by Alex Shobe
Her breathing slows to an even pace. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. You?”
She nods and gets to her feet before turning from me and stepping away.
“For a second there, I thought you were going to leave me behind.”
She pauses at my words and turns back around. There’s a slight smile on her lips. “For a second, I thought so, too.”
My mouth falls open and I give her an incredulous stare, though I doubt she can see it in the dark.
“I’m only teasing,” she says with a smile. The light of the moon glints off her teeth.
I grin then rake my fingers through my hair to free it from its matted mess. “So, are you going back to the city?”
Her smile fades. “What do you mean?”
I gesture toward her clothes. Even though the gown is ruined, it still is of a higher quality that screams nobility. “You don’t dress like you’re from the villages.”
She wraps her arms around her as though it’d prevent me from seeing her garb. “No,” she says simply, “I’m not going back.”
“You’re more than welcome to come back to the camp with me.” I rub the back of my neck when she tilts her head and presses her lips into a line. “I mean, at least for the night until you figure out where you’re going.”
She stands for a moment in the quiet of the night then drops her arms to her sides and nods. We take off toward the camp. Her footsteps follow close behind mine, the squish of the soggy branches flexing under our weight. We zigzag through the trees. Their shadows are casted on the ground like skeletal fingers under the moonlight.
“Down here,” I say over my shoulder. We near the edge of a crest before it drops down into a slope. She hesitates at the top, then together, we slide downward, the wet ground making our descent all the easier.
I fight back a smile as her nobility shines through once again, the utter disgust on her face at the mud that accumulates on her legs. She doesn’t let it slow her down, and soon we hurry between dense trees toward the cave just ahead.
I slow my pace as we near the entrance of the den. A soft orange glow pours from its mouth. My hand runs along the cave’s exterior walls, my fingertips grazing along a combination of textures, rigid rock and spongy moss. She stops at the entrance and wraps her arms around her stomach. Her eyes dart from me to the cave before turning her head to scan the woods.
“This is your camp?” she asks.
I shrug. “Good protection from the rain.”
She takes a calculated step inside, her clothes catching on the rocky wall as she moves along it. Damp hair sticks to her face and she brushes it away with delicate fingers. The same fingers that scratched my arms up in a desperate need to survive. The modest fire casts a golden hue on the girl, and for the first time, I see her. I really see her—the high cheekbones of her face, the elaborate gown plastered to her body from the rain, the dark hair falling around her shoulders like a cape.
“You leave to find firewood and come back with the queen?” Aiden startles her as he approaches from the far side of the den.
She glares at him, then at me, letting her eyes settle back on him. “Who else is in here?” She cranes her neck to look around Aiden and her gaze finds Kai lying in the darkness.
Aiden looks at me, his head tilted. I drop my eyes to the ground as all my memories of her, the way she sat unaffected in the monarch’s gallery, come rushing to my mind. My body tenses under my drenched clothes and heat churns in my core. After a moment, I raise my head and set my eyes on her.
“So, you’re the queen.” My words come out as more of an accusation.
She steps further into the cave, closer to the fire. Her gray eyes, the same ones I remember from long ago, level with mine.
“Not anymore.”
Leona
I sit with my back against the jagged wall, staring at the ground between my knees. The man who helped me, Colton, left to get more firewood. Hopefully he hurries. A shiver runs down the length of my back, but I’m not sure if it’s from the dropping temperature or because of the chaos burrowing holes in my mind.
The space between my lungs clenches into a dull ache that drops down to my stomach and ignites. The internal heat warms my veins and smothers the chill from my skin. I loosen my fists—when did they become fists?—and rub my clammy palms over the shredded fabric of my gown. My throat tightens and I want to scream out. Not because it’ll do any good, but because in this moment, it feels like just the release I need to keep the tears from falling. If there’s one thing I learned from Father, it’s that rulers don’t cry—it shows weakness. Then again, I guess I’m not much of a ruler anymore.
The moment when things all went to hell keeps replaying in my mind like a nightmare coated on the walls of the cave. Everything I’ve held onto for the past nineteen years has come crashing down around me in less than twelve hours.
I was born to rule, born to lead my people to a more prosperous life, or so I’d been told. Maybe Mother had a different outlook on my future than what the universe has planned. She was always the optimistic one, the one who convinced me that I would someday be a great leader. What a load of shit that turned out to be. How dare she fill my head with endless possibilities and the notion that I could be the queen Erenen has been waiting for. She instilled a sense of misguided strength in me and isn’t even here to help me navigate these uncharted waters.
I hate her.
My eyes sting and my chest hollows. I didn’t mean that. I push out a slow breath to bring myself from the brink of truly spiraling out.
I look over to the man sitting across from me and hope that he didn’t witness my near-meltdown. He’s leaning forward, his ginger hair falling in a fringe over his forehead. He concentrates his eyes on me.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
I clear my throat. Guess he did get a front-row view of my insanity.
“Yes,” I lie.
“Are you sure?”
I sit up straight and roll my shoulders back. “What was your name again?”
