Chapter 4
four
Isahn is moved.
Bound, gagged, and blindfolded, Isahn was hauled from the basement and tossed into a crate on the back of a cart.
It must have been morning, early, with a chorus of birds singing at him from all angles.
Other noises met his ears too: the creak of a door, the thunk of a box being tossed up beside him.
Someone climbed on the box, and heels thudded rhythmically against wood, vibrating unpleasantly against his skull.
Tucked away, he used a cord of water to pull back the fabric from one eye, determined no one could see him, then freed himself from the blindfold and gag.
Isahn debated cutting through the rest of his bindings, but logic won out.
If one of his guards spotted him, all his good behavior would be for naught.
Breathing deeply as the cart rumbled along, the fresh countryside air, awash with roses and a hint of patchouli, assaulted him pleasantly.
With eyes uncovered, he could just see through the spaces between some of the better-worn slats.
Daylight filtered in around the shadowed bottom sitting on the crate.
The one with the raspy voice was right there, so close he would’ve been able to touch her with the top of his head—if wood wasn’t in the way.
Lost in thoughts of Mira, the confusing woman who hid behind practiced mirages and seemed meaner than she was, it took a moment for Isahn to realize the creaking and birdsong had gone silent.
Carefully, he sent a tendril of water upward, puncturing through the sound barrier he suspected surrounded them and pressing his magic against the slats of his box.
Voices flooded in—an argument already in progress.
“You did what?!” Odos’s gritty voice cracked, his frustration evident.
“They talked to him while we were out,” Tocco replied, soft and smooth.
“When did you learn of this? When did you two have time alone?”
“None of your fucking business,” Tocco growled.
“It doesn’t matter Bur— It doesn’t matter,” Melody cut in.
Isahn smirked. They were using code names, and Bur-something was Odos. What did that mean for George? Why wasn’t he traveling with them? Or was he along for the ride? Another swirl of rose and incense drifted through his box, and he flicked his gaze up as the woman above him fidgeted.
“Does he know who the fuck she is?” Odos’s voice carried real concern.
“Shut the fuck up, man.”
“No, you shut the fuck up! Waltzing around with Melody in front of me—”
“I’m literally right here,” the woman shouted.
Shuffles and thumps indicated a scuffle on the seat at his back. Definitely a love triangle. He snorted, then slapped his hands over his mouth.
“Stop it,” Mira scolded without moving in her seat.
“Ow! George, that hurt!” voice gritty, a man shrieked, and the people in the front of the cart went still.
“Deiwos, Odos!” Melody snapped.
George. Isahn’s pulse flickered in his wrists.
The constant rage whenever that name slipped out.
Mira handled mirages... Mira handled mirages, but she’d done something to Odos just then.
Something with touch magic. And Isahn only knew of one family with two forms of mental magic.
He could be wrong... information was slim.
Air squeezed through his nostrils as he breathed rapidly, jaw clenched tight. Her lush scent with its woodsy undertones swept through the box again, and Isahn wanted to scream. He’d thought maybe George and Mira were spending time together, like the trio in the front of the cart.
But he was wrong.
Mira and George were the same person.
Mind whirling through their magic, through what he’d experienced in the basement, through their nicknames, the pieces clicked together like a child’s puzzle.
How had he been so dense? Melody, like a song, was the sound mage.
Odos, like odor, was in control of the smells.
Tocco—touch, maybe—made Isahn think cuffs were piercing his wrists and the branding iron was burning his flesh.
And then there was Mira, Mira who showed up smelling like roses, who showed up looking like a different person every time.
.. Mira who’d just done something to Odos with touch magic.
There was only one important figure in Domos named “George” who’d command this kind of loyalty. Only one woman whose guards’ hackles would rise at any perceived threat.
Princess Georgetta Kastrumanos.
Shit.
The apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree, it seemed. Rumor had it she was being groomed to continue the king’s practices—mindfuckery, manipulation, absolute power at the expense of Domos’s people.
Isahn was absolutely and utterly fucked.
