Chapter 27
‘What the hell are you doing?’ hissed Tain as we were marched through the woods.
‘Gathering intelligence,’ I replied.
‘Don’t you think we could do that without being captured?’
‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘But I need to know where they are taking Sno—the princess.’
Thankfully, not all of us had been captured. Cor and Sim had hidden, along with Breust. Tain, Weylei, Zeyr and myself were tied together and forced to march, surrounded by armed and armoured soldiers. It was overkill…okay, maybe it wasn’t. If we weren’t tied together, we could escape. Even being tied together, I was sure we could find a way to escape, but I had no intention of doing that. Not yet at least. Not until I knew a little bit more about what was happening.
There was one thing I knew. Tain, Weylei and Zeyr were not the traitors. Which left Cor and Sim. There was no way Breust was the one who had done this. I would bet my life on it. And if I had to choose between Cor and Sim, I would choose Cor. For no other reason than she was the coldest of the group. I didn’t know much about her, except I knew she wasn’t someone who should be crossed.
‘It’s Breust,’ Tain said under her breath.
‘What?’ I stopped and turned, startled by her accusation. The soldiers stopped around us and looked at each other as if they weren’t sure what to do.
‘It has to be him. It’s not any of us, and there is no way it is Cor or Sim.’
‘There is no way it is Breust,’ I replied, turning back around and resuming my trudging before anyone could poke a spear at me.
‘You trust him that much?’
‘He saved my life,’ I said. ‘He saved Sno—the princess’s life and taught her to fight.’
Tain snorted. ‘Or maybe he was just gaining her trust so he could give her the apple.’
I did not want to believe her. I did not want to see the logic of what she was saying. Instead of answering, I gazed ahead. I could just see the litter carrying Snow. Elil had shown no emotion at seeing the princess unconscious, no emotion except for a small tick at the corner of his lips that could have passed for a grimace, but the look in his eyes had told me something different. It felt like a small smile of satisfaction.
But then maybe I was projecting. I didn’t like the guy, and he had been my number one suspect all along. Why had he been in the garden with Snow on the night she was going to be kidnapped? Why hadn’t he tried to stop us? He had put up a token fight, but I knew his skills, and I knew he was better than the performance he gave that night. It was almost as if he was expecting the attack.
And how did they know to bring a litter to transport Snow? Obviously the spy was well informed. I refused to name Breust as that person. I would need to see irrefutable evidence before I believed Tain’s accusations.
I wish I knew what Snow had seen in the mirror. She denied seeing anything, but I knew she was lying. Was this what she saw? If I had known, could I have stopped this from happening?
It was too late now. It had happened, and the only thing I could do was try to find a way out. But first I needed to know exactly what Elil had planned. Maybe by him arresting me, I would finally find out the end game. I liked a good game of chess as much as the next person, but I liked it far less when I didn’t know who my opponent was and couldn’t see their face.
The whispers about Werifesteria intrigued me, but I didn’t think they were the aggressors. They absolutely had a right to demand compensation if the rumours were true, but I didn’t think they would do it this way. It felt too much like a long game, and each move had been made slowly and deliberately over many years. Perhaps the attack on Werifesteria had been the first move.
I stumbled but caught myself before I fell. I had never thought of it like that before. I had never considered that what happened in Werifesteria was the first battle. But the question was, was it a win for the aggressor, or had Werifesteria managed to rebut them? Until we got access to the sleeping kingdom, we wouldn’t know.
‘We’re not going to the castle,’ Zeyr mumbled behind me.
I had been too wrapped up in worrying about Snow and trying to figure out the traitor that I failed to realise we were not headed south, toward the castle. We were going north. Elil was taking us to Querencia.
‘Why is he taking us there?’ Tain asked. ‘Shouldn’t he be taking the princess back to her mother?’
They were my thoughts exactly. Why were we going to Querencia?
Now that I looked around and got my bearings, I realised we were following the border of Werifesteria. We weren’t close enough to see the giant thorn bushes, but we were definitely following a trail that ran parallel to them. It wasn’t exactly the long way, but it was a more indirect route. It would bypass any major towns and villages, and it would mean entering Querencia at the south-east corner where the three kingdoms met. Was Elil doing this so no one could report his progress, or was he doing it because he didn’t want the people to see Snow unconscious? I wanted to think it was the latter, but my gut told me it was the former. Elil didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing, which didn’t bode well for anyone, least of all us. If the queen didn’t know we’d been captured, then she couldn’t do anything to free us. My only hope was that Cor, Sim, and Breust were tracking us. I didn’t know who of the three I could trust, but at least if they were together, we might have a chance of escaping…as long as the spy among them didn’t expose them.
