11
A VOW OF TREASON
Davorin exchanges the cuff around the human woman’s wrist for one around her neck and guides her toward the prisoner carriages. I suppose calling themcarriagesis perhaps a bit misleading. They’re more like oversized crates on wheels with hardly enough space inside to stand. They’re hardly anything compared to the luxury the rest of us have been fortunate to travel by.
I feel a twinge of shame for the way we transport them, what little comforts we provide. But, with less than a fortnight to live, my father finds no sense in exerting his resources on frivolous matters such as affording humans better accommodations.
Davorin tosses the young woman in with the other prisoners—all except Fox.
At my father’s orders, she has a cart all to herself. I think he fears what she’d be capable of accomplishing if she had the ears of her fellow prisoners to whisper into.
If only he knew it wasn’t the other prisoners that he needed to worry about.
Once I’m sure Davorin is far away from here, and Caz and the others are still preoccupied with dismantling our camp and readying the horses for travel, I slink to my aunt’s cart and rap on the shuddering door.
Her weary voice answers from the darkness. “What do you want?”
It’s a simple question with a very straight-forward response. I’ve come to tell her I mean to help her escape, and yet I struggle to articulate it. I’m suddenly acutely aware that I am a noctis prince, one of the most powerful beings in the realm, and she is a prisoner we’ve left crippled behind bars.
“I…was hoping I might have a word.”
A derisive sound huffs past her lips. “I’m hardly in a position to deny anyone, let alone aprince.” The sting of her words cuts surprisingly deep. “Spit it out. What do you want from me now?”
All at once, a surge of heat and ice bubbles through me. The seething hatred in her tone, the palpable distrust. I hadn’t been expecting it, though I realize now that I should’ve.
“N-nothing. I want nothing from you,” I tell her, taking a seat on the topmost stair leading into the wobbling cart. “You’ve done far more than you should’ve ever had to.”
I think I hear her lift her head, her attention piqued, but she doesn’t utter a word. She waits for me to speak.
“You will likely not believe me,” I say, searching the surrounding darkness for any signs of someone listening, and finding none. I keep my voice to a low whisper, regardless. “But I wanted you to know that I’m done letting him treat you the way he does.”
“Letting who?” she asks, a challenge sharpening her words.
I glance around yet again. We are alone. Not even the other prisoners are within earshot, their cart resting a safe distance away, much closer to the circle of rocks where we warmed ourselves around a fire last night. Meanwhile, my aunt had been in her own cart all the way over here, far from the fire’s heat, likely shivering herself to sleep.
“The king.” Despite my resolute tone, my words make me shift uncomfortably where I sit. But sensing that her doubt has not yet been remedied, I continue. “It’s gone on long enough—it should have never even begun, and I’m—I mean…what I’m trying to say is—”
Nothing is coming out quite the way I mean for it to. I have no clear plan yet, and so the gust of a whim I’m riding as I contemplate my aunt’s freedom is a wild and blustering tempest of fear and doubt and agony that is impossible to see through.
I still have much to figure out: when to free her, how to get her away unseen, where to take her so that she’ll be safe. Most importantly to her: how to also save her sons, for I know that without them, I cannot grant her freedom, not in any true sense of the word.
And then there’s the matter of how I can do all of it without jeopardizing my own life.
Somehow, I eventually manage to find some semblance of coherency, the only promise I know I can make. “You and your sons won’t be our prisoners forever.”
“I’m well aware of that,prince.” She uses my title like a swordsman uses a blade, jabbing into my gut with a swiftness and being just as quick to withdraw so that the wound is as painful and deadly as it can be. “Why else do you think the greatKing Torhas decided to bring us to this year’s Hunt?”
My brow creases. I hadn’t yet truly wondered. Or at least, if I had, I simply assumed it was because he was too vain and paranoid to leave his precious cargo unattended in Neveridge while he was so far away.
Sensing my grappling, or perhaps simply lamenting in her own forthcoming demise, my aunt sighs. “No, I imagine we won’t be your prisoners for much longer at all.”
I want to tell her that she’s wrong. That my father would never stoop to something so low as butchering his own family. But deep down, I know she’s right. My father toyed with them long enough and to no avail. In time, overseeing her torture will lose its rush. Maybe it has already.
And just like that, I have my timeline.
“Before the Hunt,” I say, unwavering in my defiance now. “I will find a way to free you and your sons before the Hunt begins.”
Fox breathes another humorless laugh. “Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.”
