Chapter forty-one
What is happening?
I attempted to free myself from the men who squeezed my arms tighter from behind me.
Why were they holding me down? Did they think I was trying to escape? But I was a free woman… Maybe they didn’t know.
Despite it being the palace stables, this place felt too small.
There wasn’t enough air and not enough room to move.
I was caught.
I asked the questions through my eyes to Maeri, who now had her hand trembling over her mouth.
She was crying.
Why wasn’t she helping me?
“I said enough, my love,”
Helon scolded, and Maeri flinched.
She took a step back.
Further from me.
Helon wore a crimson tunic with dark blue threads in the collar. But it was the way he touched Maeri’s cheek that caused me to feel a chill, yet there was no breeze.
Holy Erus.
Maeri’s lover was Helon… How did I miss this?
This was the man who bought her luxurious dresses and handed her monies.
The food I ate earlier with Nirelle and Sebry threatened to escape my stomach.
What did Maeri do? What has she done?
Maeri’s shoulders slumped as she started to walk away toward the back of the stables toward the next set of doors.
She disappeared into the shadows.
My mouth dried.
She did this to me.
Helon shouted at a nearby Strokan guard.
“Pull the carriages behind the stables! We’re to leave immediately.
Send news to Aris tomorrow morning that we left on an early departure.”
The beastly Strokan guard bowed his unwashed head and left the stables behind me in a grunt.
Helon grabbed the bag, my bag, that Maeri grabbed from my chambers.
He lifted my freedom papers in the thick smoke-like air.
“You think these are real? I knew you were a foolish young girl, but I didn’t think you’d be that stupid.”
He scoffed and shook his head, almost hiding his laughter from me, and what was left in my cracking heart disappeared.
What was he saying? Did Aris lie to me?
“You were just another woman twisted in his life—he gave you those freedom papers to have you.
You were a challenge to him.”
He sneered at me as if I were scum.
“These freedom papers don’t mean anything in Stroka.”
Stroka?
The sounds of a carriage pulling in front of the stables vibrated the walls.
They planned on taking me away.
They were taking me to Stroka.
The realization hit me instantly, and now I knew why Maeri was crying.
She did this to me. She did this to me.
I panicked.
Maeri did this to me.
The Strokan warrior who held me in place was nearly an entire head taller and pressed his grimy fingers into my waist.
“It’ll be a long journey to your rightful place, but it’ll be worth it.
You’ve caused enough troubles here in Siniya,”
Helon said as the Strokan guards yanked me to the metal carriage.
No.
Not again.
But no matter how hard I yanked myself for my freedom and thrashed my legs in the air for leverage, I was thrown into the metal carriage.
My knees scuffed unto the wooden planks below, and my head was hurled against the back of the cage, causing blood to trickle down to my jaw.
I coughed from the collision, and more blood came spattering through the rope between my lips.
The taste of metal filled my mouth. Before I realized what was happening, the portcullis slammed shut in my face, causing a loud ringing in my ears.
Helon stood a distance away, smirking.
“Funny how it all worked out.
My nephew will believe you ran away after receiving these freedom papers.”
Aris wouldn’t know I was taken.
I was taken because I was still owned by Stroka.
Maybe Helon was telling the truth, and these freedom papers were false.
Yet for some reason, I didn’t care if Aris never found out his uncle stole me.
I would have never forgiven him for leading a country into bloodshed.
Yearning for it, seeking it.
It made me sick.
I stared into Helon’s icy, vapid eyes.
The carriage jolted into motion before I was ready to let those eyes go.
I cursed those dark eyes into damnation.
A flicker of fear flashed across Helon’s face, as if he suspected the same.
He continued to the next carriage behind him.
Down the dark road, the Strokan guards rode the rumbling metal carriage towards Stroka and its venomous lands.
Through the starlight, as I sat at the back of the cage, I stared down the Strokans who controlled the carriage Helon rode in.
I could tell I made them uneasy, but I didn’t care.
I saw the fear in his eyes, and I was hungry for it.
Something was beginning to change me.
I could feel it.
There was a part of me that didn’t really care I was being taken away to the worst place in the world.
There was a part of me that relished in the fact I was going to be very far away from him.
And that maybe, just maybe, the worst possible pains would make me forget him.
Forget this country.
I might be a dreamer, but I was sure if I tried hard enough, I would forget about him, and what better way than a place where love did not exist.
I clenched my fists together, and I felt my chest tighten and harden.
I felt my heart harden.
Towards Stroka, towards Helon, towards Maeri, and towards the emperors that tugged a war between me.
Then I tore my heart into pieces so there was nothing left of him in me anymore.
PART IV
RELEASE