The Ones Who Serve

by Jennifer Kenny

  Darius stood in the clothes he had been wearing on his arrival, not restrained in any way but the shock of all that had happened still sat firmly in his eyes. Looking around her, Evangeline could not think that it was merely due to Braykith. Whatever Darius had been experiencing back home for the past year had been nothing compared to what he had seen, or done, recently. His hair was longer then she remembered it being in the past, and there was a maturity to his stance which was new to see on her brother. She had only ever imagined Darius as a child, a younger being who ate up Baxter’s attention while she was neglected. The person before her was still young in many ways, but the beginnings of a man were starting to emerge. A cloud stole the shine of his blue eyes, and Evangeline swallowed hard, not wanting to know why.

  “Are you allowed to be here?” Darius asked although he suspected the answer to that question.

  “I brought you some food. I wasn’t sure how well you had been fed.” She offered the basket, but Darius refused to take it until finally, she answered him. “No one said I was not allowed down here, and the guard did not seem at all alarmed by my presence.”

  Darius nodded and reached for the basket. Evangeline removed the bread and gave it to him. “I do not want you taking risks for me Eva.” He said quickly, turning the fresh bread in his hands as he observed her. “I knew what would happen when I got here. I am surprised by how comfortable it is.” Darius bit into the bread and closed his eyes as he chewed. “You are being fed well here.” He tried to joke, but Evangeline would not let him distract her.

  “What is happening back home Darius?” she asked him. Even referring to Crimah as home had her paranoid, and Evangeline looked back to the door to see if she was being spied upon or was it simply suspicion that made her skin crawl. She shivered but ignored the goosebumps that were starting to appear on her arms. “Baxter left for Crimah only days after I arrived back here, but we have not been given any information on what he discovered.”

  He chewed, savouring the taste of the bread before he tried to answer. He also needed the moment to try and sort through his memories and create a narrative. His mind was racing between moments. The prisoner under the manor, and then the confrontation with Baxter were so jarring that it made his head spin. He was yet to truly understand what Grant had told him once the Braykith soldier had found him.

  Darius coughed into his hand and thanked Evangeline as she passed him a pouch of water. He drunk from it greedily and forced more bread down his throat before he could speak. “After you left, Father became worse. He was more confident than ever before that Braykith had become our enemy. Glais attacking him in the forest was proof of their betrayal.”

  “Glais saved me,” Evangeline interjected, and refused to get into the dynamics of how that made her feel at this time. Just when she believed she could move past their differences, something would remind her of Glais’ true predatory nature. Evangeline could never tell if there was a good deed that would excuse his dietary needs. “Glais was not the one to start that,” Evangeline told Darius, keeping her thoughts to herself on her personal feelings. She had never been close to Darius, but the curse made it impossible for Evangeline to open up to him now. “Did Barret explain to you the events?”

  Darius shook his head after a moment of hesitation. He had stumbled over Evangeline use of his father’s full name. He did not think he had ever heard Evangeline call him anything but Father their entire lives. “We did not do much talking near the end.” He admitted quietly.

  Evangeline was surprised since it seemed that all Barret had done during her youth was ignore her in favour of Darius. “Father had taken me into the woods and was willing to sacrifice my life for Mother’s return.”

  Darius nodded. “Then Father did not kill Mother?” he asked.

  “I do not think so.” Evangeline sighed, hating herself for not being able to have a more definitive answer to that question. It seemed unlikely, but Barret now was so far removed from the quietly powerful yet estranged man she had known her entire life. She was not willing to exclude anything. “I believe she died sometime during the evening.” It was the story she wanted to understand the most. “Barret had set a fire that could be seen from my window and would grab the attention of the best soldiers. He took us both to a clearing and summoned the dryad.”

  “A dryad?” Darius asked, and Evangeline hated that there were so many secrets between them, and she felt they had no time to discuss them.

