Chapter Eight
Dietan
My entire body throbs with rage, along with a wash of relief that I was here to stop it. The world is an evil place filled with evil men. I must get this woman to safety.
She’s easy enough to carry, and I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, holding her tight to ensure she doesn’t slide off my back.
I’ve thrown her over my shoulder like a sack of flour, the way we practice in battlefield training.
I know how awful this looks, but I can’t leave her passed out in an alleyway.
I saw everything. I was watching the barmaid during the festival, and she kept glancing my way as well, both of us making quick eye contact before averting our gazes, pretending as if we hadn’t.
She wasn’t one of the women presented to me, though she doesn’t appear to be married.
Perhaps she carries a torch for an absent love?
The thought sends a flare of power down my spine, so I force my mind to abandon it.
If this woman is a spy, she’s a clumsy one, but maybe the best spy is the one you’d least expect. Maybe that’s what she wants me to think. Spy or not, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I was attuned to where she was at all times.
And when her sister came up to my table to remind Jared that he’d asked her to save him a dance, I was looking her way just in time to see that sleazy marquis place his grubby hand over her mug.
I noticed just how strangely uncoordinated she became when she left the party.
With mounting dread, I watched as the marquis and one of his men followed her.
I didn’t know what that sick bastard was up to, but it was nothing good.
I was so blinded by anger, I could have reduced the entire town to bits.
I had to channel my rage into my fists so the Rings in my back didn’t rip Evandale apart and even then, it was close.
My knuckles burn hot, still slick with the marquis’s blood from where I struck him in the mouth.
His teeth took the full brunt of my punch, and I feel some satisfaction that the bastard will eat soup for the rest of his miserable days.
Some of these towns are in serious need of new governance. I’ll have Jared put that on the list of reforms I’ll enact when I eventually become king in Alarice.
The barmaid groans, and her tears soak through my shirt—or maybe it’s drool.
At least she seems to be regaining consciousness.
She’s breathing, but even as she struggles, she’s as limp as a wet washcloth.
I hold on more tightly. Despite my celibacy, I’m not immune to the pleasant feeling of her chest against my back and the backs of her thighs beneath my hands.
I adjust her higher on my shoulder, and she groans.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
The whole village is still at the party, but I can’t take her back there in this state. After what happened, I’m certain she’d rather go home. She grunts and weakly pounds my lower back with her fists.
“You can’t walk,” I say. “I’ll take you home. Where do you live?”
She moans and points a wavering finger down the street.
I shuffle onward down the main road. “Over here?”
She mumbles an incoherent response, and I think I hear something like “let me go.” She shifts again, stubbornly trying to wiggle out of my grasp.
“I’m not letting you down,” I say. “Not until you’re somewhere safe.”
“I fine,” she slurs as if she drank her weight in Alarician ale. “Lemme go.”
“You can’t stand, let alone walk,” I say.
“I fine,” she repeats. At least she’s stopped struggling. I sigh in relief.
A minute later, she lets out a soft, “Stop. Here.”
The house is, like all the others in Evandale, a pretty little cottage with flowers in boxes on the windows. A single candle flickers dimly inside. I carry her to the doorway but hesitate to enter with an incapacitated woman in my arms. Instead, I knock with a swift tap of my boot.
There’s a shuffling from inside, and the door opens, revealing an older man with a prominent nose.
He’s deeply hunched over a carved wooden cane, with wispy white hair tied in a low tail at the base of his neck.
He’s already in a nightgown, but he comes alert at the sight of the young woman I’m holding tightly. I’m determined not to drop her now.
“Hello, good sir. May I come in?” I say. “I believe this is your daughter?”
The man nods and doesn’t ask questions as he steps aside. He gestures to a small back room.
Inside, there is a single bed. Scraps of fabric hang from a rack, leaning against a table with a sewing station and a sack of straw stuffed in the shape of a woman—more scarecrow than mannequin. So, this is where she made her sisters’ gowns.
I carefully lay her down on her bed, atop her patchwork quilt, as her father lights her bedside lamp.
I stand back, watching as her father presses a wrinkled hand to her forehead.
“Aren?” her father asks. “Can you hear me?”
Aren. So that’s her name.
She groans and opens her eyes, but they’re unfocused. She tries to sit up, but her father puts a hand on her shoulder and pushes her back down.
“What happened?” her father asks, looking at me.
“She needed help,” is all I can say, even as the old man takes in my bloody knuckles.
His lips grow thin as he checks Aren, then nods. “We are fortunate you came to her aid. She needs water and rest. She will be all right by the morning.” He peers into the empty pitcher by her bed and starts to leave the room, shuffling on heavy feet.