“Aiden Hastings.” Melancholy rolls off his tongue as he speaks his name. “Should I call you Queen… or Your Majesty… or—”
“Leona is fine.” There’s a tinge of bitterness in my tone. This is my new reality, so I might as well embrace it.
Nothing could have prepared me for today. When I set out to disrupt the stillness of my kingdom, I never thought in a million years it would cost me my crown or a dear friend her life. I never outright considered Gracen a friend, but in hindsight, she may have been the only one I had.
And now, she’s gone because of me.
A coldness trails down my spine and my body vibrates uncontrollably, no matter how tightly I wrap my arms around my chest to subdue the shivers.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
Calm down. Breathe. I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out. Luckily, Colton’s return veers the attention away from me.
“I managed to find a few good pieces of wood,” he says, dropping kindling into a pile in the center of the cave.
The cave isn’t particularly large, not the size and quality of living spaces that I’m familiar with, but it’ll do for now. At least until I figure out what my next move is.
Colton kneels beside the pile and Aiden crawls over to join him. Colton passes him a wedge-shaped rock about the size of his hand, and they begin pounding the rocks against chunks of wood.
The hairs on the back on my neck stand up. The noise echoes in the cave, amplifying the sounds ten-fold. My eyes dart to the cave entrance and then back to them.
“What are you doing? You’re being too loud!” I lean forward and shift so I’m sitting on my heels.
Both men pause mid-strike and look at me as though I’m the crazy one.
I nod to the entrance. “The guards are going to get lured here if they hear you.”
Colton shakes his head. “No, it’s clear out there. I checked—twice. Those men are probably hom
e tucked in their warm beds by now.”
I tilt my head and raise my hands in front of me, palms up. “Okay… Still, what are you doing?”
The men shoot each other a glance. Colton mutters something under his breath, to which Aiden responds by snickering.
How disrespectful.
I clear my throat. “Excuse me?”
Colton sighs and sets the rock down so that it leans against the wood he was working on. His gaze meets mine. “I said, yeah, you must be a noble girl.”
My face flushes with heat and I stare with wide eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means—” he hesitates and turns away from me. “Nothing. Nevermind.”
The tension in this cave thickens in a short amount of time. Ever since he realized my position, he’s been acting like a child. He has something he wants to say, so he might as well say it. I fix my lips to pursue the conversation, but Aiden beats me to the silence.
“So, what we’re doing is preparing the wood for the fire.” His voice is calm and steady, nonthreatening. “Here.” He tosses me a piece of wood. It bounces once on the ground before rolling to a stop at my knees.
“Feel how the outside is soaked from the rain?” he continues.
I turn the wood over in my hands a couple of times, my fingertips grazing over the cold, damp bark. “Yes…” I roll it back to him.
“Well, a fire won’t start with wet kindling, and the moisture shouldn’t have gotten to the inside of the wood yet. We need to break the logs open to get to the dry section.”
I nod, and the men resume their task. As Colton works, our eyes meet for a lengthy second before he snatches his gaze away to something else. It doesn’t take long before they build the fire back up. Hues of orange flames flick the air as wind tunnels into the cave and breathes life into the fire. Warmth kisses my skin and delivers a speck of comfort. My fingers comb through the length of my hair, detangling the strands the best I can, and removing as many dried mud clots as possible.
I look at the flames dancing violently above the kindling. The crackling sound it produces soothes away the bundled nerves I had earlier. I’ve never really taken the time to notice how relaxing a fire is.
My eyes focus beyond the fire at Colton. He’s sitting across from me, staring, and this time, he’s not averting his gaze when I catch him. I toss my hair back over my shoulders and rub my hands together to get rid of the dirt.
“What’s your problem?” I say, breaking up the relaxing atmosphere.
His eyebrows raise but his body remains stiff.
“Well? Spit it out.”
“You have a lot of blood on your hands.” He props his elbows on his knees and rests his chin on interlaced knuckles.
I flinch as though his words slap me in the face. “And, how is that?”
He gestures toward the man moaning softly from pain. “Kai probably won’t survive the night, all thanks to the entitlement of your nobles and their belief that we’re inferior to them.” Kai’s brawny stature is reduced to fragility as his chest rises and falls with constricted breaths. He lies on his back, sweat trickling from his forehead, an ugly scar tacked onto his face. “A lot of innocent men—and boys—have died under your and your family’s rule.”
“You’re talking about the gladiator fights?” My voice tries to rise in pitch, but I push it back down.
He nods once, never taking his eyes off mine.
“I disbanded it, didn’t I? How are you angry at me for that?”
So, that’s where I remember him from. His face looked so familiar to me, but I couldn’t pin-point where I’d seen him before.
“Your coronation was six months ago, yeah?” His question is rhetorical, and he doesn’t give me a chance to answer. “You’ve had plenty of times to end the fights before now. But instead, you sat casually by while injustice ran rampant in the kingdom. You’re no better than the men who chased you out of Demesne.”
My jaw drops. Usually, I’m used to dealing with the accusations and lectures from my Council, but this feels different. This feels personal. My heartbeat accelerates and I clasp my hands together to discourage the trembling.
