Chapter 30 Galwell
Galwell
His very first prison cell. How exciting.
Galwell found himself contemplating the many firsts he’d experienced in Mona’s influential company. His first wanted poster.
His first flight from royal guards. His first . . .
Yes, many interesting firsts indeed. Mona seemed to summon them when the two of them were together.
He inspected his carceral surroundings. Honestly, they were not as bad as he expected when they’d made this plan. A wooden
bench suspended perpendicular to the stone walls with chainwork. Polished obsidian flagstone floor. Candlelight sconces. The
room was windowless—they were several levels underground—yet even here, the echoes of the Brethren onstage drifted into their
confines.
Yes, Galwell found the conditions entirely acceptable. Perhaps he’d adapted to his days of villainy, he concluded darkly.
Or perhaps it had something to do with how hot-as-fuck Mona looked in shackles next to him.
Neither possibility was entirely comforting.
Fortunately, they were precisely where their plan demanded. While plotting the coup on Vestriya Now, the group had determined
this would be the fastest way to secure an audience with the royal guard—whose support they would need if Ario’s overthrow
of his parents went the way the heroes hoped.
The problem was, the guardsmen escorting them seemed entirely uninterested in the famous fugitives’ claims of an impending assassination of the queen of Mythria.
“In you go,” their unaccommodating guard stated while he shoved Galwell over the threshold. Mona, shackles removed, strutted
in willingly as the guard locked the heavy iron door.
Galwell spun and clasped onto the bars. “Just listen to me,” he urged. “Please.”
His jailer withdrew, pointing the metal key vehemently at Galwell. “You,” he spat, “killed Ezio. I don’t care what you have to say.”
Galwell spoke from the heart. “Sometimes the stories we are told are just that,” he said. “Stories. With the heroes and the
villains of someone else’s determining.”
He remembered royal engagements no one had ever really understood. The unknowable challenges of escaping death, of the sacrifices
heroes never shared. The hidden costs and complications under the narratives the realms willingly accepted.
“Don’t let someone write you into a role you didn’t choose. Ask yourself the questions you need to make your own choices,”
he urged their jailer. “Who was the dead man on the pitch if not an assassin? More assassins are here tonight. You should
ask yourself who paid for them. Who benefited from Ezio’s death? It certainly wasn’t me.”
He felt his words starting to work. What held the guard in place wasn’t head or heart magic. It was stronger—the truth.
Galwell gestured to his cell. “Look where it’s landed me.”
He decided to withhold accusations of the king and queen’s corruption, sensing they would not go over well.
Which would suffice. Sometimes change need not come in one decisive stroke. Sometimes hope need not roar into flame from the
first spark.
His crew would conjure that fire, completing the rest of their plan. For now, Galwell needed something other than conquering
force.
Reading Galwell’s mind, Mona interjected effortlessly.
“Ezio would have made a great king,” she said quietly.
Her earnest calm surprised even him. She sounded . . . like she meant her praise. Like even Mona the Merciless once held something
like hope for her realm’s salvation under just and compassionate leadership.
Her words reached their guard. He nodded, visibly emotional now.
Mona continued. “So would his brother.”
The guard faltered, confused. “Ario? He’s not likely to survive,” he informed them, repeating the scribesheets’ public line.
Mona shrugged. “Say he does. Say he were to come here tonight, completely healthy—I trust you would guard his life from all
attempts against him, no matter from whom?”
“Of—of course,” the guardsman responded. “Ario is a good man. Though, not sure he is king material like his brother.”
“People can be capable of more than you think,” Galwell replied.
The guard locked eyes with Galwell. Galwell hoped he saw courage in the man’s gaze.
“Whatever you see tonight,” Galwell continued, “decide for yourself what your part in the story will be.”
He released the iron bars. As he retreated to the wooden bench, where he sat heavily, new guards rushed in to confer with
their commander.
“Fights are breaking out,” one reported. “We’re needed in the audience.”
After a long moment, the jail guard pulled his eyes from his convincing convicts. Hardening his features, he led his men from
the cells.
Silence—broken only by the faint sounds of the Brethren’s upbeat music—found Galwell and Mona.
“Think we planted the seed?” Galwell asked.
Mona—clearly comfortable behind bars—stretched languidly. “I read his mind,” she replied, rolling her neck. “When he sees Ario, he’ll know he’s been lied to. He loved Ezio. He will want justice.”
