Chapter 22 #2
They came to a stop, and she felt the canvas lift. A moment later, the covering was yanked from her head, and she found herself staring up into a face that had no place in this nightmare.
Aunt Diana?
She couldn’t say the name aloud, the silencing charm still keeping her tongue captive. She could only stare in total confusion at the hard lines of the other woman’s familiar countenance.
“Yes,” Aunt Diana said curtly. “That’s her.” She tossed a bag to one of the two men sitting in the front of the cart, the jingling of metal accompanying the motion. “Remember what I told you. Now get going. You shouldn’t linger.”
She made as if to throw the canvas back over Alina, but Alina struggled to a sitting position before she could, her eyes bulging.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Aunt Diana said tersely. “This is on your head, not mine. You’re the one who betrayed the family by siding with the prince.”
What? Alina’s mouth formed the silent word, and she knew her aunt understood.
She must be able to read the total shock on Alina’s face.
Surely none of this could be real. Her aunt couldn’t possibly be so offended that the crown didn’t help Alina’s father financially that she would turn to… whatever this was.
“Your father would be ashamed if he’d seen the way you’ve been behaving,” her aunt told her.
She strode up and down once along the small stretch of forest, then came to a stop in front of Alina.
“But of course, you don’t know what happened, do you?
” she said, her voice tight and angry. “You should. You should know exactly what side you’ve chosen.
The king was behind everything that happened to us.
Your father was a brilliant businessman, and he was punished for his success.
He had vision our king doesn’t have. He knew that the ban on trading with the continent was short-sighted.
He made our family prosperous by going around it.
And it was only the beginning. He discovered plenty of opportunities with his contacts on the continent.
We would have had wealth to rival the crown’s, given time. ”
Alina wouldn’t have had words even without the enchantment.
Her shock was too great. Her father had been trading with the continent?
The powers that once tried to annex all the Peninsula, and were supposedly causing trouble all over again?
What kind of opportunities had her father been offered?
It all sounded horrifyingly like treason.
“But of course, the king got wind of it.” Aunt Diana ground her teeth. “The crown didn’t know all of it. Just enough to censure him and cast doubt on his loyalty. He tried to just walk away, when he left the capital. But that wasn’t enough for them. The crown seized all your father’s assets.”
She shot a look at Alina, sitting bound and silent inside the cart.
“Why do you think you couldn’t even apply for a scholarship at the guild? The process would have involved looking into your family’s background, and it would all have been reopened.”
Understanding blazed in Alina’s mind. Captain Mitchell must have discovered all this.
No wonder he’d been suspicious of her. No one else in power at the castle seemed to even remember her or her family, let alone connect her with the murky allegations that had been made against them before they left the capital.
But Captain Mitchell paid more attention than most. He probably thought her there to continue her father’s unproved crimes.
And Benji had suffered for the reputation she didn’t even know her family had.
All of that was secondary to the twisted tirade still pouring from her aunt’s mouth.
“The crown literally stole everything from your father. And now you’re simpering at the prince’s feet like the tavern wench you’ve become.”
Alina flinched at the insult, but a bigger fear reared its head at the look in her aunt’s eye. She wrestled more violently, and with a sigh, her aunt flicked her hand toward the men watching from the cart.
“Let her have her voice. She can’t do any of us mischief now.”
One of them fumbled with an object, and Alina gasped as it released a recognizable trickle of magic that reached into her throat and loosened the blockage there.
How had he done that? He’d harnessed no movement. She remembered what Xavier said about players from the continent experimenting with ways to store magic. Were these men part of that? Was she about to be carried all the way to the continent? The thought was terrifying.
She cleared her throat, the discovery that she was capable of speech reminding her what she’d been determined to say.
“Don’t you dare hurt him.” Her voice came out a rasp.
Her aunt gave a laugh that made Alina wince.
“The prince? No one wants to hurt him. I have no loyalty left to this kingdom, but killing off the wayward prince would serve no purpose of enemies of Siqual. That would give the kingdom Prince Theodore as its heir, which would put Siqual on much stronger footing. That’s the last thing they all want. ”
“You’re wrong about him,” Alina whispered, tears stinging the corners of her eyes. Her aunt’s words were simply what everyone thought, but they were all wrong. The truth of that washed over her, bringing a wave of regret in its wake.
Aunt Diana ignored her words. “No, Prince Xavier is best kept alive,” she mused. “And hopefully more volatile than ever. I think your disappearance will help with that.”
“I’m your family.” The words were wrenched from Alina, tears trailing down her cheeks now.
Something crossed her aunt’s face, but she mastered it.
“Not anymore. Your father was my family, and then he died, leaving me to take on the burden of a child he never even wanted. He always told me you were too much like your mother, that you lacked the strategic mind he would wish for in an heir.”
Her words created no more than a dull ache in Alina. She’d never had reason to think her father held fondness for her. And his loss was far from fresh. Her aunt’s next words were much harder to take.
“You betrayed me when you betrayed him. I was angry when you told me that you were willingly working with the crown. Then when my sources told me that the prince was besotted with you, barely willing to leave your side, not showing the faintest interest in any other girls in spite of his reputation, I realized that what I’d considered an offense was actually an opportunity.
I tried to take advantage of it when you last visited me, but I underestimated his capability.
This time I was more careful.” She inclined her head toward her niece.
“You’ve handed me a way to strike right at the core of the royal family, and if you’d done it on purpose, I would have congratulated you with all my heart. ”
Fear surged in Alina. Her aunt’s contacts had reported that the prince was besotted? What contacts? Who in the prince’s trusted circle was carrying tales to his enemies?
“I don’t get any joy from your fate, Alina,” Aunt Diana said, her voice quieter now. “But this isn’t just about revenge. It’s about restoring the future taken from me and my family. A price has to be paid for that, and much as I don’t like it, I can live with it.”
With the words, she pulled the sack back over Alina’s head.
Alina fell back as the cart rumbled forward, not back to the road, but on into the forest. She didn’t try to roll out as the man from the city had done.
Some part of her devastated mind remembered that this was her mission, that she was on her way to help Benji.
But mainly, she was just numb, unable to comprehend the betrayal that had just been exposed.
Was her aunt the local informant this whole time?
What were the powers of the continent giving her in exchange? Gold? Promises about the future?
If only she hadn’t been kept in the dark about what happened all those years ago, she wouldn’t have been so vulnerable to this disaster. Xavier had been right. She shouldn’t have been satisfied with the vague information she’d been given.
Xavier.