Afew hours later, the cart slowed.
“I don’t know how you got into Gramenia,” George’s raspy voice murmured through the slats, “but do not make a peep while we cross this border. Understand?”
Isahn grunted assent.
“If they find you, you’ll be working on a Gramenian farm for the rest of your life.”
She’d still expect him to be gagged. Unfortunately, Isahn didn’t think about that before he opened his stupid mouth. “And that would be worse than this?” he whispered.
The box was gone, and he was flying through outer space as her magic swept him away.
He imagined the effect was supposed to be disorienting, but he found it charming, relaxing, a break from his sad reality.
Coupled with the movement of the cart, it was like flying with the gods.
Isahn groaned with fake discomfort, just so she’d think it was working and maybe keep up the mirage a while longer.
“How the fates are you speaking right now?”
Oops. “Rubbed my head against the wood to get the gag off.”
“Shut up.” She turned her attention forward. “I’m covering us now. Tocco, you’re the dad. Hil, you’re the mom. Odos, we’re the kids.”
Hil? Oopsies, George. Melody’s name was Hil-something. Isahn didn’t even think the rest of the group picked up on the princess’s mistake. Or if they did, they weren’t going to call her out the way they did to each other.
“Why do I have to be a kid again?” Odos whined, his voice already childlike from Hil-something’s sound magic.
“Because I said so,” George bit out, her tone carrying an air of command, despite the fact that she squeaked like a six-year-old girl.
“Beciss,” the mother, father, and son in the front of the carriage all murmured.
What the fuck does that mean?
“Here, take the papers.” George handed something up to her friends. “No sounds,” she warned him in a whisper. “We’ll let you out on the other side.”
The border guards waved the traveling family through without issue. And once they were safely into Domos, they let Isahn out as George promised. His cramped legs buckled when his feet hit the dirt road, and a small wave of embarrassment swept over him. Who was he trying to impress?
“Don’t run when we unbind you,” Tocco warned, grabbing Isahn’s elbow and angling him toward the shady trees lining the dirt road.
“Where am I going to go? I’m exhausted, don’t even know where the fuck I am. I wouldn’t make it ten paces.”
The men chuckled.
Grateful for the moment of freedom, Isahn relieved himself as he took in his surroundings: lush green trees heavy with vines and moss, the balmy air growing warmer as they headed north toward the sea, birdsong, the scent of pine, and roses—always a hint of rose—curling through the breeze.
He wanted to look back at George, see if he could see her true face, but Isahn resisted, unwilling to risk the goodwill he’d built up with the group.
Although they blindfolded him again and re-bound his wrists, the guards—the same two men who’d abducted him in the first place—settled him in the cart bed beside the crate rather than inside.
It was a blessing he wouldn’t question aloud, though it got him wondering just what his captors wanted from him.
The cart creaked again as someone joined him, and he knew precisely who it was by scent in the air.
“Water.” George’s raspy voice tumbled his way.
Something hard and smooth knocked against his bound hands, and he opened his fingers as best as he could to accept the flagon. Then Tocco, Odos/Bur-something, and Melody/Hil-something hopped back onto the front of the cart, and they were on their way.
The princess’s knee bumped him as they rumbled down the dirt road, and her soft fingers brushed his when she took back the water and quickly thrust something else into his hands.
“Bread.”
“Thank you,” he mumbled.
“Are you going to tell us your name?”
“Are you going to admit yours?”
She didn’t ask him another question for the rest of the ride.
Strong arms hauled Isahn down what felt like an endless series of stairs with at least two landings as they dragged him deep underground.
The air cooled, taking on the faint mineral smell of stone cellars with a hint of herbs and olive oil. It smelled like wealth.
A door groaned open on old hinges.
“In,” Tocco commanded, pushing him forward before ripping off Isahn’s blindfold.
He blinked at his new accommodations. It was a proper cell with well-maintained stone walls and a cot with a thin mattress. A chamber pot greeted him from the far corner.
