I turned back to the room, with the open windows letting in an icy wind behind me. Kasper lay on the floor. I didn’t want to just leave him here like this, but I didn’t know what I could do.
His eyes were still open, staring up at the ceiling, so I crouched down next to him and closed them gently.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered around the lump in my throat.
Kennet had made a lot of noise as he fell, so it wouldn’t be long before guards found their way up here to investigate what had happened.
I grabbed a chair and pushed it up against the door, propping it underneath the handle so they’d have a little more fight before they could get in. I went into the bathroom and washed the blood off my hands, trying not to think about where the blood had come from.
The Högdragen would be on the lookout for me, and one thing I’d learned from growing up in Doldastam was that my blond hair made me stand out like a sore thumb. I needed to cover up.
I ran over to the wardrobe and grabbed the parka, then I jumped back into the dumbwaiter and prepared to make my escape.
FORTY-SIX
exile
“Yes, sir. I understand. Of course, sir,” Ridley was saying into his cell phone. “I will. ”
He stood in the living room, his back to me. He still wore the Överste uniform with the silver epaulets on the shoulder. When he hung up the phone, he ran a hand through his hair and let out a heavy sigh.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Holy crap, Bryn!” Ridley turned around to face me, and his surprise was immediately replaced by relief as he rushed over to me. “What are you doing here?”
“Your back door was unlocked. ” I motioned to it behind me.
He pushed back the hood of the parka so he could see me more clearly, and he grimaced when he saw my eye, which had to be blackening by now. “Oh, Bryn. ”
“How bad is it?”
“I’m not sure if you’re asking about your eye or the situation,” he said. “But the situation is not good. I just got home from work, and the head of the Högdragen called to tell me that you’d been arrested for treason, escaped from prison, and then murdered Kasper Abbott and the Skojare Prince before going on the run again. ”
“It’s not like that. ” I shook my head. “I never hurt Kasper, and I even told him he shouldn’t come with me. Because Tilda—”
My voice caught in my throat as I realized what had just happened. Kasper had become my friend in his own right. He was good and capable, and he was dead. Not to mention what this loss would mean to Tilda. My best friend’s husband of less than twenty-four hours and the father of her unborn baby had been killed.
But I couldn’t let the full gravity of it hit me, because if I did I would just crumple up and sob.
“And the treason charge is bullshit. I would never do anything to damage this kingdom. I was trying to protect it. It was Kennet. He’d been supporting Konstantin, and I wanted to keep the King safe. And then everything happened so fast, and I got out of there as quick as I could. I took the dumbwaiter to the basement, and then I climbed up a garbage chute to the outside, and I had to sneak around town to get here as fast as I could. But I didn’t do those things they say I did. I didn’t. ”
“I know. ” Ridley put his hand on my face to calm me, since my voice had taken on a frantic pitch, and he looked me in the eyes. “I know you didn’t do anything wrong. And you can explain it all to me later, but right now, we need to get you out of here before the Högdragen find you, because they won’t believe you. ”
I nodded, because now everything was too far gone. I’d only been trying to make things right, but I didn’t know how I could ever come back from this.
“Stay here,” Ridley instructed me. “Lock the door behind me, and don’t let anyone in. ” He started walking toward the door. “And hide, just to be safe. ”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” he said, like that explained anything, and then he left.
I did as I was told. I locked the doors and then went into his bedroom to hide. The shades were drawn, leaving it nearly dark even though it was still daylight. The afternoon sun was hidden behind an overcast sky, but the extra level of darkness was still comforting.
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I leaned against the wall and slowly lowered myself to the floor. And I couldn’t think. I tried to figure out my next course of action, but I couldn’t. My mind felt numb and blank, and I couldn’t process anything that had happened today. It felt like I’d slipped into a big white void that had swallowed me whole, and nothing was real anymore.
“Bryn?” Ridley’s panicked voice was in the house, and I hadn’t even heard him open the doors. Time no longer seemed to move in any coherent way, and I had no idea if he’d been gone for ten minutes or two hours.
