42. Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Two
Ayse
Ren raised his hands toward the sky, palms facing up, and flurries began to whip around me violently. Panic surged through me as the snow on the ground rose to mix with the snow in the air, turning the still night we’d entered into a raging blizzard in mere seconds.
Cold sank into my bones as I frantically scanned the frenzy of white surrounding me. The crown prince had vanished. Sweet earth and all that lives on it… this couldn’t be good.
Taking a reluctant step back, I tried to swallow down the bile that made its way into my throat. My back collided with a wall… except, it was not a wall. It was rock-hard muscle.
I spun, raising my dagger from its sheath and pointing it at his stomach.
Ren’s eyes glinted with an unsettling combination of amusement and something darker. Dread tightened its grip on me, and my mind raced through the possibilities of escape. I wasn’t sure there were any.
As the storm howled around us, Ren stood still, his deviant grin unwavering. Still aiming my dagger toward him, I stepped back to retreat into the blinding swirl.
But I didn’t. The snow shifted, forming a pocket of calm within the wild blizzard, encapsulating both of us. The contrast was stark—chaos swirling beyond the invisible barrier and an unsettling stillness within.
Trapped.
I was trapped in a reverse snow globe with a madman.
“We’ll have to make our own way out,” Ren asserted, that wicked grin persisting.
I narrowed my eyes at the elf.
“Make our own way out,” I parroted, my mind searching for a clue to what in the world was going on. His eyes sparkled, as if pleased by the confusion gripping me.
“How else do you expect you’ll be escaping tonight?” The prince arched one eyebrow, the rest of him keeping perfectly still. I raised my dagger slightly, keeping it firmly pointed at his chest.
“I doubt the dagger is going to do you much good.” The grin slowly left his face, but he remained where he was, giving me some space. “You’re holding it wrong. Stab something with that grip, and the dagger blade is just going to slip into your hand and slice you up.”
My head hurt. How did we go from escaping the palace to Ren turning against me to him teaching me knife safety, all in a matter of minutes?
“When using a dagger, you need to wrap your thumb around your other fingers.” His smile was completely gone now, replaced with his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed.
“And while we’re at it, since my little brother clearly forgot to teach you to defend yourself, go for the neck if you get a chance.
The base of the skull and the hinge of the jaw are less likely to be armored, but slicing into the side of someone’s neck will do just fine. ”
I stared at him as the snow continued to circle us, my eyes wide in disbelief as we stood in silence.
The prince crossed his arms, his foot tapping against the hard, icy ground.
“So are we still getting you out of here, or what? I know I’m easy on the eyes, and I hate to break it to you, but we don’t have all night.”
A flush heated my cheeks as I returned my dagger to its sheath. “I’m sorry-I… I think I’m a little confused.”
“The plan is to hide you in the blizzard. I’ll create a path above the castle and its grounds. That will allow you to cross over the hedges, trees, inner and outer walls, you name it. Just don’t fall off.” Prince Ren’s smirk appeared again with his warning.
My fingers found my ear, tugging at it absent-mindedly. “It’s just, why are you doing this?”
His smile froze, like he was holding it in place like a mask.
“Why am I helping you, you mean?” he asked.
Swallowing, I nodded slowly.
The mask fell. Ren’s eyes softened, his brows pulling down as his mouth moved to a subtle frown.
“Did Seok tell you why he was helping you?”
A vivid image of Queen Xia appeared in my mind, wielding her deadly light that harmed Seok and killed his disloyal fiancé.
“He did,” I answered solemnly.
“I was the one who caught Henry with another. I was the one who told my mother. I didn’t know she would react the way she did.”
The prince pulled his lips in between his teeth for a few beats before he continued.
“On top of that, I kept secrets from my brother, ones that I really shouldn’t have kept.
” He clenched his fists. “I paid off quite a few people to keep them quiet about his little visits. He has the right to make his own choices, but sometimes he acts first and thinks later.”
He paused to shove his fingers through his dark, untamed hair.
“Officer Marcelo found out Seok was helping you. He tried to blackmail him about it, sending a message through my brother’s attendant, but I intercepted and blackmailed the bastard right back.
Apparently, there were multiple reports of him following or inappropriately grabbing women over the years, but with no concrete evidence, nothing ever came of it.