With his long locs swaying, Tocco reached down to grab a shackle connected to a long chain. It clanged when he yanked it, testing the bolt in the wall. Apparently satisfied, he cuffed Isahn’s ankle.
“Where am I?” Isahn asked.
“Somewhere safe,” Odos replied, not unkindly.
“For you or for me?”
Odos snorted, and the guards exchanged a glance but didn’t answer. The door closed with a heavy thunk, a flicker of distant light visible through the small iron-barred window. The lock scraped into place.
Alone, Isahn tested the shackle. With enough chain to reach the cot and the pot, he couldn’t get to the far side of the room without it pulling taut.
Fuck. He should’ve picked his shackles back in Sorhaven and fled.
Settling back onto the lumpy bed, he worked through what he knew.
Rumor painted the Blackmail King’s daughter as cruel, power-hungry, her father’s willing apprentice in tyranny.
His abduction and their torture attempts all tracked with what he’d heard about the Kastrumanos family at Selwas’s House of Lords.
.. except... the guards had been surprisingly gentle, even at their worst, and seemed to be softening more.
They’d let him out to piss, given him water and bread, and this cell was significantly nicer than that basement.
If George was truly her father’s daughter, wouldn’t she have left him to rot?
He couldn’t trust them. This could be a strategy to lull him into compliance before the real torture began.
The traitorous part of his brain countered: Or maybe she’s different. Maybe she’s nice.
He’d find out soon enough.
Eventually, bored of the steady drip, drip, drip of water from somewhere down the corridor, Isahn sent his magic out scouting.
There was a single round vent hole in the corner of the ceiling.
He snaked a thin stream of liquid magic through the pipe until he found what he was looking for: conversation.
“I still can’t believe it worked out for you two,” George rasped, her tone warm. “I’m so happy.”
“You’ll get out too,” a woman replied, sounding tired but kind.
“I don’t plan to get out. I plan to take over.”
Isahn’s mouth dropped open, and he sat up straighter.
An unfamiliar man replied, “As you should.”
Tocco’s dulcet tone followed. “It’s been getting worse. He’s up to something.”
“We’re figuring out what, while Adda finishes the pill. Then we can make a move,” Mel said firmly.
Murmurs trickled through his water.
“You know we typically attend the Great Assembly,” the unknown man continued. “But Greta can’t hide among the aides this year.”
Someone asked if he’d go alone, another asked when the babe was due.
A long pause followed, before the new man said, “I suppose I—”
“No.” The princess cut him off, her tone firm. “Neither of you are leaving Villa Manolay. I’ll exempt you from the Great Assembly. Mentagra? Does that work?”
Isahn didn’t know what that was, but gratitude colored the couple’s responses.
“Princess, you’re too kind.”
“It’s not kindness, Greta. It’s basic decency.” George’s voice held an edge. “My father requiring your attendance when you’re pregnant is preposterous. The whole affair is absurd.”
“You’ll make a wonderful queen,” the new man said quietly.
“Elio,” George began, deflecting and making some comment that she’d only have the chance if they could pull it off, all together.
Isahn’s mind raced, reassessing everything he thought he knew.
The conversation shifted to evening plans with the group trying to talk George into joining them in town.
“No. I’m tired from the journey, the mirages, the questioning...”
“Come on? Please?” Odos begged.
“Deiwa hathemi. No.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so!”
“Beciss,” the group chorused in unison, and someone laughed.
Footsteps scattered. Doors closed. And conversation moved beyond Isahn’s reach.
Heart pounding, he retracted his magic and blinked at the small window across the room, watching flickering light play off the rough stone.
The constant buzz of anxiety that had thrummed through him since Sorhaven faded away like a pestering fly taking off at long last. His likelihood of dying while captive had just dropped significantly.
These weren’t Gasparo’s people. They were leading a rebellion. Peros was mixed up in this somehow, and if Isahn wanted to figure out what he was planning, staying with George’s group, being open with them might be his best shot. He was fairly sure they were all on the same side.
Lying back on the cot, Isahn fixed his gaze on the stone ceiling, waiting to see what would happen next.