  “We can discuss those details later.” She reached out and squeezed his hand, a promise that they would indeed have a chance to talk leisurely soon. It was a false hope, and Evangeline suspected that Darius knew that. She could not offer him a date for his freedom, or even if he would ever be free from these dungeons again. “The dryad told Father they could not do as he had asked, and he grew violent. If Glais had not discovered us when he did, then I doubt very much that I would be here now.”

  Darius only nodded, and his complete acceptance of her version of the truth gave her reason to pause. “What has Father done since I left?” Evangeline asked her brother. “I thought I would have some resistance in my story.”

  “He raged through the manor and ordered all of the Braykith riders to be kept prisoner and their horses housed securely in the stables. He took your ladies, and they were also held in the prisons.” Darius paused, what came to follow was disturbing to speak of. “I did not witness much of it,” Darius admitted to her. “But I heard things while he tortured them. First, it was the women. Father believed they would be easy to break, but when they died still claiming Braykith’s innocence, he turned to the men.”

  “Did any of them survive?” Evangeline asked, her stomach in knots as she tried to understand the final moments Darius had been forced to witness in Crimah, and how could her father ever do such sins against their closest allies.

  Darius shook his head. “I had been kept in my room and barely given enough food and drink for the day. Father would not let me out unless he commanded it, and those were very few and far between. He only let me out during those times he was in prison with the Braykith people. He wanted me to know what he was doing.” Darius got quiet and stopped even seeing the bread he had been holding. “I once believed he meant for me to die in that room,” Darius confessed, and Evangeline offered him a gentle squeeze of affection as she held his hand. Darius squeezed her hand in return.

  “Just as I believed I would never know freedom as I once did, Father came to me and told me that I needed to see his work. He said that I needed to understand why this torture was so important.” Darius did not share that he believed his father was hoping to find someone who would join him in the pleasure of a drawn-out kill. His father’s name had already been tarnished enough, and at this point, it was all just speculation.

  “There was a man,” Darius forced himself past his doubts. “James, I believe Father called him, and he was barely alive when I was obliged to look upon him. He was the last of the Braykith visitors, and Father thought that witnessing the death of so many of his brethren would give James more reason to speak the truth.” Darius looked down at the bread, but he did not eat it. His stomach was turning over itself. He would never forget the room he had been forced to observe.

  “Darius, what happened?” Evangeline gently urged him.

  Darius cleared his throat gently. “I fled.” He wiped at the tear that slid down his cheek with the back of his hand. “I escaped from the dungeons and the manor. I did not stop for anything, not even my horse. I fled, and I accidentally escaped right into the hiding soldiers. Baxter tackled me to the ground.”

  Evangeline tried her best not to shake her brother when he said the prince's name. There had been no news from Baxter or any of the men he had left with. She was not sure if she could stomach the things that Darius had witnessed, and Evangeline was less confident that she was ready for what remained of his story, but she needed to hear it. “Darius, what happened when Baxter found you?” She asked carefully. Evangeline kn
ew that she would not find peace until it was confirmed.

  “We tussled a little, but once my story was confirmed he gave me his horse to aide my escape. Baxter told me to ride for as far as the horse will take me and then wait for them. He promised to come find me after that.” Darius shook his head. “I only discovered when his second in command found me two days later. Baxter and Father are both dead.”

  Evangeline gasped and fell against the wall, unable to support herself. “Are you certain?” She asked, but she knew the question was useless. Darius would not lie about such things, and even less likely was for him to act this convincingly. What he said was as he believed, but Evangeline struggled still to accept it. She fought to breathe above the stench of the room, and Evangeline felt faint as she recalled Darius’ words once more.

  “As I was told, there was a confrontation between Baxter and Father.” Darius paused, and Evangeline’s eyes finally focused on his. “In truth, and I doubt his own loyal man would say this lie, Baxter got lucky, and Father was ignorant. Baxter killed him.” There was no emotion in Darius as he reported the acts that finished his father’s life. He found it hard to feel much of anything and was waiting for the time where he will finally discover the emotions that should gather with such news. “It was on Baxter’s orders that the men went to Crimah, intending to collect the horses and bear witness to the deaths in the dungeon.” Darius paused, picking at the bread he held but no longer eating it. Small flakes fell to the cell floor, but Evangeline reached out to stop him.