“Bryn?” Ridley repeated, sounding more panicked this time, and he came into the bedroom. “What are you doing? Why didn’t you answer me?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
He crouched next to me. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” I said again. “But I will be. ”
His eyes searched me in the dark. I didn’t know if he believed me or not, but we didn’t have time to figure things out right now. “We have to get out of here,” he said.
I got up and hurried after him, and that seemed to help. Moving reminded me that I was alive, and there were urgent things I needed to take care of if I wanted to stay that way.
Ridley had gotten an SUV from the King’s fleet and parked it in the constricted alley behind his house. I pulled up my hood over my head, and he snuck me out the back door and loaded me into the back of the Land Rover. He covered me in a thick black blanket kept in the back for emergencies, and then he hopped in the driver’s seat.
As he drove through town, he said nothing. Underneath the blanket, I couldn’t see anything. I just listened to the sound of the car.
It didn’t take long before I heard the SUV come to a stop and the window roll down.
“Where are you going?” a man barked, and by the tone of his question, I surmised it was one of the Högdragen guarding the gate.
“I have orders from the King,” Ridley replied, sounding just as stern.
“That doesn’t tell me where you’re going,” the Högdragen shot back.
“I am the Överste, Ridley Dresden. ”
By the sound of the rustling, I guessed that Ridley was pulling out his credentials to show the guard. It was a cross between a passport and an FBI badge, with all the specific information to prove exactly who he was.
“This still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing, sir,” the Högdragen said, but with a bit more respect in his voice now. “Doldastam is on lockdown now. ”
“I know that,” Ridley snapped. “But the King has sent me on a mission to follow up on a lead on Viktor Dålig. Do you want to stop the commander of the army from going after the man who tried to kill the King?”
“No, sir,” the Högdragen replied. I heard the muffled sounds of him conversing with another guard but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Then, rather reluctantly, he said, “All right. Go on through. ”
The gates creaked open loudly, and the SUV started to move. At first, Ridley drove at a reasonable speed, but as soon as we were a safe enough distance away, he sped up, causing the vehicle to bounce around on the worn road.
I pushed the blanket off my head and sat up, looking around at the familiar trees that surrounded us. I wondered dimly if I’d ever see them again, but I had far more important things to worry about.
I climbed up over the seat into the front and sat down next to Ridley.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I’ve been better. ”
“I got passports and money from the safe. ” He motioned to a black duffel bag in the backseat.
“Thank you. ” I looke
d over at him, and I hoped he understood how much I truly appreciated what he’d done and risked to help me. Ridley reached over, taking my hand in his, and held it on the drive to the train station.
When we pulled into the parking lot, he turned off the car and got out. He grabbed the bag from the back, and I walked around the Land Rover. He took my hand again so we could walk together to the ticket booth, but I stopped.
“What?” Ridley looked back at me.
“You can’t go with me. This is where we have to say goodbye. ”
He shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“Kennet and Konstantin are just pawns. Somebody else is making the moves, and I need to find out who that it is and make sure they get some semblance of justice. I may never be able to prove my innocence, but I won’t stand by and let everything I care about be destroyed. ”
“That’s exactly why I should go with you,” Ridley insisted.
“No. I shouldn’t have let Kasper go with me, and I won’t let you meet his fate,” I said.
“Bryn—”
“And more than that,” I cut him off, “my parents are still in Doldastam. I don’t know who is behind everything, and they could go after them in retaliation. I need you to go back and make sure they’re safe.
“And Tilda,” I went on. “She needs someone to help her now. And I need you to tell her that I didn’t kill Kasper. ”
“Bryn, she knows that,” he said.
“Tell her anyway, okay?” I persisted. “And tell her I’m sorry. I never meant for him to get hurt. ” I swallowed back the tears that threatened to form.
Ridley squeezed my hand. “Okay. I’ll tell her, and I’ll watch out for you parents and Tilda. I won’t let anything happen to them while you’re gone. ”
I kissed him then, knowing I might never see him again, that this might be the very last kiss we ever shared, and he set down the duffel bag so he could wrap his arms around me. For a moment, the world fell away around us, and it was only me and him and the way his lips tasted and his arms felt and how desperately I loved him.
