My head began to ache as they continued to explain their plan to me. I listened and nodded, but my heart was pounding and I was having a hard time memorizing what they said. All I could think about was the fact that I was going to leave them behind, that I was going to have to face the king and Iker alone — and somehow try to convince them to let the general come with his army and the prince.
The plan depended heavily on me. If I wasn’t successful, it would be a disaster, and King Hector really would have the chance to crush King Osgand’s most powerful general right in his own courtyard.
“I think we should call it a night and head to bed,” Eljin finally said, when the entire plan had been laid out for me.
“Yes, we all need to rest while we can,” General Tinso agreed.
I stood up in a daze. Rylan wouldn’t meet my gaze when he stood up and followed Eljin from the room. Lisbet and Jax slipped out the door quietly, but not before Jax gave Damian a tight hug. I watched as Damian bent over to embrace the boy, a look of tenderness on his face. His half brother. My chest tightened, and I had to force myself not to think about my own brother and how much I missed him. With a sigh, I started to follow Eljin and Rylan out of the room when someone touched my arm.
I turned to see Tanoori standing by me, her expression pained. “I’m sorry for what I did to you, Alexa. I just wanted to tell you that before you go. And …” She paused, as if summoning courage. “I want to thank you. For saving me even though I didn’t deserve it. I will make it up to you someday, I promise.”
I impulsively reached out to embrace her. She stiffened at first, but soon she softened and hugged me back tightly.
“Be safe, Tanoori.”
“You, too.” She looked at me for a moment longer, and then turned and followed Lisbet and Jax to the front wings of the castle.
“I wish you well,” General Tinso said from behind me, making me jump.
I turned to look up at him. “Thank you.”
He nodded and moved to leave the room. “General?” I hesitantly called after him.
He paused, glancing back.
“Papa used to call me something — a nickname in Blevonese. He never told me what it meant. I was wondering, before I leave, if you could …” I trailed off.
General Tinso nodded for me to continue.
“He called me his zhànshì nánwū.”
The general’s eyes widened. “Alexa, zhànshì roughly translates to ‘champion fighter.’”
My heart began to pound. “And nánwū?”
“It means ‘sorcerer.’”
I couldn’t swallow past the sudden lump in my throat.
“You can do this, Alexa. I know you can.” He clapped one hand on my shoulder, staring down into my eyes for a moment. And then, with one final smile, he left.
“Let’s go,” Damian said from behind me, startling me. He touched the small of my back with his fingertips, guiding me toward the staircase that would lead us back to our room for the last time.
THE MEN WHO are taking you back to the palace don’t know the truth,” Damian said, his voice barely above a whisper as we walked. “They think they really are delivering a prisoner of war with a message to the king. And they still think you’re a boy.”
“Okay,” I responded, too overwhelmed and too tired to care about this additional information. What was pretending to be a boy — something I’d done for years — to two soldiers compared to everything else they expected of me? I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t want to think about how frustrated I was with Damian, either. Instead, I focused on the fact that Papa had been calling me “champion fighter sorcerer” my whole life. He’d been trying to tell me the truth after all, in the only safe way he knew how. But what had he meant — that he knew all along I’d have the ability to fight sorcerers, or was there even more to his nickname for me?
Damian touched my arm, gently grasping my elbow and pulling me to a stop. “I didn’t intentionally keep my involvement with the Insurgi a secret from you, Alex.”
I sighed as I looked up at him.
“With everything else going on, I didn’t think to tell you about it. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe if we survive all this, you’ll get to a point someday where you don’t have to think about telling me these little details, like asking someone to pretend to murder you.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice.
Damian’s expression hardened. “I’m not used to telling anyone anything — let alone every secret I have. Not to mention that even though I hoped I could trust you, I had to be sure before I told you my whole plan. I said I’m sorry; what more do you want from me?”
“I don’t know,” I said crossly. “I don’t know what I want. No more surprises, I guess.” The one thing I knew I didn’t want was to spend our last night together fighting. I might never see him again. “What I want is to be able to trust you.”
It was so dark in the hallway, I couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like he grimaced. “Someday, you will.”
We stared at each other for a long moment. My heart thudded dully in my chest. Then we heard the sound of other people heading our direction. My eyes widened in alarm. We couldn’t be caught standing here in the hallway, unguarded.
I turned and hurried to the stairway, with Damian on my heels.
Rylan was already lying down, his back to the door, when we rushed into the room. I stared at him for a long time, hoping he would roll over and say something to me — anything before I left in the morning. But he stubbornly stayed facing the wall. Damian also walked over to his cot and sat down, staring into the fire.
The chill in the room didn’t come from the wind battering the window. With a sigh, I crawled under the blanket in my own bed and curled into a ball. It was going to be a miserable journey back to Tubatse.
I wondered what I would find when I returned. Would Kai be alive? And what about the rest of the guard? This whole time, I had forced my thoughts away from that line of thinking, knowing it did me no good to wonder. But now, as I lay in the silence, I couldn’t stop the questions from rushing through my mind.
Oh, how I hated unanswered questions.
