Bound to the Shadow Prince

Chapter 64

Chapter

Sixty-Four

I ’m allowed a few moments alone to quickly dress, and then one of the men sits with me at all times. They go through our bags, rifling through the small amount of possessions we took with us from the tower. The magical globe in its case is tossed aside, the case emptied and one of the men throws his filthy satchel inside it. My knife is snatched and claimed by Braid-Beard, tucked into his pocket. I don’t say anything, because if I tell them that they’re magical instruments, I’ll be looked at with suspicion. They tear through everything we have left, looking for food or things to barter, and when the bag doesn’t provide much, they hunt through the house and then the rest of the village again.

There’s no sign of Nemeth at all, and my heart grows heavier by the hour.

I learn a bit about the men—the two brothers are Jarvo and Corlath. Braid-Beard is their unofficial leader, and his name is Saemon. Even though they’re wearing filthy guard uniforms, they’re not from the army. They claim to have found the uniforms “nearby” and borrowed them, as their clothes were rotting. Outside, they have two skinny ponies that eat weeds and moss and whatever they can find. It seems we’ll be riding back to Castle Lios.

Lucky me.

Saemon watches me closely as I give myself my potion. Out of the three, he unnerves me the most. He’s constantly calculating, gazing at me as if trying to assess how he can profit from my presence. I wish I’d dyed my hair before abandoning the tower. The dark locks give me away every time, because they’re proof of my Vestalin heritage…and the Fellian blood, it seems.

I contemplate giving myself a half-dose of potion to make the two vials last longer, but in the end, I go with the full dose. I’ll need my strength if we’re going to be traveling via horseback, and if we’re truly heading for Castle Lios, then I can get more of my potion there. So I give myself the full amount and fold my arm as I’ve been taught, so the potion will flood through my veins faster. My head swims with the onset of it, and I feel dizzy without anything in my stomach.

“Is it true that you’re cursed?”

I glance over at Saemon. “If you mean do I have the Vestalin blood sickness, yes. But it’s not catching.”

“Heard you’re barren.”

My ears prickle at that, and I glance at him from under my lashes. I don’t answer, wondering where this is going.

“Heard that you won’t get pregnant no matter how many men you take between your thighs,” he continues slowly. “That true?”

Ah, so that’s where this is going. I’m a woman alone, so I must need some fool with a dick and balls to take care of me, and naturally that means I’m ripe for the raping. “My, you sure seem to have a lot of information for someone who claims to have never been to the palace. Are you sure you’re not a deserter?” I smile sweetly at him. “I’ve heard there are ever so many of them roaming the countryside.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “You’re lucky you’re a princess. Lots of men have been looking for a woman to comfort them for a while.”

“Comfort” them? What about the woman’s comfort? It takes everything I have not to make a face. “I suppose I am,” I continue blithely. “It should be very upsetting to my sister the queen should anything happen to me.” I can play the game of veiled threats, too.

He picks at his nails with my magical knife, and I have to resist the urge to snatch it out of his hands. “How did you say you ended up out here alone?” Saemon asks again.

“I didn’t. How did you say you ended up out here?”

“I didn’t.”

Exactly. We stare at each other in a silent battle of wills, unwilling to bend.

“Get some sleep, princess,” Saemon finally says in a low, deadly voice. “You’ll need your strength for riding tomorrow.”

I wrap a blanket around my wrinkled dress like a queen and lift my chin. “I’m taking the bed. Wake me up when we leave in the morning. And if you find food, I expect it to be shared four ways, since you’ve eaten the last of mine.”

“Of course,” Saemon says. “But there’s no food anywhere. That’s why we’re going to the capital.” He pauses and slyly adds, “That’s why you’re valuable to us.”

I’m sure I am. If there truly is a food shortage, no one’s going to give their food to a few miscreants. They need me far more than I need them…and then I think about the last vial of my potion and how dangerous a position that puts me in. All right, if they’ve got horses and they know the way to the capital, I need them, too.

But what of Nemeth? Where has my Fellian mate gone? Why has he abandoned me?

Or has something happened to him?

I barely sleep that night. I’m too alert, watching the men as they take turns with the watch. I keep expecting one of them to attack me, or for them to murder me in my sleep because I’m the piece of dragon shite that left the tower and they’ve finally put it all together. I want to run away, to go find Nemeth, but they never give me a moment alone. There’s no opportunity to slip away. Dawn approaches, and when everyone rouses, they check through my bags one last time looking for missed food. When they find nothing, they decide to keep my dresses and belongings. “Just in case,” Jarvo says. “Might need to trade it at the next village.”

“It belongs to me,” I point out, irritated. “Why are you stealing from a princess?”

“Because we need it far more than you do,” Saemon replies. “And when you’re home, if you still want your sad, wrinkled dresses back, I’ll give them to you.” He smiles tightly. “Until then, they go into the pool of trade items if we run into someone that has food.”

“Great,” I say flatly. I’m as hungry as the next person. Hungrier, since they ate what I had and didn’t share it. I want to tell them to piss off and be on their way, but with one dose of potion left and no Nemeth, I don’t have a choice. I have to go with them. The unease I’ve been trying to tamp down flares, and I dig my nails into my palms. There’s no sign of Nemeth. He’d come after me if he could. Has he been hurt? Wounded? Did these jerks stake him outside of town like the Fellian at the other village?

For a moment, my chest fills with so much pain that I can’t breathe. I have to find him. I have to.

It starts to rain again, and my thoughts fill with panic. Nemeth can’t slide into shadows if there’s rain, can he? He can’t “slide” if there’s anything that could interrupt. What if he’s bleeding out somewhere? What if these men killed him and I’m going along with them blindly? We head outside, the rain drenching my hair in a heartbeat, and I look around for gray wings and sleek horns, but he’s nowhere.