  It was not for fear of wasting food or bringing rats into his cell over the scraps. Evangeline did not wish to encourage him to continue because Baxter would always comment on her own habit of tearing food apart and never eating it. The memory was too much for her at this moment, and too personal to share with Darius.

  “Grant told me that the rebels attacked,” Darius said. “Men and women dropped from the trees, silent in their manoeuvres. Even their chieftain was unnaturally agile although he was quite a large man, and Baxter was dead before anyone realised what had come to pass.” Still, Darius’ voice lacked the emotion that should come with delivering such news, and yet Evangeline did not fault him for it.

  “Has Glais or Quintus come to see you?” Evangeline asked, her voice breathless and betraying how close she was to tears.

  Darius shook his head. “I was placed here and forgotten.” He went back to eating the bread, and Evangeline pulled herself away from the wall, so she stood on her own two feet. Her stance wasn’t strong, but she did not fall again. “Do you suppose they will believe me?” Darius asked her, his voice quiet, and Evangeline did not blame him for his tone.

  “As long as your story matches that of their own trusted man, then they will.” Evangeline tried to sound certain for her brother’s sake. “Darius, can I ask why you came here?”

  Darius shrugged, his shoulders sinking as he felt the doubt creep in again. He had fought with the decision on the trails, and now he was not sure if he had a good reason for seeking out the protection from Braykith after what his father had done. “I had nowhere else to go.” Darius looked at Evangeline, and this time he rejected her when she attempted to console him. “I wish I had something better to say about my motives, but that is the truth, Eva. The war had brought Braykith and Crimah together, but during the same actions it had ensured there were no other allies that Crimah could rely upon,” Darius said.

  “It was not the Braykith demands which had done that.” Evangeline was quick to defend Braykith for reasons she did not fully understand beyond a fundamental desire of survival. Like Darius, there was no home for her to go back too. The only reason she handled the news well now was that she had come to accept it when Barret had made it quite clear she was no longer welcome back to Crimah.

  Darius shook his head. “I do not blame Quintus for that,” he told Evangeline, so there was no misunderstanding between them. “All that had come to pass, from the promise of your wedding and including the deaths that occurred on Crimah soil, is a reaction to a commanding hunger for power that stirred within our father. Their own ghost stories for protection have limited Braykith. Father has destroyed every neighbouring province in his determination to control Zorelians’ threat.”

  She nodded gently, unable to meet his gaze as he elegantly summarised parts of her life which had seemed so daunting. “I do not think anyone will believe that you are a threat Darius, but I have a larger concern than that,” Evangeline confessed to her brother.

  “Oh?” Darius had not thought much further than coming to Braykith and surrendering himself to the King. Being put into a cell was not planned but wasn’t unexpected. The island continent they lived in belonged to three factions. Crimah was gone, and the rebels would kill him before daring to contemplate other uses for the former heir. Darius’ only chance for a life was to beg Evangeline’s father in law for leniency. It seemed that Evangeline did not think it would be that simple.

  “Once it is revealed that you had nothing to do with the death of Baxter and that riding his horse was a gift from him, and not a statement of victory or replacing him, there comes a question of what will become of you. I cannot be sure Quintus will be so welcoming of your presence here at court.” Evangeline pressed her lips together and did not add that she was also doubtful of what Glais would say. “I can be certain you will have my and Kyleigh’s support in staying here as their guest. But Quintus can be unpredictable at times.”