I heard the creak of Damian’s cot, but I kept my eyes shut, willing my brain to stop spinning in useless circles, wishing I could just go to sleep. It felt like hours passed with nothing but the sound of the fire slowly consuming the wood and burning itself out, and the wind howling outside, before I finally succumbed to my exhaustion and drifted off to sleep.
The morning dawned cold and clear, blue sky stretching as far as I could see outside our window. My stomach was already twisted in knots when I opened my eyes and sat up. Rylan was sitting on his bed with his head in his hands. Damian was sprawled out on his stomach, fast asleep.
I was about to say something to Rylan when the door swung open and Eljin marched in with two men behind him. Damian jerked awake and scrambled to stand up.
“Which one are we taking?” one of them asked in our language, glaring at us.
My heart raced and my hands went cold. This was it? I was going now? I thought I’d have a chance to say good-bye — to try and get Rylan to talk to me one last time before I left. A chance to mend the fight I’d had with Damian. But I remembered what he’d told me last night; these men didn’t know the truth. I had to act like the unattached male guard of the prince — nothing more or less.
“That one. Take him. But be careful, he’s the best guard the prince has. If you drop your attention for even a second, he’ll have you disarmed and dead on the ground before you realize what hit you,” Eljin said severely, pointing at me.
Rylan looked up at me in alarm, while the prince schooled his face into a mask of indifference. I stood up slowly, drawing on all of my training, all of the years I’d spent pretending to be something I wasn’t — someone I wasn’t. It couldn’t be any harder than pretending Marcel’s death hadn’t affected me.
The two men came over. One grabbed my hands, roughly yanking t
hem behind me and tying them with rope.
“You expect me to walk the entire way to Tubatse with my hands bound?” I asked disdainfully.
“Yes.” The man who wasn’t tying up my hands grinned, revealing stained, yellow teeth.
“Let’s go.” The man behind me shoved me between the shoulder blades, and I stumbled forward.
“Alex —” Rylan jumped to his feet, his face pale.
My new captors kept pushing me forward, and I had to crane my head to look at him.
“Be careful,” he said, his voice strained. “And look out for Jude — if you can. If he’s … if he’s still alive.”
I nodded, feeling as though my stomach were full of lead.
“How sweet. Now let’s go,” the man behind me snarled with another shove to my spine.
I didn’t even get to look at Damian again before the door slammed shut behind me.
THE JOURNEY BACK to Antion was even worse than I’d feared. My captors kept my arms bound either in front of or behind me, alternating the position each day. Since it was just the three of us, the pace they set was grueling, and I collapsed to the ground exhausted every night when they finally stopped to make camp. When we crossed back into Antion, we nearly ran right into a battalion. We had to crouch behind some large bushes for an hour while the soldiers passed. Angry about the delay, my captors made us run the rest of the day until my legs literally gave out and I fell to the ground, unable to stop my fall with my hands tied behind me.
The muggy heat of the jungle was even more oppressive after the cooler air of Blevon. I was too tired and worried to be afraid of the jungle when we’d stop for the night, sleeping in the small tent I was forced to carry on my back during the day. But we made the entire journey in just under two weeks because of the quick pace.
When the walls of the palace rose in front of us, I nearly cried with relief. Until I remembered what came next.
My captors led me up to the wall with their swords pressed into my back.
“Halt! Who goes there?” A sentinel shouted down at us.
“Answer him,” one of the men growled at me.
“It’s Alex Hollen, guard to Prince Damian,” I called out. “I have been brought back to deliver a message about the prince to his father, the king!”
“Throw your weapons down!” came the shout from above us, at the top of the wall.
The men behind me muttered to each other in their language, and then I heard the sound of their swords hitting the ground.
“Step away from your weapons!”
We all moved forward, closer to the gate. It ground open, and we were suddenly surrounded by a host of soldiers from the Antionese army, swords and arrows pointed at us from all sides.
“Let me through!” I heard a familiar voice. My legs almost went weak with relief when Deron shoved a sentinel out of the way and stood in front of me, his eyes wide. He had a new, vicious-looking scar on his face, stretching from his eyebrow to his jaw, barely missing his mouth. But it was him — my captain — alive and in shock at the sight of me standing before him. “Alex, it is you. We thought you were dead!”
“I have a message for the king about his son,” I said, keeping my mind carefully walled in to the present. If I let myself think too much — feel too much — I’d break down right then and there.
“Take these men to the dungeons,” Deron shouted at the sentinels, pointing to my captors. The Blevonese soldiers looked at me in alarm, but I had a hard time feeling bad for them after the last thirteen days. “Alex, come with me. And someone cut those ropes off his hands!”
My shoulders burned, and my hands and wrists ached when I pulled them in front of me, rubbing the raw skin.
“Let’s get you some clean clothes and some food, then you can go see the king.” Deron began to lead the way back into the palace. I stared at the familiar building with my chest tight. General Tinso’s castle had been massive, but compared to the palace, it looked like a summer cottage. So much depended on me. I felt as if the weight of the entire palace hung over my head.
We’d made it halfway across the grounds when a door opened, and another familiar figure rushed toward us. But this one filled me with dread.
“Alex Hollen, the king requests your presence immediately,” Iker said, his baleful gaze sending a shiver of foreboding through me.