It was a long week of marching. My wrists chafed under the rough rope they used to tie us together, and my body was tired from being constantly on alert. The four of us had taken turns keeping watch at night so the others could sleep, but I found it hard to close my eyes.
Each night when we made camp, Elil made sure Snow’s litter was placed in the centre of the camp where everyone could see her. She looked so peaceful, and I wanted to believe that for her it was peaceful. I wanted to believe that she was asleep and dreaming beautiful dreams, but I couldn’t be sure. What if she was in a living nightmare? What if she was aware of everything going on around her but was unable to do anything? I couldn’t think of anything worse.
Elil had prepared well for ‘rescuing’ Snow. The litter was well constructed, and the bed on which she was laid was thick and luxurious. It looked like a bed fit for a queen, or a princess as the case may be. It was carried by four burly men, but it also had large cart wheels beneath it. The path we walked wasn’t a well-travelled path, but between the wheels and the four men, the litter navigated the uneven trail without too much disturbance for its occupant.
I wouldn’t have been too concerned about it—okay, it was disturbing that he had this thing prepared as if he knew what he would find when he raided our camp—if not for the glass cover that enclosed Snow. It was a coffin of sorts, and I hated it. I wanted to smash the thing to pieces. The way she was encased in the glass felt like she was some sort of display piece. An exhibit. The way Elil placed her in the centre of the camp so that she could be seen from every angle was also disturbing. Was she his prize? Is that how he saw her?
I’d known of his plans to marry her. The queen had wanted me to win Snow White’s affections before Elil could make his move. I’d tried, and failed miserably. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her, it was the opposite. I liked her too much. It was one of the reasons I had pulled away from her when we were younger and why I had discouraged our friendship. But the king and queen had decided that they would rather Snow marry someone within the kingdom and strengthen our borders from within than to unite with another kingdom. My objection wasn’t that I found the thought of marrying Snow repugnant, but rather that I wanted her to marry me because of love.
It sounded so antiquated and superfluous, especially now that we faced a war from an enemy who hadn’t yet revealed themselves. But what were we fighting for, if not love?
Tain stiffened beside me, and I slowly turned my head, raising an eyebrow at her. We had developed silent signals in the years our group had worked together, and to outsiders it might seem like we were reading each other’s minds. I suppose, in a way, we had become close enough that we practically could.
A subtle lift of Tain’s chin drew my attention to the edge of the clearing. I didn’t look directly at the place she indicated, rather using my peripheral vision to scan the trees. I saw the pale fingers of Cor as she tapped out a message on the tree. It wasn’t audible, but the combinations of fingers and their placement told me what I needed to know. They were following us, and she was asking if we wanted them to help us escape.
I slowly moved my head side to side as if I was stretching out a kink in my neck and then lifted my bound hands to my ear, tugging on the lobe.
No escape.
Wait.
Cor took a moment before acknowledging the command and withdrew into the darkness.
‘Sim is with her,’ Tain mumbled out of the corner of her mouth.
‘And Breust?’ I asked.
Tain gave one sharp shake of her head.
Was Breust really the traitor?
I sucked in a breath as a sharp pain pierced my heart. Breust had been my first recruit. He had helped me recruit the others. He knew everything about us. Everything about our plans. I had hidden nothing from him. Even when I knew there was a spy amongst us, I had never suspected him and even debated who it could be with him.
I turned to Weylei, who was leaning against the tree on my other side. Our shoulders touched, and I knew he’d seen Cor and the message we’d passed, but he remained quiet. Weylei didn’t ask much, and when he did it was usually after he had given it a lot of thought and turned it over in his head many times. It had taken a long time to convince him to join us, and I respected him.
I tilted my head at him, silently asking for his opinion. His eyes were closed and to anyone else he looked like he was asleep, but I knew he wasn’t. Weylei had this way of being able to take everything in without so much as moving a muscle.
He let his breath out slowly and the slightest jerk of his shoulder told me he was as confused as I was. But then he moved his hand, it was barely a twitch, but it told me he’d had his doubts about Breust. I wanted to flat-out ask him to explain, but I couldn’t. Not with so many ears listening.
I sighed and settled my back against the tree, tilting my head up so that I could see Snow’s face. I lowered my lashes, not closing my eyes completely, but doing enough to appear as if I had. I watched the princess through my lashes. As long as she was within eyesight, I had the slightest bit of ease. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had at the moment.