Chapter 9 Myla
Chapter Nine: Myla
The glass slider shakes as I knock on it again, my annoyance with my brother making me contemplate if wrapping my cloak around my hand and punching through the glass might be a better option.
My muscles ache, the adrenaline from sprinting through the forest and then the rocky tunnels connecting the palace to the mountain beginning to wear off.
They were thought to be sealed off, used long ago as a way for the palace inhabitants to escape should there be a siege, yet with the Spell now in place, the fear of an attack from other kingdoms is long over.
While all the passageways within the palace that lead to the tunnels are indeed blocked, there’s one exterior entrance near Navin’s bedroom balcony that remains untouched.
Likely due to the fact that it’s also near a ramp for dragons to land, giving a fae rider much quicker and easier access to mount.
Another minute passes, and I kick the slider hard enough that the glass rattles. Navin finally appears on the other side, grumbling as he runs a hand through his rumpled hair. The raven locks hang tangled past his shoulders, covering some of the colorful ink that adorns his muscular frame.
“Good morning, princess,” I tease, pushing past him once the slider is open wide enough.
“I hate you,” he grumbles, his voice still groggy with sleep. I make my way to his bathroom, unclasping the cloak and leather vest that’s strapped to me as I do. Though barely conscious, Navin doesn’t let the silence linger. “Long night?”
“Yes.” I ignore the weight of his gaze on me as he checks me for injuries, something he’s done since he inconveniently caught me sneaking in from a visit to Khargis one night.
My vest hits the floor of his bathroom, the hilts of my daggers tucked into the sheaths that line my ribs clanging on the stone.
I pull my weapons from the vest and grab the final two daggers from the straps at my thighs, piling them on top of a towel.
Navin tosses one of the spare nightgowns I keep hidden in his room in my direction before giving me the privacy to undress completely.
Once I’m changed, I gather up my blood and dirt-covered clothes and toss them into the wicker basket on the other side of the bathroom before carefully rolling up the towel and padding barefoot out into his room, my boots also in hand. “Thank you.”
He grunts, pulling a white tunic over his head. “I can’t decide if I should be offended that none of the staff have questioned why flying leathers that are clearly too small for me end up in my laundry so frequently.”
“Perhaps you aren’t as large as your ego would have you believe,” I counter, entering the sitting space that adjoins our bedrooms. Though he has the option to move to the heir’s wing of the palace—a wing much nicer and larger than this one—he’s opted to stay here.
The common area we share is large enough to fit a collection of sofas and reading chairs as well as a dining table set up at the center.
Bookcases filled with tomes on the history of the kingdom line most of the walls, only broken up by hanging tapestries and paintings.
“You’re unusually cruel this morning.” Following behind, he leans his hip against the back of a ruby-red chair, its gold stitching shining in the pale sunlight that pours in through another glass slider.
“Blame it on the fact that I’m not much of a morning person.”
“And yet here you are. Awake after a night risking your life for the scum of Khargis.”
“You act as if you did not train me yourself,” I counter, raising a brow as I mirror his position, leaning against a black velvet couch. That gets him to smirk, though it quickly falls.
“I could help you—”
“No.”
“Myla—”
“Enough, Navin,” I cut in, letting my voice drop as I glare at him.
I know he means well; he always does when it comes to me.
There’s a reason he took on training me, and he knows better than anyone else roaming this palace that sneaking into the city and finding those who deserve the end of my blade isn’t about feeding some aching thirst for blood.
At least it didn’t start that way.
It is a way to gain control. To help females and children who are already considered second-class citizens amongst males and free them from a hell that they have never deserved.
It’s the only form of vengeance I can claim, so I hold onto it with a white-knuckled grip.
It’s a version of freedom for me, and though Navin’s intentions are honorable and born purely out of the need to make sure I am alright, what I do in Khargis is mine and mine alone.
I watch as his words pile up behind his pursed lips, his hand twitching at his side while he bites his tongue.
