Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Why didn’t anyone find me the second you brought her down here?”
The distant sound of Brynne’s voice echoing off the dungeon walls nudges me awake. I bolt upright, the cloaks pooling at my hips, and the instant chill from the air brings on a full-body quiver.
“Weston, wake up!” I hiss. Pressing my hand into his chest, I jostle him slightly, my eyes straining to see through the dim light down the corridor. When he doesn’t respond, I glance back, and icy fear slides up my spine as I take him in.
Shoulders hunched, body turned toward me, serene and unmoving. My eyes fall to his body, lying completely uncovered by the cloaks that had been draped over me only a moment ago.
“Weston?” Worry coats my voice as I spin until I’m on my knees in front of him. I’m too afraid to check for the rise and fall of his chest. “Weston?” I say more urgently now, my hands finding his face. Bile rises in my throat at the chill that meets my fingertips.
No.
“Weston!” I grab his shoulders and shake him again, more forcefully this time as tears well in my eyes. Panic claws at my chest, and my stomach threatens to empty, despite not remembering the last time I ate anything.
No. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This can’t be happening.
We were supposed to confront my father, to figure out how to be together despite the futures already destined for us. He can’t leave me now.
“Wake up, please,” I plead, my hands running up the column of his neck, feeling for the beat of his heart. All the air leaves my chest when his body twitches, his head slowly turning to the side as his eyes flutter open.
“Gods, you’re alright!” I fall into him, pressing my forehead to his and taking his face in my hands.
“I’m fine,” he grumbles as he reaches up to rub at his eyes.
I lean back slightly, scanning his face, trying to convince myself that he’s alive, that he didn’t just freeze to death in the depths of my castle.
“You’re freezing.” I pull his hand to my face and blow my warm breath on his fingertips before rubbing my hands over them, trying to force warmth back into his body. “Why weren’t you under the cloak?” I reach down, grabbing it from where it lies on the ground behind me.
“You were cold,” he mumbles, and I fight the urge to scowl at him. Gripping his shoulders, I lean him forward and wrap his cloak around his shoulders, clasping it tightly across his chest.
“Get this door open now!” Brynne yells, and my head snaps toward the sound of her voice.
“Is that her?”
“Yes, thank the gods. You need to get up and move.” I grasp his hands, his fingers still like ice despite my effort, and he lets me help him to his feet.
His movements are rough as he stretches his arms slowly.
Hopping up and down, he tries to warm his muscles again as the clang of a full ring of keys sounds from down the hall.
“Hurry up, idiots!” Brynne yells, and it’s followed by the click of a lock and the loud creak of hinges from the thick wooden door.
I run to the bars, my hands wrapping tightly around the freezing metal, as I press my face into the open space between them, trying to get a glimpse of her.
Multiple sets of footsteps pound on the stone floor, and I hope whoever she brought with her is ready to deal with the guards who threw us in here.
“Brynne!” Relief floods my body as the footsteps get louder. “I tried to tell them they were making a mistake, but no one would listen to me.”
She will sort all of this out, and part of me doesn’t feel sorry for those who are about to incur her wrath.
She steps into the dim glow of the lantern, and the moment my eyes fall on her, the relief I felt falls away into a sinking pit of dread. Guthrie stands behind her, sneering over her shoulder, but that isn’t what makes my throat dry.
Brynne looks the same as the day I left, the subtle changes of the time that has passed hidden away behind the way her hair is pulled back, out of the way of her armor.
It’s the cold look on her face and her eyes zeroed in on me that makes her unrecognizable as the Brynne who told me she was proud of me almost two years ago.
Confusion rocks me, and I gape at her until she stops in front of the cell.
“Brynne?” I barely get the word out before powerful arms cinch tightly around my waist and yank me away from the bars. Weston drags me away from the front of the cell and pins me against his body.
“Weston, wha—”
“Her name isn’t Brynne,” he grumbles in my ear. Ice coats my skin as I look up at her in horror, the answering smirk all the confirmation I need.
“And who might you be?” she says, her voice different than I’ve ever heard it before. Cold. Malicious. Seething.
“He’s calling himself the First Guard,” Guthrie says behind her. “Goes by Weston.”
“Ah, so you’re Weston.”