He held my face in his hands and looked deep into my eyes. “When this is over, and your parents and Tilda are safe, I will come find you. ”
The train began to whistle as it pulled into the station, so we didn’t have much time. I kissed him again, then grabbed the duffel bag and ran into the station.
FORTY-SEVEN
five days later
The cell phone sat on the counter, the black screen staring up at me, almost taunting me to use it. It’d been five days, and every day had been a battle of will not to call Ridley to find out what was going on.
I didn’t know if he’d gotten caught for helping me escape, and I wanted to know how Tilda was doing and if my parents were safe. But the Högdragen were probably monitoring his phone, and even though I’d gotten an untraceable prepaid phone, that could still mean trouble for him.
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So I didn’t call.
“What are you having?” the waitress on the other side of the cracked vinyl counter asked me, interrupting my staring contest with the phone.
“Um…” A badly worn laminated menu sat on the counter next to my phone, and I quickly scanned it to see if anything appealed to me. Most things sounded as if they were cooked in a vat of grease, and my stomach rolled in disgust. That was the price of stopping in dive diners like this, but I didn’t know how long I’d be on the run, and these places had the cheapest food—even if all the food was repulsive.
“Just an unsweetened iced tea,” I decided.
“Coming right up. ” She smiled at me as she took the menu. Even though she had the weary expression of someone who was at the end of a ten-hour shift, there was sympathy in her eyes as she looked at me, so I knew I had to look as bad as I felt.
The metal side of the napkin holder worked as an okay mirror, so I tilted it toward me to get a better look. My attempt at dyeing my hair hadn’t worked, failing the way it always did since my hair refused to hold any color. The black dye had faded into a sickly grayish-blue, and in another day or two it would be gone entirely.
The black eye Kennet had given me had finally begun to heal. The first few days it had been an awful puffy purple, and now it was fading to a putrid yellow. I tried to cover it up with makeup, but it was still obvious that there was something going on with my eye.
It didn’t help that I wasn’t sleeping, so there were bags under my eyes, and my skin had an unpleasant pallor. I hadn’t been eating well either, since it was hard to find anything that sat well with me on the road. I’d made the mistake of grabbing turkey jerky in desperation last night and ended up throwing it up.
So far, my only plan was to get south and lay low for a little while until I felt like most of the heat was off. I knew Evert wouldn’t want to spare many soldiers to go after me, but he would probably send a few. The Skojare would definitely send some of their guards, not that I thought they’d be able to do anything.
But since I was accused of killing a Prince, other Skojare allies might send troops to help find me, like the Trylle or maybe even the Vittra. They lived farther south than we did, which meant I’d have to go even farther to get out of their range until everyone got tired of looking and went home.
I didn’t know where I was exactly, but the last sign I’d seen had been for Missouri. I hadn’t decided if this was far enough, or if I should keep going. I didn’t know where the end of this journey was for me.
The waitress brought back my tea, and I pushed away the napkin holder so I wouldn’t have to look at myself anymore. I leaned forward, letting my hair fall over my face as if I could hide myself, and went back to my staring contest with the phone.
I heard the stool next to me creak as someone sat down, which annoyed me since the entire bar was empty. There were plenty of seats for them to sit in without crowding me.
“Need any company?” the guy next to me asked.
“No, I’m good,” I said firmly, and tilted my stool away from him a bit.
“A girl alone like you, I really think you could use a friend,” he persisted, and it didn’t look like he’d get the hint without more force.
“Listen—” I turned to him, preparing to tell him off—but when I saw I was face-to-face with Konstantin Black, the argument died on my lips.
He looked exactly the way he had in the lysa—his hair longer than it had been before, the raven curls framing his face. From the scruff on his cheeks it had to have been a couple days since his last shave, and he wore all black. His smoky gray eyes studied me, and he offered me a hopeful smile.
“So, what do you say, white rabbit?” Konstantin asked. “Friends?”
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