“I don’t see anything,” Michelle retorted. “I don’t see any watchtowers.”
“Your eyesight is inferior to that of a fire dragon. The watchtowers are there. Why would I lead myself and two trusted companions into a frozen wasteland with no destination other than death?”
“Oh, so, I’m, like, not trustworthy?” Michelle shrilled. I whirled on her, but she didn’t shrink back, even though she was almost a foot smaller and less than half my weight. “You were the one who showed up at my house and invited me!”
“Because the damned Oracle forced me!” I bellowed. “Do you think I would choose, for a mission as crucial as the life of my beloved and the safety of my kingdom, the accompaniment of a spoiled, vain concubine?”
Michelle’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. Her eyes glazed over, and she settled back onto her heels and closed her mouth. She turned from me and continued to trudge through the snow.
I’d done it. I’d finally shut her up.
Nell
The masked guard carried me, my face beginning to thaw and blazing with pain, down a twisting flight of stone steps. I feared I was being taken to the Aena castle’s dungeons.
The walls were lined with torches, spears, and shackles; at least they were well-kept. No blood on the stones. No rust on the chains. You could tell that the recent residents of this home cared very much for its maintenance, comfort, and style—or perhaps they had imprisoned few people.
But you could not say that for the dungeons of Castle Aena anymore.
Each cell was filled with men, though I struggled to find any women, and none were beneath middle age. I was dumped outside of the cells, and manacled to the wall.
“You don’t need to do this,” I told the guard, panicking as he turned to exit the room. Would there be mice in here? Rats? My dad always said that when it snowed outside, it drove vermin indoors... I scooted closer to the wall, then away from it, thinking that perhaps they hid in the crevasses of the stone. “Do you want me to be a chamber maid? I can be a chamber maid!”
The guard exited the dungeon without glancing back. Now it was just me in here: me and the meager torchlight, and the other weathered, exhausted prisoners. Starving prisoners. Forlorn and doomed prisoners.
One of them called out to me. He was young and dark-haired, with a tattoo of a fireball on one hand. “Hey. Where did you come from?”
“I was kidnapped.” I might as well trust him; we were both prisoners now, after all. “I’m from Earth…” But I was beginning to think that this would be the country where I’d die. My eyes panned warily around the dungeon before returning to his. “I was kidnapped after passing through the portal, kidnapped by Lethe.”
“That cowardly, conniving—”
The dungeon doors behind us groaned as they opened, and we broke eye contact, lapsing into silence.
Five guards entered the room, each prying spears from off the wall as they passed them.
I swallowed.
“There she is,” the guard announced, indicating me. “I found her wandering in the west wing. She’s no chamber maid I’ve ever seen. And look—look at her hem, there. Singed. No ice dragon could get so close to a fire.”
“She looks like an Earth maiden,” a short, broad guard observed. They all wore masks, so it was only possible to differentiate them by their body types.
“Friends with a dragon, are you?” another of the guards asked. He was the tallest of them, and he stuck his spear into the spluttering flame of a torch until it turned a hot coral red. “Perhaps you’d be wanting to give us a name right about now, as to who let you into this castle and why?” As he spoke, the tip of the spear hovered closer and closer to my body, and I shrank away, trying to disappear within the folds of the dress.
“Prince Lethe Eraeus! He brought me from the ocean gate! He—he was keeping me as his prisoner!”
The guards shared a look amongst themselves.
“And why wouldn’t he tell anyone he had captured an Earth woman in our territory?” the blue-masked guard asked. “Why hide you in royal quarters?”
Because I’m the claimed mate of his sworn enemy, part of me answered. But another part of me wasn’t so sure. Why had he taken me to a royal chamber, when he could have just as easily dumped me in this dungeon? Why hadn’t he tortured me, or had me tortured for him, when the guard staff was clearly amenable to the practice? Why had he stripped the freezing wet clothes from my body and dressed me in rich blue velvet—the gown of a princess—if I was nothing but a prisoner?
“I—I don’t know,” I stammered. It was the only way that I could answer.