Sara Larson - Defy

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 — some one 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 them 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.