“On to the horse, princess,” Saemon says.

“Actually, you know what? I’ve changed my mind,” I say, clutching the bag of needles and my last remaining potion. “I think I’m going to take my chances out here. Stay in this cottage for a while and see if anyone comes by.”

“You’re coming with us,” the bearded man growls, pointing at the soaked horse at his side. “Get your sorry arse over here.”

“I don’t know how to ride,” I protest.

“Then it’s a good thing for you that I do.” Saemon gives me an unpleasant smile. “All you have to do is hold on.”

I cast a worried look around the village again. Everything’s drenched in mud, but other than the rain, it’s all so very still. Deserted. A knot forms in my throat and I want to hitch up my skirts and just run for the hills, hoping that I’ll locate Nemeth somewhere.

But if he’s dead, where does that leave me?

Where does that leave our baby? I grab the front of my dress, wanting to touch my stomach to comfort myself, but knowing I don’t dare. Saemon watches me too closely already. My lower lip trembles. I don’t want to leave.

I don’t know that I want to even live if Nemeth has been killed. I can’t do this alone.

“Get on the horse, princess,” Saemon says again. “Whoever you’re waiting for isn’t coming back.”

That’s exactly what I’m worried about. I’m glad it’s raining, because it hides the tears that fall down my face. Stupid, dragon shite tears. I can’t cry right now. I shouldn’t cry. Nemeth would want me to be strong and go on. I clench my jaw, gazing up at Saemon’s hated face. He extends a hand to me to help me mount, and I see the gleam of my pretty, jeweled knife in his belt.

My knife.

It could tell me where Nemeth has gone and if he’s still alive.

My new goal in life is to get it back, no matter what it takes. So I smile sweetly and take his hand, letting him help (or rather, shove) me up onto the horse’s back. I sit up there awkwardly, the leather saddle and the blanket underneath it making a wet squishing sound when I’m seated. A moment later, Saemon is behind me, and he locks an arm around my waist.

I stiffen, because his touch is far too casual.

“Don’t worry, princess,” he says, and leans in close enough that I can feel his hot breath on my skin. “If you need someone to warm your bed at night, I’ll volunteer.”

Disgusting. I say nothing. Instead, I look down at the bite on my hand, the bite mark from when Nemeth promised to love and care for me always.

If he loves me, why isn’t he here?

The entire day passes without a sign of Nemeth, and my soul feels as if it’s shriveling in my body.

Nemeth would come for me if he could. That he hasn’t tells me that something is wrong. I picture him with a wounded wing, unable to fly. I picture him melting into shadows, only to disappear forever because of some spell backfiring. I picture him slain by the very men that hold me captive right now, and my insides are ice. It doesn’t matter that Saemon gropes me and whispers lewd things in my ear, things that he’d like to do to sully a princess. It doesn’t matter that the rain doesn’t let up for an instant, and the entire world feels like one endless wet landscape of mud. It doesn’t matter that my stomach growls and the lack of food—combined with the swaying of the horse—makes me dizzy all day long.

Nothing matters anymore. Nemeth—my Nemeth—is gone. I picture his face as he reads one of his boring war poetry books, and my heart feels like lead. I think of him, the heated look in his eyes as he pushes his knot into my body. The you can take it he always whispers to me when I squirm against him because it’s too much, the best kind of too much. I picture him a thousand ways, and they all make me hurt so badly that I can’t bear the pain.

And yet I have to, because I’m carrying his baby and our child deserves better than his mother giving up.

We pass through another deserted village, and I’m forced to stay on the horse with Saemon while Jarvo and Corlath search the town for supplies. They find nothing, but I’m not surprised. If this world is nothing but a swampy, muddy mess because of the goddess’s wrath, how can anything grow?

“We’ll find something at the capital,” is all Saemon says, and pats me on the shoulder as if I’m his answer to everything.

That night we bed down in a stable, and at the far end of the stable is the carcass of a dead, rotted horse. It smells so bad my eyes water, but it’s dry in here so they won’t leave. I vomit twice, then hunt my bag for an ancient sliver of soap that I packed and keep it under my nose, the thick perfume of roses drowning out the stench of decay. The men don’t seem to be bothered by it, and I get sick a third time when Jarvo pokes at the dead animal, trying to see if it’s edible.

The next day is even worse. The coastline starts to look familiar, and the villages get closer together. They’re all empty, and my heart hurts for the people of Lios. Did the war end them or was it the lack of food? What’s the capital going to look like with so many refugees flooding it? Erynne must be beside herself with stress. I picture my sister, but thinking of her makes me think of her orders to kill Nemeth, and it fills me with bitter anger instead. I think of Riza and Nurse instead, of their smiling, sweet faces, and I miss them both dearly. They raised me more than my mother did, and I long for my family.

Maybe Riza and Nurse will help me raise Nemeth’s child.

I’m yet numb as I sleep that night, and when I wake up before dawn, I find Saemon staring down at me with a wild-eyed intensity that makes me want to tug my dress higher over my breasts. “Been a long time since I’ve had a woman,” he comments.

“Been even longer since I’ve seen a gentleman,” I retort. “I’m still waiting.” I haul my damp cloak around my shoulders, wishing he’d go away. “Piss off with you.”

But he only laughs, and the uneasiness in my stomach grows. A bitchy princess attitude will only carry me so far, and if Saemon isn’t intimidated, I know it’s just a matter of time before he tries something.

I hope we get to Castle Lios before he gets brave enough.