“He’s not dead, so you should be thanking me for that.” Rafe turned on me, his unnaturally green eyes narrowing. I quickly looked away, refusing to give him the chance to give me any more commands that I would have no choice but to obey. “He didn’t think you’d come. But I knew better. I’d already learned just how far you were willing to go to protect someone you cared about — someone you loved.” He sneered on the last word.
“She doesn’t love me,” Rylan muttered.
“I beg to differ,” Rafe said. “She’s here, isn’t she? She risked her king to come for you.”
I glanced over to see Rafe reach up and stroke his chin.
“What a difficult decision that must have been. Stay and protect the king who you managed to rescue from my sister’s control or come after the man you nearly killed in your effort to escape me.”
Despite my best intentions, my gaze snapped to his at his words. He knew about what had happened to Vera — he knew that she was —
Before I could even finish my thought, he’d lunged at me, grabbed my arm, and yanked me toward him. I struggled, twisting to free my arm so I could throw him to the ground — he wasn’t much bigger than me, and not nearly as well trained in hand-to-hand combat — but a confused haze settled over my mind, and I went still.
“This is for my sister,” he hissed into my ear, and then fire exploded in my side. An involuntary scream wrenched through my lips as I staggered back. He clutched a bloodied dagger in his hands, his eyes flashing in the dimness.
“Alexa!” I heard Rylan’s shout through a strange roar in my ears as I lifted one hand to my side and it came away coated in blood. My blood. Warmth coated my hip, running down my leg. Pain pulsed through my body with each throbbing beat of my heart. A terrible spreading weakness stole my ability to stand, and I dropped to my knees on the ground.
Dimly, I heard the door open and Rafe’s voice again. “Get that healer down here. Tell him to do only enough to keep her alive.”
And then Rylan was there, kneeling next to me, catching me just as I swayed and crumpled the rest of the way to the ground.
“Alexa,” he whispered, his hands on my face, stroking my hair back. I could feel how they trembled, I could hear the panic in his voice. “Don’t you dare die. Hold on, Alex. Hold on.”
He pushed something against the open wound where Rafe had stabbed me, trying to stanch the blood. My eyelids fluttered shut, and though I tried to open them again, the agony in my side took hold of me and dragged me under.
When I woke again, I was lying on a cot, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. I turned my head, but it was too dark to make out many details other than the fact that I was alone in a barren room. My body ached, and the place where Rafe had stabbed me still throbbed with pain. I tried to sit up, but my head swam and my stomach lurched sickeningly, threatening to make me vomit. I lay still for a few long minutes, waiting for the nausea to pass. My head felt heavy, my mind sluggish and fuzzy. Had they drugged me?
Afraid to move too much, I hesitantly lifted my hand to my belly. I found the tear in my tunic where Rafe’s dagger had penetrated, but when I pushed my fingers through it, rather than my own skin, I felt the rough fabric of a bandage across the wound. His parting words came back to me then — “only enough to keep her alive” — and I wondered what exactly that had meant.
Tears threatened to surface, but I clenched my teeth and forced them back down. I refused to give them the satisfaction of coming in and finding me crying — whoever it was who would be sure to check on me sometime soon. I had to think. There had to be some way to get out of this. I was unable to hurt Rafe, and Rylan was also under his control … but Eljin wasn’t. If I could somehow find him, or get a message to him. He could cause an earthquake, and then conceal himself and come get me —
The door opened, and I turned to see an unfamiliar man walk in. He wore clothing similar to what Vera’s men had been dressed in when she’d come to Damian’s palace — a long tunic with loose pants beneath it, in a light, airy fabric, with a sash across his chest. His sash was a deep, rich blue, and the fabric he wore was white. But when my gaze traveled to his face, I had to suck in a gasp of surprise. He had olive skin, and dark eyes with the slight tilt at the corner. He was Blevonese.
“Here,” he said in my language, but his voice held a strange combination of a Blevonese and Dansiian accent. “Drink this.”
