She couldn’t go down there. Not now.
Elora shuffled away from the door, clutching her hand to her chest as if the doorknob had seared into her. She backed away until she bumped into a small table, a decorative vase atop it. It wobbled and she spun around to steady it just before it could crash and shatter.
A light rapping came at the door not a moment later, making her jump and spin around again.
“C-come in,” she said, though she wished she could’ve told them not to enter. But her room was not permitted to ever be locked, so it would’ve been futile anyway. If the queen wanted her, she would have her.
This time, it wasn’t the queen to step inside though. It was a mousy servant who kept her head turned down, afraid of locking eyes with her.
“The prince has returned, my lady. Queen Signe requests you to join her in the throne room.”
Eyes wide as the moon and likely shining just as brightly under so much duress, all Elora could do was nod. But the servant wasn’t watching her. Elora couldn’t force herself to budge and obey the command anyway. She couldn’t go to the throne room. Couldn’t face Darius Graeme or the others. She was a coward. A shell of the battle-hardened warrior who had led hundreds into war all those years ago.
It was another life.
This was who she was now.
Who they had made her to become.
“I’m unwell,” Elora said hurriedly. “Please tell the queen not to wait for me, but that I will come when I am able.”
Concern bloomed behind the servant’s eyes, likely because no one wanted to relay a declined invitation to the queen, although part of Elora wondered if it was because she had been meant as the main entertainment.
“Very well, princess.” The servant scuttled out of the room, closing the door behind her.
Already Elora felt the panic settling. The tightness of her breath loosening. Her hands stilling.
Because apparently after decades of imprisonment, the onlyplace Elora felt safe anymore was behind a shut door, confined to a singular room, trapped and imprisoned.
Chapter 17
A Royal Reunion
KESTREL
Kestrel held her breath as she walked under the portcullis, entering Irongate for the first time.
It seemed a storm was rolling in with them, dark clouds forming in the sky overhead and casting a gloomy tone over the kingdom. Regardless, Kestrel still balked at the magnitude of the place. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it hadn’t been the sprawling city before her. Irongate seemed to be forged of steel spires and slate bannisters. Of formidable buildings and indestructible towers. The people walking the streets seemed to be hewn from the same sturdy materials their homeland was named after. Nothing but fierce resolve reflected in their eyes as Kestrel and their entourage marched by.
Every townsfolk they passed stopped what they were doing to pay their respect. As they passed the docks, fishermen dropped their entire catches just to salute their princes with the same stacked-arm gesture Kestrel had seen the princes and the knights use. Once they reached the trades district, blacksmiths stopped their clanging, wiped the sweat from their foreheads, and even with tools in their hands, they still mimicked the Irongate salute.
Thunder rumbled overhead, matching the kingdom’s heavy and serious demeanor.
Kestrel couldn’t decide if that was because everything was constructed out of the same grey stones and metal, or if it was because the people here lacked the kind of joviality she’d seen from the ones back in Mutiny Bay. They were all so…formal. So dutiful. Nothing at all like the rambunctious and wily folks who’d inhabited the Stinging Drip.
Kestrel felt herself shrinking inward, not wanting to stand out. Standing out, being too colorful, felt wrong here.
But shrinking inward didn’t seem to help her hide. The same labor-worn eyes that followed the princes marked Kestrel not a second later, and she was beginning to understand why. Everyone here looked so similar. Unlike Mutiny Bay, which had been an explosion of human differences and uniqueness, the townspeople of Irongate were all pale of skin and had blonde or light brown hair.
Kestrel’s bright orange locks made her standout like a mirage on the horizon.
Everyone stared. Everyone whispered. And it wasn’t until then, when she heard the snippets of hushed voices, that she realized just how distinct her hair was to the people.
“Corrupt Queen?—”
“Another traitor?—”
“—hang her and put this darkness behind us.”