“I’ll go find some food for when you’re done,” Deron said after bowing to Iker.
“That won’t be necessary. We’ll see that he is taken care of,” Iker said, and Deron gave him a sharp look.
“You may go,” Iker dismissed him. Deron bowed and did as he was told, though worry shot across his face.
I watched Deron walk away, fear practically choking me. I didn’t want to be alone with Iker. Now that I knew the truth about him, I was even more nervous around him. I’d always noticed something off, but I hadn’t known what it was. There was an aura of dark power that surrounded him and sent a chill down my spine.
“Follow me, Alex. The king and I are quite interested in what has happened to our beloved Prince Damian.” He began to walk back the way he’d come. I reluctantly followed, my heart in my throat.
We stopped before the thick mahogany doors that led to the king’s counsel room, next to his private chambers. Iker knocked once briefly and then opened the door.
“Sire, I’ve brought the guard for your questioning.”
“Excellent. Let him enter,” the king’s deep voice answered.
Iker swung the door wide, and gestured for me to precede him into the room.
King Hector sat upon his throne, one of many that he had placed throughout the palace. The signet crown encircled his head. He looked at me with his pale blue eyes — Damian’s and Jax’s eyes — and then beckoned me forward with a flick of his fingers. Sunlight flashed off the jewels of his many rings and the diamonds lining the collar of office draped over the silk robes he wore.
I strode forward and bowed low to the king of Antion. I had to appear confident, calm. A bearer of a message that I should assume would be good news for my king.
“You may rise,” King Hector said. I stood up straight, my fist pressed to my opposite shoulder. I could feel Iker’s presence behind me.
“Sire, I bring word of your son,” I said.
“Yes, I assumed that was why you were brought back. We’ve had reports of my son’s whereabouts. I believe you were being held at General Tinso’s castle in Lentia. Am I correct?” Damian’s eyes had always been piercing — beautiful and sharp. King Hector’s eyes were more gray than blue. There was a spark of intelligence in his eyes, but also a dark hint of the cruelty our king was fond of. This was the man who had killed his wife in front of his sons. He was the man who had ordered countless girls raped to breed a bigger army. I had to take a deep breath to calm the fury that began to pulse through me.
“I don’t know the name of the town we passed through, my liege, but the man whose castle we were imprisoned in was General Tinso, as you say,” I replied, thankful that my voice remained steady and calm. I’d never needed my years of practice pretending to feel and be something I wasn’t more than I did right then.
“You may proceed with your message.”
“I’ve been asked to tell you that General Tinso and his army are preparing to march on Tubatse with the prince as their prisoner. He said to warn you that he has gathered together the most powerful sorcerers in the land of Blevon to rain fire upon our walls and our nation until we burn to our deaths, if you do not agree to a truce with Blevon.
“However, if you are willing to sign a treaty of peace, he will release Prince Damian back to you, unharmed, and will take his army and leave Antion without further loss of life.”
As I spoke, Iker made his way over to the king, taking his place on his right side, staring at me as well. He bent and whispered something in the king’s ear. The silence stretched out for a long moment as Iker straightened back up, and they both looked down at me.
And then the k
ing began to laugh. A cruel, mocking sound that turned my blood to ice in my veins.
“Is this their big plan, then?” He stopped laughing and pointed at me, his voice thunderous. “They think to fool me into believing my son is their prisoner? Of the nation he loves so dearly?”
“Sire, I don’t understand —” I began, but he cut me off.
“You and your men are ignorant of a great many things regarding my son. He has never loved Antion; his heart is with Blevon, where his mother came from. And I will not see my efforts come to an early and unsatisfactory end to save his worthless life.” He stood up to glare down at me. Iker stood just behind him, his mouth twisted into a derisive smile. “He wants to end this war? So do I. We will crush General Tinso and his army of sorcerers, and Blevon will fall to my power.” His gaze was wild as he shouted at me. In that moment, I wasn’t sure if he was entirely sane.
I dropped to one knee before the king. “Sire, please, do not be so hasty. We have been imprisoned, and the prince does love Antion. He has told me of his love for his nation many times.”
“Take him away.” The king waved his hand at me.
Desperation made my stomach turn violently as I jumped to my feet. Iker walked toward me, and I backed up, blurting out, “Sire, please! I know who his sorcerers are — I can point them out to you. If you let them think you are agreeing to their treaty, they’ll return your son to you. Then you can surround them and kill them all.”
King Hector held up his hand and Iker paused, though his eyes flashed ominously.
“What good is having a traitor for a son?”
“He is not, my king. He is loyal to Antion,” I said. It was the truth — Damian was loyal to Antion, just not to its king.
“Does he lie?” the king hissed, his voice low.
Iker gave me a look of pure disgust, and then turned to bow to Hector. “No, sire. I believe he is telling the truth.”
King Hector contemplated me for a long moment, his cold gaze calculating. Finally, he waved at Iker again. “If my son is a traitor, that would mean you are as well, Alex. And though you say he is loyal to Antion, I have my doubts. I’ll think on the guard’s words. Take him to the dungeons until I decide what to do.”