  Darius nodded. “I suppose that is fair.” Although he did not feel that way right at this moment as he struggled to see if he would have a future at all. He looked around his cell and realised this may well become the last home he knew. It disturbed him greatly that he even held the fleeting belief that a holding cell was preferable to the homeless suffering he may soon endure. He felt the weight o the bread between his hands and took a tearing bite although it was flavourless in his mouth. “Are things truly so bad here?” he asked.

  Evangeline could not tell him what waited for him here, the secret of the curse and the tainted looks from every resident of Braykith which had stalked her for months. She offered Darius the smallest of smiles, reaching out to wipe his tangled curls. They were damp and stuck to his face gently, the exhaustion of the ride and this treatment clung to him.

  “I will do all I can to keep you safe Darius,” Evangeline promised him. “Be it here in Braykith, or elsewhere, you will not be lost to the world. I can swear to that.” She hugged her brother, and they shared a rare moment of intimacy between them. For so long they had been separated, not only physically but mentally. Evangeline knew that it was Barret’s fear of her rightful heritage that kept Darius away from her. It was those doubts had grown into something dangerous. She wondered if Darius had the same concerns about her, and she looked at him as if she could see those signs.

  Darius offered her an awkward smile, returning her embrace.

  Evangeline believed she could save him, but it was clear that Darius was not feeling the same optimism about his situation.

  CHAPTER SIX

  S able had often wondered if her good fortune was only a trap which would eventually expose her for who she was. Sable was also sure that she was giving Evangeline far too much credit, and these two opposing sides of the same thought was keeping Sable sick to her stomach. There had been high demand in the castle since Darius’ arrival. New faces marked the halls, and strange eyes followed her movements. That unplanned scene was causing her to find evil lurking in every corner. Sable would start jumping at shadows if she did not steady herself.

  Sable reminded herself that it was entirely possible that Evangeline was merely a lonely and foolish girl, and she had never bothered to think that the rebellion would come so close to her sleeping quarters. She could not believe that Evangeline was playing a role so convincingly, Sable was certain. Almost certain and she recollected her thoughts regarding her friendship with the soon to be Queen of Braykith.

  To Evangeline, the rebellion was an idea w
hich affected other people and never herself personally. At least that had been the case until Darius arrived and forced Evangeline to re-evaluate all that she had thought to be true. Sable remained vigilant that Evangeline had no idea who Sable indeed was, but that belief was being tested. It would only stay that way if Sable continued to be careful.

  After Evangeline had left her for the morning, Sable had waited for a few minutes before she felt that it was safe to flee the rooms. She needed to send word to Christof on all that she had witnessed today, and every rumour that had persisted since Darius had appeared on Baxter’s iconic horse. While the castle was busy with the shock of seeing Evangeline’s brother arriving on the mount of their Prince, Sable could think of no better time to give her leader the happy news.

  She had written a hurried note that contained few words, but Christof was never a man who liked the waste time of pleasantries. Sable said that Darius was here, the rebellion was blamed for the Crimah take over, and that she remained within the castle close to Evangeline. Sable had paused over the note before adding a line that Evangeline had assigned her a prominent role that would allow her to get close to the royal family and their plans.

  Although the note seemed to be nothing more than a report, the message was crafted to stop any rumours that may come up from the rebellion itself. They had lost many strong men and women to the comforts and security of living in the city. Sable could not blame them entirely. She had quickly come to be thankful for the warm bed she slept in nightly, and the beautifully made dress Sable had been assigned to wear was made of fabric so soft that she had never imagined such items existed before. The food beat the meagre means they had been forced to live on for decades. Sable could certainly see why people with weak wills would settle here with the enemy.

  She never would abandon the cause of the rebellion, though. Although everything she had now was tempting, she would always remember the time spent sleeping in the rain, huddled against the dirty bodies of her brethren to stay warm. The food had not been glamorous, but it was enough to sustain them, and the discipline of the lifestyle kept them sharp. It was not these memories which kept her loyal. The realisation that all the comforts she had could be shared with those who were still struggling kept her within the rebellion. Sable did not want what was good for her, but what was good for all.