Sara Larson - Defy

I couldn’t stop thinking about Prince Damian. The way he’d looked at me, the things he’d said — even before we were abducted. How he’d claimed we were alike. I was terrified that I was letting my guard down too far with him — it didn’t matter if he knew I was a girl. Or that, if I was being truly honest with myself, I was growing ever more attracted to him. It was forbidden. I was his guard .

Rylan walked beside me, but we didn’t speak much, conscious of the ears all around us. We continued for hours, with no breaks, over the moist dirt and ground cover, skirting tree roots and branches, ducking when monkeys screeched overhead. At one point, a bush rustled beside me and I jumped back, my encounters with both snake and jaguar haunting my every step.

“Are you okay?” Rylan asked, reaching out to touch my elbow.

“I’m fine ,” I responded, yanking my arm away. “Just because you admitted you know I’m a girl doesn’t mean you need to treat me like one.”

The concern on his face immediately disappeared, replaced with a mask of indifference. He nodded and turned away without another word. He didn’t speak to me again for the rest of the afternoon. I wasn’t even sure why I’d snapped at him. I was confused and frustrated with myself. After so many years of never letting myself slip up, was I now expected to act like the girl everyone suddenly knew I was? With each painful, silent step, I felt worse and worse. It didn’t help that I was hot and sweaty and tired.

As the sun began to arc back down toward the earth, the boy’s earlier enthusiasm began to wane. He started whining and Lisbet had to keep calling after him, telling him to hurry up when he began to lag farther and farther behind.

“Jax, come on,” she said for the tenth time in an hour.

“But I’m tired ,” he moaned, and plopped down on the ground. Lisbet reached down for his arm, trying to pull him up, but he slipped out of her grip. “No. I’m not getting up. I don’t want to walk anymore.”

Rylan and I both stopped, causing the men who were marching at our backs to run into us.

“Keep moving!” one shouted, but I didn’t obey, concerned about Lisbet and her son.

I was about to say something to the boy, see if I could coax him to get up, when Prince Damian’s familiar voice came from behind, startling me.

“Jax, hop up off the ground. If you’re that tired, I’ll carry you on my shoulders, all right?”

“You don’t have to do that,” Lisbet said, but her eyes were full of gratitude as Jax jumped to his feet, his face eager.

“Really? You will?” He bounded over to Damian, who stood a few feet behind us.

I turned to stare at the prince in shock, unable to believe he was serious.

“Of course I mean it,” Damian said. “I don’t offer to do things I don’t intend to follow through on.” He smiled at the boy, a smile I’d never seen before — gentle and affectionate. Then he knelt down on the ground and helped Jax clamber up his back, until he sat atop Prince Damian’s shoulders.

“You’re so tall ,” Jax said in wonder when Damian stood back up. “I can see forever!”

“What’s the holdup?” I heard a shout from ahead just before Eljin stormed into view.

“Nothing. Everything’s fine now,” Damian said as he began to stride forward, with Jax on his shoulders.

Eljin stared at them in open amazement — amazement that I was sure was mirrored on my own face. Lisbet hurried to walk next to Damian, visibly relieved now that Jax was taken care of.

Rylan and I followed as well, a few steps behind them. I could hear snippets of conversation between Jax and Damian every once in a while, and even laughter. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever heard Damian laugh before. Watching him with Jax, hearing him laugh with the boy made my chest ache beneath my breastbone. It made me miss Marcel. And for some reason, it made me think of this morning, of the moment Damian reached up to touch my face.

Finally, when the sun had fallen below the tree line, the line halted and Damian helped Jax climb back down.

“Can you carry me again tomorrow?” he asked eagerly.

I didn’t hear Damian’s answer over the shouts of the guards next to us, telling us where to set up our tent. This time, there was no clearing in which to make camp. Instead, we had to pitch our tents in whatever space we could find. The jungle felt impossibly close, almost suffocating, as darkness descended. I sat in our tent alone, after Rylan had been summoned to help find dry wood for a fire.

When the flap opened, I didn’t even look up, expecting Rylan to return.

“I’d never guess you would be the type to sit around and mope.” Tanoori’s voice took me by surprise.

I jumped to my feet, ready to fight if she had come to take her revenge on me. But she stood by the entrance to the tent with her hands held up, empty. When I was sure she wasn’t armed, I relaxed slightly. “I don’t mope,” I said.

“Oh please.” Without asking, she sat down on the end of my bedroll. “We might not have been friends before, but I did know you for years, Alexa. And even though you’ve cut off your hair and you dress like a boy, I can still tell when you’re moping. You might as well sit down and tell me about it.”

I glared at her, but finally my exhaustion won out over my pride, and I plopped on the ground as far away from her as I could get. “Why would I tell you about it? You threatened to kill me last night.”

“Oh, that.” She waved her hand with a nervous laugh. “I wouldn’t really have shot you. I was still mad at you for that rather unpleasant interrogation. And allowing me to be sentenced to death.”

“And now you’re not?”

“Well, I suppose I am still, but I didn’t die, so … And I realize you were only doing your duty.” She glanced down at her hands in her lap. “None of this has worked out the way I thought it would. Besides, there aren’t too many people our age in the Insurgi.”

“Is that the name of the group you’re working for — the one that hides near the Heart of the Rivers?”

Tanoori looked up at me, her brown eyes bleak. “I never thought they’d ask me to try and kill anyone. But if I thought it would end the war, I’d try to do it again.”

“I’ll never let you kill him,” I said. “Whether you think it’ll stop the war or not.”

“You like him, don’t you?” Tanoori’s expression was innocent, curious. But I could feel an underlying urgency to her question. Was it her own desire to know or had she been sent by someone else?

“Until recently, I couldn’t stand him.”

“But now things have changed?”

“I … I don’t know. He isn’t the man I thought he was. I’m not sure what I think anymore. But whether I respect him or despise him doesn’t matter; I’m a member of his guard. I won’t let you hurt him.” I wasn’t about to tell her about my conflicted feelings toward the prince. I trusted her as much as I trusted the jungle at night.

“You’re not the only one. The sorcerer seems pretty intent on keeping the prince alive now, too.”

“So Eljin doesn’t work with you — with the Insurgi?”

She shook her head. “The first time I ever saw him in my life was when he saved it.”

I’d been sure that she and Eljin were working together. If not, then why had he rescued her?

We were silent a moment and I took the opportunity to study her. Her hair was thinner than it used to be. She was obviously undernourished: I could see the outline of her ribs beneath her shirt, and her elbows jutted out when she crossed her arms. I wondered what had happened to her, what had driven her to join a rebel group and become this strange, unpredictable girl.