He came over to help me sit up. My head swam again, and my stomach rebelled once more at the movement. My body convulsed as I tried to hold back the urge to vomit, but the man pressed the cup to my lips anyway.
“Force yourself to drink this; it will help. I promise.”
I was barely able to do as he asked, but the moment I swallowed the liquid that tasted faintly of herbs and lemon and it hit my mutinous belly, it was as he promised — the nausea abated slightly. I took another sip and then asked, “Who are you?” My voice was scratchy from disuse, and my throat felt strangely raw.
His dark eyes met mine, but he didn’t answer right away. Instead, he helped me finish the drink and then had me lay back down. He couldn’t have been that much older than me, I realized, now that I got a good look at him. Maybe closer to Damian’s age, in his mid-twenties. “I’m a servant in the king’s household — his head healer.”
“Is that where I am?” I asked.
Again, he didn’t answer me right away. Instead, he raised my tunic and examined the bandage on my stomach, lifting one corner to glance at my wound.
“You are to go before him tomorrow, and it is my job to make sure you are able to do that.” He pushed the bandage back down again, sending a surge of pain through my abdomen.
“Why don’t you heal me completely, then?” He had to be a sorcerer, I realized, like Lisbet. But why would a sorcerer from Blevon be working for King Armando — and have a bit of a Dansiian accent?
“I was instructed to only heal you enough so that you could stand on your own two feet before the king. Nothing more.” He stood up and turned to leave.
“Wait!” I cried out, desperate to find out more, to not be left alone. “What’s your name?”
He paused by the door. “Akio,” he said quietly.
Then he left.
I lay there for what felt like hours, drifting in and out of sleep, trying not to let my mind wander. I couldn’t afford to wonder about Rylan, or Eljin, or what the king would do to me when I was brought before him. And I especially couldn’t afford to think about Damian. To wonder what he was doing — if he was safe. Had Armando begun to openly fight against Antion yet? Or was he still letting Blevon and Antion fight each other for now?
Twice, I tried to get up, to try and figure out some way to escape, but both times, my head spun, and I nearly lost consciousness. Apparently, whatever Akio had given me was just enough to hold the nausea back, but not enough to give me the strength to stand. Not yet. Not until they needed me to.
Helplessness assailed me — a feeling I was unused to and immediately hated. Unable to do anything except stare at the ceiling wondering what fate awaited me, I plotted instead, imagining ways that I could somehow get to King Armando when they brought me before him, and kill him. Rafe had commanded me to protect him; he’d made it so I could never harm him. But he’d given me no such command for the king. If I even got within twenty feet of him, somehow, I’d find a way to make sure Armando was as good as dead.
There were no windows in my cell, but I assumed it was morning when the door opened again and Akio walked back in, followed this time by two armed guards wearing all black beneath their blue sashes, curved swords hanging at their sides. The one man’s biceps were bigger than my legs — put together. Perhaps King Armando believed brute size and force would intimidate me.
He was wrong. He didn’t realize I’d trained for years with Deron, a man just as big as the guard who came over and grabbed my arm, yanking me up in bed. And not only had I trained with Deron, I’d beaten him.
But in my current state,
I was no match for even someone my own size. As the guard dragged me to my feet and the room began to spin, my legs threatened to give out on me. The other guard came over and roughly pulled my arms behind my back, tying my hands together. I flexed my wrists, hoping to keep the bindings from going too tight, but then my stomach lurched, and I lost focus on my hands as I fought to keep from vomiting again.
Akio stepped forward, lifting another cup to my lips. “Drink,” was all he said.
I obeyed, hoping it would settle my stomach and perhaps control the dizziness that assailed me as I swayed on my feet before the sorcerer.
“Better?” he asked when I’d swallowed the last drop of liquid.
“Yes.” I nodded, and it was true. The room had finally settled into one place and I was able to stand without leaning on the guard’s arm. But the pain in my side was worse now, pulsing with each beat of my heart. I didn’t think it was bleeding, but I could tell if I moved too quickly, it would tear wide open. My hands were secured behind my back without even an inch of wiggle room in the bindings.