My head snaps between the two of them as I try to piece everything together. Weston left Blackwood before Brynne had ever stepped foot into the castle. There’s no way he could know her. And the way she just said his name sounded like she knew exactly who she was meeting.
That could only mean one thing…
My stomach falls as the pieces fit together, the stories and details all working into one big picture, where I somehow became the center.
“Weston, how do you know her?” I whisper. My hands clench around his forearms as they still crush me to him, and I wait with bated breath for the answer I know is coming.
“This is who has been guarding you the entire time?” he growls, his volume rising as he shifts me to his side and steps in front of me, protecting me with his body despite his movements still being stilted from the cold.
“This is Brynne, the Second Guard. My guard.”
I catch his head shaking out of the corner of my eye as he stares her down through the bars. “Her name isn’t Brynne, princess. It’s Briony.”
I choke on the breath in my throat. My jaw falls open as I stare past Weston at Brynne. Briony.
“How do you know?” I say. My voice is barely a whisper as she continues to smirk at me, armor clinking as she crosses her arms over her chest.
“She was…there,” he says, his voice is strained, as if he is trying to say something about Dawnlin, but couldn’t. “We saw her, and then one day, a long time ago, she was gone. We didn’t know if something had happened to her or if she had decided to go home, but we never saw her again.”
“Is that true?” I gasp at her, but all she does is smile.
“You know,” she says with a tilt of her head, “when time is on your side, you can do whatever you want. There’s nothing stopping you. Basking in the sunlight, making friends, getting fantastic at handling a sword.”
The memory of Brynne showing up at the castle comes racing back to me.
A young woman walking through the gates, demanding to compete in the tournament where the winner is named the Second Guard to the princess.
The fury she caused in the other guards as she bested them, one after the other, despite them seemingly having years of training compared to her.
She appeared out of nowhere, claimed no kingdom, and immediately took to me, even in my young age.
“I don’t understand,” I say, shaking my head, but Weston doesn’t let me flounder.
“She’s with him, Lennox,” he murmurs, and the world I’ve known for years shatters around me.
There’s only one him Weston is referring to, and there’s only one way Brynne would have been able to leave Dawnlin.
Dane.
“This whole time?” The shock turns to rage as once again I feel like everything I’ve ever known has been a lie, but this time not one kept from me to protect me.
“From the moment I saw you, you were working with Dane? For what, Brynne? Tell me why!” My voice rises with each word until I’m yelling, my despair connected directly to the increasing tension in Weston’s shoulders.
“Why doesn’t concern you,” she snaps.
“Doesn’t concern me? You don’t think I deserve the truth? To know why you were lying to my face for most of my life? Why you were faking it all? What is the reason?”
“Because without me, there would be no plan, and you were too young and na?ve to realize it. I started it all. Someone had to be here to watch you, to make sure you were where you needed to be. It took time, but there wasn’t a single person in this castle who didn’t trust me, who didn’t listen to everything I said.
It was too easy to adjust your training schedule so you couldn’t protect yourself as well as you should have.
Do you really think I just forgot to teach you how to use a dagger?
That I let you focus on the bow instead of the sword?
It was all so easy, and you were just so needy.
“And then when I overheard the old man talking to you about Dawnlin, I knew it was time. You thought you were so sly, sneaking out of the castle like I didn’t notice. You got out because I let you get out. All because I knew who was there to meet you all along.”
Her words land like a blow to the gut, and I can do nothing but stare.
Brynne planned this, or at least my actions made me fall right into the palm of her hand.
Memories come flooding back to me. The way the halls were clear.
The way the kitchen staff didn’t bat an eye.
The way the guards never questioned who I was.
The way she just let me say I was going to find Dawnlin, and didn’t try harder to stop me.
She wanted all of this to happen.
“Half my work was done for me when the idiot king decided to isolate you. You were starving for attention. It was so easy to make you think somebody could be attracted to you, could love you—”
Brynne staggers back when Weston springs toward the bars. His arm shoots out of the cell and swipes at her, but she is just out of reach. Once she realizes she’s safe from his attack, she regains her composure quickly.
“Careful, Weston,” she says silkily, before the sound of her slapping the top of his wrist echoes through the dungeon. “That’s a good way to lose a hand.”