“Please, allow me,” I offer, taking the pitcher from his hands.
I move through the dim house and find an ewer of drinking water on the humble kitchen counter.
After I stop pouring, I hear her father say distantly, “There, there. Get it all out,” followed by the sound of retching. I wait a moment before re-entering the room, giving Aren some privacy.
When I reappear in the doorway, Aren is coughing into a bucket.
She glares up at me under lowered brows.
She obviously still feels the same contempt toward me that she’s shown all day.
Does saving her from the marquis’ attempted kidnapping count for nothing?
She thrusts the bucket toward her father, and he takes it, dutifully.
“I’ll be back right quick,” he says to me.
I notice an empty washbasin on a small stand in the corner. I grab the washcloth folded over the rim and lean over Aren to wipe a bit of spittle from her mouth. “There you go. Feeling any better?” I ask.
Aren falls back onto her bed, groaning still, and doesn’t answer.
She pulls the covers up to her chin. I set aside the washcloth and busy myself by looking around her room.
The shadows from the lone lamp are long.
Her barmaid’s apron hangs from a small rack on the wall, a woman’s portrait beside it.
Her mother, I assume, because she looks remarkably like Aren’s twin sisters. But Aren has her eyes, I notice.
I take a seat on the trunk at the foot of her bed, surprising myself with my unwillingness to leave her just yet and tap my fingers on my knees to prevent myself from fussing over her where it’s clearly unwelcome.
The poison seems to be waning; she gathers up her blankets and curls into herself miserably, with her hair mussed and sweaty.
I’m relieved that she seems relatively unharmed.
“Why?” Aren finally asks, half groan and half cry.
“I imagine the marquis will be the only one who can explain himself.”
“No—not him. Why you?”
It takes me by surprise. “You mean, why did I help you?”
She stares at me, her eyebrows furrowed, and her lower lip juts out as she frowns, but she doesn’t answer.
“Why in Albion wouldn’t I?” I ask, shocked. I’m a prince, trained by knights. I would help anyone in the position she found herself in—it’s what any gentleman would do.
She doesn’t respond but continues to watch me, perhaps too tired to say much more.
She buries her face into the blanket just as the front door opens again, accompanied by her sisters’ laughter. I stand as their footsteps near. They come into Aren’s bedroom arm in arm, looking happy and gay, but stop short when they see me.
“Oh! Prince Dietan, why are you—” Ophelia starts, but then they see Aren lying in bed, pale and sweating, and rush to her side.
“What happened?” Sonja asks. Aren wants to rest, but her sisters fuss over her like a pair of hens. Ophelia brushes her hair back from her damp forehead while Sonja smooths the quilt anxiously.
I look back down at the dried blood coating my knuckles, and I scrub it away on my trousers. I won’t say anything, not unless Aren says it first.
“Just too much to drink,” she mumbles.
Perhaps she fears retribution from the marquis.
I will personally see to it that the marquis is severely dealt with.
White-hot anger flares inside of me simply remembering the way the marquis’s face danced with joy as his man’s hands dug into Aren’s throat.
The Rings in my back make my fingers twitch, and I’m forced to ball them into fists, lest I summon a gale in Aren’s bedroom.
“The prince escorted me home,” Aren continues.
Her sisters look at me for confirmation.
“Bringing her here was the least I could do,” I say, following Aren’s lead. It is, after all, half true.
Ophelia and Sonja glance at each other, saying more in a single look than any conversation, but they don’t press her further in her current state. Their father returns, carrying a stack of fresh washcloths. I know when my presence might be more distracting than helpful, so I excuse myself.
“Your Highness,” Ophelia says. “We are so, so grateful.”
“If anything terrible happened to Aren, we would never…” Sonja chokes back her words with tears.
“I’m glad she’s all right,” I say. “I’ll leave her to your capable care.”
They curtsy deeply, and I pause in the doorway as they go back to tending to their sister. “Do you need anything? What can we do?” Ophelia frets.
Aren rises on her elbows. “Actually, there is something. Girls, gather some of the herbs from the windowsill—chamomile, lavender. Steep them in water with a slice of ginger. It will help clear my head. And bring me my casket of dried remedies.”
I step out into the hallway, and after her sisters scurry past to collect the requested items, I quietly leave the house.
I can see the light still emanating from her room, the shadows cast by her family as they tend to her flickering on the walls, and I feel an ache I can’t describe—a longing for the return of something that was never mine to begin with.
They love her dearly, unconditionally. I wonder what that’s like.