“Good. Let’s go.” Akio turned and led the way out of the cell. We were in a different hallway than the one we’d originally come through with the black sorcerers. My hopes of seeing or even hearing Rylan or Eljin on my way to the king died as quickly as they’d risen.
Akio said something to the guards in Dansiian, and they each grabbed one of my arms and began to pull me forward.
“Why did they bring me here through those tunnels?” I asked as we marched down the hallway, past a few other doors, and then turned to our right, heading for a staircase.
Akio ignored me as we began to climb the stairs. The pain grew worse, but I forced myself to ignore it, to stand tall and walk as quickly as possible next to the guards’ long strides.
“Tell me why they forced us through the dark for days. Why not just bring us to your king directly — why not stay above the ground?” I pressed, hoping to annoy an answer or a response of any sort out of Akio.
When we came to the top of the stairs, I had to keep my jaw from falling open as we stepped into an opulent hallway lined with windows. Sunlight streamed in through the stained glass, creating a tapestry of color and light that nearly blinded me after so long in the dark. I couldn’t contain a shiver of dread for whatever awaited me in this lavish place — where the sand-colored stone floor was covered by thick, hand-cut carpets, and the side tables were adorned with priceless sculptures and vases. The palace in Antion was beautiful, but this palace made Damian’s seem like it was nothing more than a home in my tiny village at the edge of the jungle.
“To keep you alive.” Akio finally spoke, pulling me out of my shock, finally answering my question about the tunnels.
I couldn’t keep myself from laughing. “You expect me to believe I was dragged through an underground prison for days, and practically starved, to keep me alive?”
Akio stopped, and the guards beside me halted as well. He spun to face me, his dark eyes unreadable. “Yes. It was to protect you. When word spread that you had been captured and were being taken to the king, there would have been any number of threats that could have meant your death on the journey to King Armando’s palace if you’d been out in the open. The tunnels are only known and traveled by his most trusted sorcerers and guardians. It was to keep you safe.”
I stared at him unflinchingly, sure he could read the hatred on my face. “I find that I don’t really care for the Dansiian definition of safe,” I said evenly.
A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he turned without another word and marched forward again, leading us through lavish hallway after lavish hallway. We went out an ornate iron door into a courtyard where I got a brief glimpse of the exterior of the palace — an immense, three-story monstrosity that was all glass and pale stone, with towers that jutted into the heavens. The sun hung in the cloudless expanse of sky, a massive, relentless orb of light, beating down on the dry, plantless ground. I was pretty sure the guards purposely slowed down to make sure my bare feet got burned by the hot sand as long as possible before we went back into the palace again through another door.
I was surprised that they let me walk across the plush carpets and pristinely cleaned floor with my dirty feet as they pulled me down another hallway, toward two massive, ornately carved wooden doors. I took extra care to make sure and grind the dirt into the carpet as I walked.
Outside the doors stood four men, two on each side. They all wore the same dark cloaks with the hoods pulled up as the black sorcerers by the gate between Antion and Dansii. Fear crawled over my skin as we got closer and their heads all lifted simultaneously to stare at us. I could barely see their faces, their shadowy features obscured by the dark confines of the hoods they wore.
Akio stopped a few feet away from the doors, and the guards on either side of me halted as well, jerking me to a stop.
“I, Akio, high healer for the kingdom of Dansii, seek audience with the king, as commanded by His Royal Majesty, to bring the prisoner Alexa Hollen before his throne.” Akio knelt down on the ground, bending his head, and the guards each grabbed one of my shoulders and shoved me to the ground as well. But I refused to lower my head, keeping my chin lifted instead, glaring forward at the black sorcerers. They could injure me, weaken me with drugs, make me kneel — but they couldn’t force my will to bend to theirs.
“You may enter, sorcerer,” one of the robed men intoned, his voice a low hiss.
