streets? She is under the protection of this fortress, and you will let her in.”
With a jumble of apologies, the Stav Guard signaled for the men on the walls to lift the jagged gate just enough for Hilda to slip underneath.
She fell against me, trembling. “Edvin left. He just left with the Stav. I can’t lose my brother, Lyra. I can’t…lose someone else.”
“Hush.” I stroked a palm down her braids. “It’ll be all right. Edvin is skilled with the blade, you know that.”
“Come, my ladies,” Thane said. “We must get out of the open.”
Hilda sniffled, but followed closely, keeping her hand in mine.
Inside the palace was quiet—oddly quiet—like we’d stepped from the chaos of reality into the peace of a dreamless sleep.
“My mother and father will be barred in their personalwings,” Thane explained when we reached his door. The prince moved like a man who’d done this too many times. “Their guards will be standing watch behind their doors, not in passages. When the horn blares, servants know to remain in their quarters.”
The three Stav positioned themselves outside Thane’s door. Wooden sofas with fur pillows were neatly arranged inside the prince’s sitting room. A heady scent of pine and leather filled the room. There was an empty inglenook coated with dark ash, and the prince’s windows were arched and painted like a wild forest with ivy and aspens in the glass.
I wrung my fingers together. “Kael would’ve gone with them.”
Thane paused near the back wall. “Darkwin is a Stav and a man of honor. I have few doubts he was one of the first to run out.”
Hilda hiccupped and hugged her middle.
The prince plucked a hunting bow from a peg on his wall and slung it over his head so it fell across his chest. From behind the inglenook he took out another one. “Any experience with bow hunting?”
Hilda shook her head.
I lifted my chin. “I’m not a fair shot, but I’ve done a little to keep the hares from Jakobson’s gardens.”
The prince handed over the second bow. “Good enough. If the thought of remaining barred and clueless behind the walls drives you as mad as it drives me, then follow me, ladies. I’ve something to show you.”
I was in a damntree house.
While our unsuspecting Stav Guards remained outside Thane’s chamber doors, the prince led me and Hilda through a passageway in the wall. He explained it was built half a century ago, abetter way for kings and advisors to move about the palace unseen before the stone walls were securely in place.
The corridor opened to one of the numerous back gardens with towering oaks and maple trees. Tucked behind walls of thick leaves and branches was a small fort. Childish in many ways, but useful in the fact we were now high enough we could see over the wall and still keep concealed.
“Built this with Roark when we were stupid boys who wanted to be watchguards.”
Strange to think of Roark Ashwood as a boy, maybe smiling with the prince as they built their war tower.
Thane removed the bow from his shoulders and unearthed a quiver of bone arrows beneath a dusty tapestry. With a nod, he urged me to take one as he set his own arrow and aimed out a small oblong window. “Godsdammit.”
“What is it?”
Breath caught in my chest.