I take a deep breath. “Yes, I could’ve stopped the fights months ago. But if it wasn’t for me, you’d still be locked up under the arena.” That last part came out harsher than I meant. “And what are you talking about injustice in the kingdom?”
Colton looks toward Aiden, shakes his head, then returns his glare on me.
“You’re really going to sit there and pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about?” The flames jump when he tosses a sliver of wood into the fire.
My eyes shift from Aiden to Colton and then back again. I search Aiden’s face for a hint as to what Colton is accusing me of. Aiden presses his lips together in a tight line, drops his head down, and fidgets with a loose pebble on the ground.
I inhale a sharp breath. With everything else going on in my life right now, my head aches from trying to figure out what he’s talking about. “I don’t know what you mean, so just say what you’re trying to say. I’m done with the backhanded comments.” My heart pounds against my arms as they lay crossed over my chest.
Colton places his hands on his knees and sits up tall. His skin has an amber glow about it, subtle shadows in the hollows of his face.
“For the past year, more and more of us have been taken prisoner for crimes we didn’t commit. Boys as young as twelve have been stripped from their mothers’ arms, accused of stealing from shops they hadn’t set foot in. No trials. No nothing. Just thrown in the dungeons.”
I blink. Blink again. My mind recalls the last six months of fights I’ve had to sit through—my attendance now more mandatory than optional. Though I’ve done my best to suppress the images from my memory, I do remember seeing more juvenile males than normal, most of whom died their first time in the arena.
He continues. “Do you have any idea how it feels to be forced to kill a friend? To know that if you don’t kill in the arena, the guards will be back to murder your entire family? You don’t, do you? How many times have you had to watch the life drain out of someone’s eyes and know that it was because you’ve just drove a sword through their heart?”
I loosen the tension in my shoulders and drop my hands to my lap. His words swirl around my mind, my brain struggling to make sense of what he is telling me. I want to ask if he’s joking, but the grim look on his face suggests he’s beyond serious and asking would only insult him.
“I didn’t know,” I say, my voice lacking strength.
“Wow.” Colton laughs. “What kind of queen doesn’t realize what’s going on right under her nose?”
“Colt…” Aiden says, noticing the anguish building up within me.
The heat under my skin is nothing compared to the fire separating me from Colton. My whole body is on the verge of combustion—all I need is a spark. Apparently, he’ll do anything, say anything, to meet this request. My fingernails dig into my palms as I ball my hands into fists. My palms throb, but I squeeze a little harder.
“All right. You made your point.” My throat is dry, the words grinding against my tongue. “Obviously, I didn’t know what was going on—that much has been made evident from me being ran out of my own castle.” My tone is rising, and I can’t stop it. “So, I’m sorry, all right?—I’m sorry that all of this happened. It’s not like I told the guards to say and do all the things that they did. If I’d known, I would’ve stopped it the moment I found out, but chances are, my assassination attempt would’ve only been moved up six months.” My pulse pounds in my ears and I can hardly hear my own words. “You don’t like me? That’s fine. Join the club. I have enough shit going on without adding yours to the pot.”
I stand up and stomp out of the cave, leaving scorch marks behind in my wake.
Colton
“Was all that really necessary?” Aiden asks as he flicks the pebble aside.
My face shrinks into a scowl. “She needed to k
now.”
“Maybe. But you could’ve cut her some slack. She did just get ousted.”
I shift my gaze from the fire to him. “Why should she have it easy? We’re the ones who suffered. She did nothing but watch.”
“Her guards just tried to kill her.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve tried to kill in cold blood. I’m sure it won’t be the last.”
Aiden runs his fingers through his shaggy auburn hair and sighs. “She did have a point though. After generations of upholding the fights, it was her who decided to put an end to them. She risked her life for us. And by giving us back our freedom, she lost her throne.”
I release a long exhale and pinch the bridge of my nose. I hadn’t thought about it that way. I have thirteen months of rage built up. Night after night, mental anguish bred into a hatred for all things noble.
“So, maybe I was too harsh?”
He nods his head, the corner of his mouth pulling up into a grin.
“Fine, I’ll go find her.” I roll my eyes. “She’ll probably get lost out there.”
“Most likely,” Aiden says with humor. He adds more wood to the fire and the flames devour the fresh fuel with no problem. Most of the remaining kindling has dried and we should have enough to last the night.
Kai starts in a fit of coughing, a ragged wheeze punctuating each whoop. Weakly, he rolls over to his side and coughs out a spurt of blood.
Aiden and I exchange a glance. It’s not looking good for Kai. Although we bandaged him up as well as we could, he’s bleeding from somewhere inside of his body. I shift to crawl toward him, to offer him something, anything, to ease his pain, but Aiden places his hand on my shoulder.
“I’ve got him,” he says, his voice grim. “You go find Leona.”
I stand and dust the dirt from the back of my thighs. At the cave entrance, I wait a second and glance around. She couldn’t have gotten far, but as pissed off as she seemed, it’s no telling how far her feet would take her in the heat of the moment. I look at the moonlit path in front of me and suspect that for a noble girl, she’d likely take the most obvious route. I start on the trail, stopping every few meters to check for any activity, but I don’t see her.