Voices sound in the hall beyond our room, and with a sigh, Navin jumps over the back of the chair he was leaning against and transforms into the arrogant but aloof prince that he plays well. “I’ll buy you some time.”
I rush to my room, slipping past the door and shutting it just as I hear Leesi’s voice filter in.
“You’re up early, Your Highness,” she trills.
I’m too far away to hear Navin’s answer, but based on her high-pitched laugh, it was probably something flirtatious.
Though we grew up together, Navin is over a hundred years older than I am.
He was born just before the Spell was cast, his parents—my aunt and uncle—dying on the same day Shah did during the war.
My own parents made sure he was taken care of, a royal though not a prince by blood.
They officially claimed him as their heir the day after I was born.
It’s a role he’s never wanted, one that he knows should be mine.
But until I bond a dragon, I cannot attempt to claim it.
Crossing my bedroom, I pull open the double doors to a large wooden wardrobe, the front covered with an intricately carved dragon in mid-flight.
Pushing a divider that separates the hanging clothes from the cubbies below, metal clicks, and it pulls open to reveal a hollowed-out space.
Unrolling the towel on my bed, I gather the daggers and methodically lay them into the small hidden niche, pushing the facade back before shutting the wardrobe, shoving my boots under the bed, and heading to the bathroom.
I undress as the shower warms, tossing the towel and my nightgown into my own laundry basket before stepping beneath the water just as Leesi enters my room.
“Good morning.”
I don’t respond to her curt tone, dragging my soapy hands over my face and hoping that any lingering blood or dirt will be washed away before she sees it.
“You’re once again curiously up before the sun.
I know that you stay up too late to warrant such early rising.
” Rinsing my face beneath the water spraying from above, I work to quiet my thoughts.
She can’t know where I’ve been or what I’ve done.
She has no way of knowing. I’d prefer not to kill her, as hiding a body in the palace is a much more difficult task than doing so in Khargis.
“Perhaps you need more devotional time.” Blinking the water from my lashes, I turn to look at her.
She holds a bundle of towels, her slender face showing only a small hint at her age with the short wrinkles that surround her currently squinted eyes.
“As a proper princess would do. Not spend her evenings with her nose stuck in a book,” she continues, shaking her head.
Years ago, when the urge to venture outside the palace walls first struck, I knew I needed to come up with an alibi should anyone try to enter my room in the middle of the night.
Locking my door was the easiest solution, but it took a while to convince the head maid that it was simply because I didn’t want to be disturbed while reading.
It was a pathetic excuse, one that likely should have caused me embarrassment, but my reputation was already tarnished with rumors that were far worse than being a female who reads.
Reaching for a washcloth and the bar of soap, I turn away from Leesi’s glare as I begin to clean the rest of my body.
“It’s a busy day. Your mother hasn’t forgotten that you missed your last tea date with her.”
Unsurprising. My mother and I are not close, the fundamental differences in our ideologies of what females should be subjected to in our kingdom makes it difficult to connect as a daughter should to her mother.
She wishes for a daughter who is content milling about the palace and gossiping with nobles similar in age about the flowers or handsome nobles or whatever the fuck it is they talk about.
Instead, she is stuck with me and the taste of shame that my name leaves on her tongue.
Though the mention of the missed tea date reminds me of my upcoming meeting with the siren.
To have survived an attack by the foul creatures was, in and of itself, some sort of miracle.
But to then owe a life debt to one? Unfathomable.
Gaps in my memory when I fell from the sinking ship to when I woke up on the beach make my chest tighten in anger.
The wide-eyed stare of that red-headed siren, her freckled nose crinkling in confusion at my mention of the life debt oath I now owed her almost made me believe she genuinely had no idea what I was talking about.
But their kind is manipulative, just as their magic would suggest. And now I owed a fucking life debt to one.
“You’re as clean as you’re going to get,” Leesi says from outside my shower, the steam doing nothing to hide her judgmental glare. “Out.”