“Let’s try this again,” I say calmly. “Where. Is. She.”
Anger flashes across his blood-streaked face. “I don’t fucking know. I don’t! I swear, I don’t!”
I sigh. I know he’s lying. It’s in the shift of his eyes, the tremor of his lip. If he doesn’t want to talk, that’s fine. There are two of them, after all.
It would be heresy to still refer to these men as Queen’s Army. They deserted their post and their morals when they chose to follow my brother. Kairyn, High Cleric of Queen’s Reach Monastery and the new High Prince of Spring, has allied with the Below and decided to name himself Emperor of the Realms. So far, he has claimed the seats in Florendel and now Hadria. Where he goes, his minions follow, waging their destruction upon the land.
Pulling a knife from my back pocket, I place it at the base of the man’s ear. “You’re having trouble listening,” I growl.
The smell of urine assaults my nose.
“Where is she?” I ask again, slowly, calmly. The man shakes but says nothing. My voice grows to a booming roar: “Where is she?!”
“Emperor Kairyn has her somewhere no one will find her!” the second man calls. He’s slumped in a pile beside the cave wall. Despite his own torso and ankles being bound with rope, this one’s still got some fight.
I stride over to him. The cave is dark, dusky light filtering in. Beyond, the desert sand wavers with heat. Soon, it will be near freezing but the cold and dark never bother me. I imagine it will bother these two though.
The fire that raged upon the nearby village is now extinguished; flames dwindled to mere embers. I was staying in the small settlement for the day, refreshing my supplies of water and food, when Kairyn’s soldiers descended. Patrollers, they said they were. Summer belongs to them now, after all. They demanded everything they could of the people: their food, their water, their supplies. When the village refused, they set fire to it.
It wasn’t hard for the villagers to stop the fire once the soldiers were dealt with.
There had been ten. Now, there are two.
A breeze drifts through the mouth of the cave, wafting my dark hair before my eyes. It’s been three months, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it. I wear only cloth. The only Spring steel left to me is my mother’s sword, which I keep sheathed and undrawn. I will not taint it with the blood of traitors.
I yank the man up by his hair until we’re eye to eye. “Where is the Golden Rose?”
The man, eyes swollen from my fists, has a delirious grin on his pockmarked face. “Who? You mean the Dandelion? That’s what Emperor Kairyn calls ’er. Nothing but a little yellow weed, ready to be torn out.”
I slam the man against the rock wall of the cave and plunge my knife into his thigh. He cries out, only making me twist the blade more. “Do you feel that?” I growl. “My knife’s right in the perfect spot to bleed you straight out. Tell me what you know, or I’ll tear it out right now and let you drown in your own blood.”
The man licks his red teeth. “Look at him, Aldridge. Those torn-up ears. Don’t even look like real fae, does he?”
“Just tell him, Laughy,” the first man—Aldridge—says.
“You know where she is.” I slam Laughy hard against the rock wall again. His head cracks against the stone and blood drips down over his neck. “Tell me!”
Laughy begins to chuckle. “So, this is how I go! By the Prince of Blood, himself. I’ve heard the rumors. An airship downed in the Suadela Sands. A troop of soldiers left mangled on the border. They whisper of you among the ranks. ‘The Prince of Blood,’ they say! ‘He’s coming for us!’”
“Now he’s found you,” I growl.
Laughy shakes his head and smiles. “You’ll never get to her. Kairyn’s got her locked up so tight, not even the Prince of Blood could get through.”
I snap, drawing the knife out in one swift movement, then drive it back into his other thigh. Blood gushes onto me and the man screams.
“You’re out of time. In one minute, you’ll have passed out. In two, you’ll be dead.”
Something shifts in Laughy’s eyes as he gazes down at the blood surging from his thigh. “D-doesn’t matter if I tell you. You won’t be able to get to her—”
His words are cut off in a scream as I drive the knife point through his bicep.
“She’s on the prison barge!” he cries. “It’s floating thirty klicks off the coast of Hadria. West of the Byzantar Isles! Kairyn’s watching over her himself. You’ll never—”
I drop the man face down. A gurgle erupts as he tries to lift himself out of the pool of his own blood. I turn away.
The remaining filth trembles as my shadow overtakes him. “He told you what you want to know! Haven’t you had enough, Prince of Blood?”
“I have,” I say, my voice a low gravel. “But he hasn’t.”