Galwell nodded, hoping Mona’s confidence and their guardsman’s courage were enough. Not on their own, obviously. Heroism was
much like hardshoe sandwalker step-dancing, which, incidentally, Galwell had noticed on the castle-high scrolls advertising
Vestriya Now’s participants. It only worked if everyone—everyone—did their part.
With nothing to do except wait until River teleported in to remove them from their cell once everything else was in place,
Galwell sat in silence. Mona, however, would not keep still. She stood, brushing her fingers thoughtfully over the bars of
their prison.
“This reminds me of how we met. You behind bars. Me tormenting you,” she reminded him.
“I remember vividly.”
He did. He remembered the moment she first touched him, while he was confined in her club’s cage. How the dark lightning in
her fingertips had . . . changed something in him, in ways he could never have predicted or fully understood until now.
“Yes,” Mona murmured, reading his thoughts. “Yes, you do.”
“You said you wanted a man who could surprise you,” Galwell recalled.
Mona eyed him, leaning her back against the bars. He knew her well enough to know the rakish nonchalance was put on. Pretended
carelessness. From the opposite side of their prison cell, he could stare into Mona’s eyes and feel the want rolling off her. Could feel what she was daring him to do.
He rose to his feet. In the flickering light, he prowled toward her.
“Well, Mona,” he challenged. “Have I surprised you?”
Mona swallowed. He’d flattened her to the iron grate, forcing her chest up, her chin rising to hold his gaze.
“Constantly,” she confessed, breathless.
“You’ve surprised me, too,” he remarked. “Clare warned me you were horrible.”
Like he expected, Mona smirked. She sought the upper hand in owning her underhandedness.
So Galwell went on. “He didn’t warn me at all how utterly lovely you are.”
Mona looked to the side to hide her shock, though she could not hide her bashful smile.
It wouldn’t do. With gentle fingers, Galwell drew her chin up. He looked right into her cerulean eyes. “Don’t hide from me
just because I’ve said something you don’t know how to face,” he commanded softly.
“I—” Mona started. She fought the waver out of her voice. “No one has ever spoken to me like you do,” she whispered.
Galwell knew the princess of lies was being entirely honest with him now. It wounded him, with real, physical pain. The ways
this realm had made Mona Grandhart see herself were, he reckoned, perhaps the worst injustice he’d ever known.
Galwell the Great hated injustice, and when he encountered it, he fought it in every way he could.
“You’re lovely,” he murmured into Mona’s ear while he stroked her hair.
He felt her fierce posture weaken.
“You’re captivating,” he went on. He kissed her cheek. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever known.” He kissed her other cheek,
then her forehead.
Mona trembled under his gentle efforts. He may have been the only virgin. But she had as little experience as he in this—in
love.
“Kindness isn’t usually my kind of foreplay,” she managed.
“What’s foreplay?” Galwell asked.
Mona did not laugh, though he intuited he’d exposed yet one more sexual shortcoming in his innocent repertoire. “Want me to show you?” she offered instead, smiling with a shy eagerness he found breathtakingly beautiful.
He nodded. “Yes.”
The next moment, Mona was kissing him roughly. Galwell responded with pure instinct, pressing her hard up to the bars. Impulsive,
he thrust his hand under her skirts, desperate to touch her.
Mona was there, guiding him. When he found slick warmth, she bit down softly on his lower lip.
“There,” she urged.
He pressed harder, coaxing her, making her gasp into his shoulder. With deepening rhythm, he continued, until she was quivering
under his fingers, her whole body tremoring with every exhale. Suddenly she was frenetically undoing the drawstring of his
pants.
“Do you wish to have sex with me, Mona?” he inquired.
The question came out earnest, even polite. Mona laughed. She returned him the same simple certainty. “Yes.”
“Good,” Galwell replied. “Even though we are in the midst of a quest with very important stakes and this timing seems irresponsible
and selfish, I would like to have sex with you, too.”
“You don’t have to be a hero all the time,” Mona replied. With this, she untied her dress in one deft pull of the drawstring, letting the garment fall from
her entirely.
She was . . . perfect. No underclothes hid Mona’s soft, gorgeous skin from his hungry, devout eyes. The shadows of their cell seemed sculpted to
her, their inky fingers caressing her everywhere he wished to.
“Aren’t you afraid someone will come?” he whispered.
Mona shook her head, her dark hair sweeping slowly over her shoulders. “I’ll hear their thoughts approaching.”