I threatened to turn him into my mother if he revealed what was going on.
It seems that angered him further, and he took that out on you. ”
My head hurt, trying to process everything the prince was telling me. I knew Seok and I’d been discovered. But on top of that, some of the cruelty inflicted on me might have been avoided if the prince had simply been honest with his younger brother.
I had to remind myself that while the prince’s actions might have contributed to the chain of events, he wasn’t responsible for every choice made afterward.
Marcelo’s cruelty was his alone, starting long before I ever met Seok.
Similarly, Ren didn’t kill Henry—his mother did.
Assigning all the blame to one person oversimplified a situation and let those responsible for their misdeeds off the hook.
“I will never be able to take back what I’ve done, to fix what happened to my brother. To you. I’m not asking anyone for forgiveness. But I can help you now. So, I am.”
Not sure what to say to that, I merely nodded. At least he was trying.
Ren turned away, raising his hands once more. Snow flew in from the blizzard around us, compacting intricately to form a breathtaking structure before us. An icy staircase with curving railings led up to a bridge of translucent ice, hovering in the sky.
“Up you go,” Ren urged, his pained, tense expression discounting any playfulness in his voice. “And don’t worry, it’s not as slick as you think.”
Pulling my cloak tighter around my neck, dread twisted my gut, and I reluctantly stepped onto the staircase.
It made a faint crackling noise under my weight but held.
Slowly, I ascended the cold stairs, feeling more sure of their stability the further up I went.
I also noticed their surface was surprisingly textured, providing more grip than I anticipated.
Ren was right about them not being as slick as I thought.
Soon, the bridge stretched before me, its frozen handrails offering a fragile sense of security, snow churning around it like a ghostly tunnel.
The prince followed me up, towering beside me as I pondered whether crossing an ice bridge was really the smartest decision.
“Here.” He handed me a pair of leather gloves. I slipped my fingers into them to find they were lined with soft fur. They were too big for me, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to complain.
The sound of thunderous hoofbeats echoed in the storm, mixed with shouts carried by the wind. There could be hundreds of guards on their way to recapture me.
“That’s our cue to move,” the prince declared, pointing to where the bridge made its way from the palace to the outer wall.
Together, we raced across the icy trail, the ground below obscured by a sea of white.
I didn’t have time to think about how far up we were.
The ominous sounds of the guards grew louder below us, urging me forward along the frozen path, my arms out to either side, gliding along the rails for balance.
While Ren’s tunnel thwarted the snow from touching us, it didn’t help much with the wind or the frigid cold biting into my skin as we sprinted across the ice. The bridge seemed endless.
A sudden gust disrupted my balance. The ice beneath my feet betrayed me. Panic seized my chest as my body slammed against the bridge. I clutched for the edge but failed, my fingers meeting nothing but smoothness.
The bridge offered no salvation as my body slid across it until my legs slipped off the side.
Desperately grasping, my hands found Prince Ren’s as the weight of my lower body and full satchel combined pulled me over the edge.
Terror was all I felt as the world around me disappeared into a blurry void of white, the wind and blood rushing through my ears.
“Help!” My cry was swallowed by the wind.
The prince’s grip tightened around my wrists, his fingers interlocking with strength. “Didn’t I tell you not to fall off?!” he grunted.
With a powerful tug, Prince Ren pulled me back onto the cold bridge. The near fall left my heart pounding. We sat for a moment on the suspended ice, heaving white clouds of breath into the air.
Then, we rose and continued onward at a slightly slower pace, hoping to avoid another fall.
“What if they find the staircase?” I shouted, realizing that guards probably already had found it and were rushing along the icy path toward us.
“Don’t worry. I melted it.” The prince winked.
At least that was one less thing to worry about.
As I pressed forward, the looming silhouette of a giant wall came into view, its darkness contrasting against the swirling storm. My pulse quickened, along with my pace. I was so close.
The bridge appeared to extend over the edge of the wall, and I charged forward, trusting the prince to magic the path downward.
“Ayse, wait!” he called out from behind me, panicked.
Maybe I should not have trusted him to do that.
Clenching my grip on the railings and turning my feet sideways to slow me down, I saw why he wanted me to stop. Guards were hoisting themselves from the top of the wall to the bridge.