Chapter 62
Ifound a letter from King Tigous informing Rajim that my father and Dagen are responsible for the missing gems. I’m beginning to think my attacker is actually from Zo and that they want me and my brother dead. But why?
When my eyes open, I roll to the spot Dagen stayed and run my fingers over the smooth, unruffled bedding.
Dawn is breaking outside my balcony doors. The black, wintry gloom is lightening to silver when a knock comes from my door. White hair and a set of ice-blue eyes peek in behind the black slab.
I sit up. “Yisabell, what are you—”
She closes the door and runs over to my bed. Her eyes have dark circles under them and her cuts from my father’s whip are still bloody and uncleansed.
“I—my father was sent away on an errand again.” She looks down at her bloody rags then at me in my clean bed and scoots herself a step back as if she doesn’t want to soil anything. “I just—I don’t want to be alone.”
I hop out of bed, fresh anger boiling inside. “Come. Let’s clean you up. I have a salve that will help with the pain too.” I swallow. She’s in pain, because of me.
She shakes her head, tears forming. “No, I will be punished if I—”
Something snaps in me. “I will die before another whip touches you, I swear it. You will not be punished. Now, let’s go.” It’s now that Sorren’s words start to resonate. If it came down to protecting Yisabell from my father . . . I wouldn’t be strong enough, but that wouldn’t stop me from trying.
Tears stream from my own eyes as I crush her into a hug. She stiffens from the wounds on her back, and I immediately loosen my grip as she sobs on my chest.
I stroke her hair. “I’m so sorry,” I cry, pressing my wet cheek into her dirty hair. “This is my fault.”
She shakes her head. “Do not apologize for his actions, or my choice to take your punishment.”
Realms, she always sounds too old for her age.
I want to tell her that it wasn’t her choice, my father would’ve forced her anyway, but instead I say, “We need to be quick.”
My next duel is in less than an hour. I tug her to the bath and start the water. “What did you tell my guards you are doing here?”
“Dusting,” she says, eyeing the gleaming black tub.
I grab the enchanted salve that will help her pain. She shrugs off her rags and climbs into the tub. Her gaze keeps traveling to the door as if my father will bust in at any second and drag her out by her hair. A knock sounds from the door to the hall and she jumps, splashing water.
“It’s just Preysee,” I say.
Preysee’s footsteps enter. “My lady?” she calls from the foyer of my room. “I managed to grab some biscuits from the kitchen before your duel.”
She steps into the door of the bathing chamber and freezes, the plate of biscuits poised in her hands.
My eyes find Preysee’s. “Will you help me?”
She sets the plate down and immediately grabs a brush. Yisabell flinches and hisses as hot water and soap find each laceration, but she doesn’t complain. When she’s nearly done, I pick up her garb from the floor. It’s covered in dungeon grime and blood, not to mention the torn shreds from the whip on her back. There’s absolutely no way she is putting this thing back on.
I run to my closet and find a black dress. It’s black and plain, but it’s not even close to her garb. It will have to do.
Liha’s voice floats into the closet, barely speaking above the groans and whispers of lesser spirits. “I will not fail,” she mutters.
“Fail what?” I say, not caring if she sees what I am doing. My father isn’t even here.
“I will not fail.”
It’s now I notice how pale she is in my sense, how she blends in with the fragments and wisps around us. I try not to panic as I take the dress to the bathing chamber.
Yisabell’s eyes go wide, and she shakes her head. “No. I couldn’t—”
I hold the dress out to her. If my father saw her in anything but a slave garb, she would be brutally punished, but I don’t plan on him seeing her ever again.
“Preysee,” I say, and my tone has her freezing mid-movement.
She looks up at me. “Yes, my lady.”
“I need you to smuggle her out.”
Both Preysee’s and Yisabell’s eyes go wide. A trickling gold tendril touches my thoughts, not the golden spirit. This is inside me, a truth I can’t unsee, and I hate that they are stronger now, that I can’t pretend I don’t see them anymore.
Preysee’s been smuggling people to the rebel camps. That’s why she’s been late some nights and gone on her afternoons off. “The same way you are going to help Haren’s daughter.” Her eyes go wide. “Who?”
I point at her. “Now’s not the time to play dumb. Haren, the maid. You’re smuggling her daughter out to the rebels, and you’re going to do the same for Yisabell.”
Preysee’s lips tighten, but she nods. “I can do this, my lady, but time is pressing. If we want to get her out with Haren’s daughter, we need to move now.”
“But my father—” Yisabell’s voice cracks. “I can’t leave him.”
I bend down, level with Yisabell. “I vow on my life. I will make sure your father follows you as soon as he returns from his errands for the king.”
I look across the tub to Preysee and she nods. “I can get him out.”
“I will not fail you,” Liha whispers in my mind.
She is not herself and we have a duel in forty minutes.
A pounding sounds from my door. “It is time to depart for the Megadome, maid.” Brunar declares to Preysee through the door.
She bustles to the door and jerks it open, thoroughly scolding Brunar for rushing a princess.
I call to Liha’s power to summon my leathers on, but only a small puff of smoke comes, leaving my nightgown on the floor and me undressed.
I’m beginning to panic now. I grab the nightgown that still smells like Dae. I tuck it away before pulling down a fighting suit and yanking it on, loading it with daggers.
My fingers wrap around the hilt of my last dagger as I slide it into the sheath at my thigh.
Then, I pluck one of my rings from my velvet tray beneath my evening gowns.
Preysee is now soothing Yisabell by walking her through how she will get her out, assuring her she will be okay through the tunnels.
I bend down to Yisabell, who’s now dressed and sitting on my chair.
“This is for you,” I say, keeping water from my eyes. This might be the last time I see Yisabell.
“A spider,” she says, taking the gem-studded arachnid ring, and by the look in her eyes, I know she’s remembering our first real conversation, when she told me her version of the mother spider tale.
“You can sell it if you ever get in a bind—”
She shakes her head. “I don’t sell symbols.”
I smile and hug her.
She squeezes back so hard my heart might pop out of my chest. I let her go and tell Preysee, “Wait till we’re gone.”
She nods.
I don’t look back before I enter the hall. If I do, I won’t be able to leave.