Akio quickly stood as two of the robed men turned and opened the doors, which gave a low groan. My guards yanked me back to my feet, pulling at my wound. A sharp blast of pain lanced through me, but I forced my face to remain impassive. I refused to let them see that they had hurt me.
We walked past the huge doors and the black sorcerers into the largest room I’d ever seen. The entire wall across from us was made of floor-to-ceiling windows, soaring at least three stories above us. The floor was pure white marble that glistened with flecks of gold in the sunlight.
“So, this is the girl who is causing me all this trouble?” A deep voice came from my right, speaking in Antionese.
My guards spun me to see a man stepping down from a massive golden throne and striding toward us. The sunlight glinted off the golden crown nestled in his graying hair. “She seems rather … pathetic.”
My breath caught in my throat and ice filled my veins. I struggled against my bindings; every instinct inside of me screamed to shoot an arrow through this man’s heart or embed a sword through his gut. I knew exactly who he was, because he looked just like his brother, only taller and stronger, his eyes the same blue as Hector’s, the same blue as his nephew’s. But there was nothing I could do. My hands were tied; I was surrounded by sorcerers.
“Your Majesty,” Akio murmured, lowering his head. He and my guards all dropped to their knees, yanking me down with them. But again, I kept my chin lifted, hatred burning through me as Armando, the king of Dansii, approached us.
King Armando stopped a few feet away from me, his eyes narrowing when his gaze moved over my scars. His scrutiny sent a chill scraping down my spine. There was something about the coldness of his eyes that made my muscles quiver with the need to turn and run away. He was dressed completely in black, except for a blood-red sash, trimmed with the same blue the rest of his men wore, across his chest. He had a perfectly groomed beard that he reached up to stroke as his gaze flickered down my body, then back up again.
“Rise,” he said curtly, and Akio hurriedly jumped up. My guards pulled me to my feet, and though I tried to hide it, I was unable to keep from wincing at the pain that shot through me yet again.
King Armando’s expression darkened. “Why is she injured?” he asked, continuing to speak in Antionese. Though his voice was calm, my guards flinched, their heads dropping lower. “You.” King Armando pulled the sword that hung at his side out and pointed it at one of the guards next to me — the smaller one, though he was still a good head taller than me. “Answer me immediately.”
/> He responded in Dansiian, but King Armando shook his head. “In her language.” He glanced at me again, his eyes flashing. “All of my sorcerers and guards have been taught Antionese and Blevonese, so that when we rule over all three kingdoms, my men will be able to communicate with even the lowest heathen in our command.” He turned back to the guard and snarled, “So you will speak in Antionese right now because I want her to understand everything that happens this day.”
“We were instructed to bring her to you exactly as she came to us,” the man repeated in Antionese this time, his accent so heavy I could barely understand his response. “I don’t know why she is injured.”
“I ordered her to remain alive. I need her to be healthy.” The king’s face remained completely placid, but in one swift movement, he swiped the blade he held up and across the man’s throat. With a horrible gurgling cry, his hand released from my arm, and he collapsed to the ground. His body convulsed as the blood pooled around him, staining the beautiful marble and turning the sunlight on the floor to crimson.
The king turned to Akio and lifted the sword until it rested below his chin. Akio trembled as Armando leaned toward him.
“Perhaps you might be willing to explain to me why she is injured?”
Akio stood stiffly, the point of the sword pressing into his skin. “Rafe is the one who stabbed her, Your Majesty. I was ordered to heal her just enough so that she could stand before you, but no more.”
King Armando stared at him silently for a long moment as if considering. Then finally, he let the sword drop to his side. “I see.” He snapped his fingers, and three servants rushed forward from where they’d been standing against the wall to my right, unnoticed until now.
King Armando tossed his sword at one, who barely managed to catch it before it struck the floor. “Have that cleaned. And you two, deal with this mess.” He gestured to the now-dead man on the ground.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the three servants responded, keeping their gazes trained on the floor and rushing forward to do his bidding.