The Dothan Chronicles: The Complete Trilogy

by Charissa Dufour

  Bethany often found herself crying in her straw bedding at night when she thought of Gia’s fate. As a child, she would have given anything to wed a prince. Her older sister had been considered fortunate to marry a landed lord, with an independent fortune. Now that she had met a real prince, the idea of spending a lifetime with one had become the stuff of nightmares.

  There was nothing she could do about Gia’s future life. The best she could hope for was one day confiding in the other woman—but not until Gia’s position was established. Maybe with her help, Bethany could rise to some level of respectability. Of course, there was always Féderic’s offer to be his mistress. Bethany shuddered at the thought. Still, she had to be pragmatic, or at least that’s what she told herself.

  Gia and Féderic acted unlike any engaged couple she’d ever seen. They barely spoke to each other beyond the basic pleasantries. They would be spending a lifetime together, but they didn’t seem too concerned about knowing their partner. Bethany had a strange feeling they were both content to ignore the other’s existence except when absolutely necessary.

  When the course was served, the knight returned to his seat at the lower table, leaving Bethany to hide herself in the shadows and hope no one else noticed her absent mindedness.

  Cal left the slave girl in the shadows as he returned to the table with the other knights and courtiers. Whatever she’d been daydreaming about had been far better than her reality. Cal had seen an innocent smile playing at her lips. The expression had softened the wary mistrust he often saw on her face that made her features look hard and unnatural. She was a genuinely beautiful woman, even if she was nothing but skin and bones. When her brown hair was down, it framed her face and softened the gauntness of her cheekbones. Cal could imagine her with enough flesh, and it was a pretty picture, especially with the relaxed look he had just seen.

  He hated to interrupt her, but if she continued to miss her cues, she would receive a whipping. Though he cared little about her experiencing the necessary punishment, he didn’t want to have to give it himself. He’d miss the rest of his meal. At least, that’s what he told himself as he retook his seat next to Sir Rían.

  Of the other knights who resided in the castle, Rían was his favorite. The young man’s history was similar to his own, and the shy knight didn’t babble like many of the others. It produced a comfortable sort of silence.

  “Did you hear the rumor, Sir Caldry?” asked the king from his place at the upper table. Cal glanced up to look at the king on his dais. “King Middin’s youngest daughter has supposedly gone missing.”

  “His youngest?” asked Arabelle. “She would be, what? Sixteen or seventeen?”

  “If I remember correctly, my lady, she would be about twenty,” replied Sir Marcus as he took another long pull of his wine.

  “Ah well. If she has no husband now, it’s not likely to happen, is it?” responded the queen.

  No one responded. The queen had a fairly emphatic view of a woman’s sole mission in life— to get married. Cal understood her perspective, but that didn't mean it made for great conversation.

  “My lord, do you have any notion of these rumors’ validity?” he asked, hoping to guide the conversation away from marriage.

  Sir Caldry noticed more than one person sigh with relief when the queen turned to her husband to hear his response.

  The king chewed quickly before answering, “I have no reason to doubt them.”

  “Are they doing anything to recover her?” asked the queen.

  “I’ve heard nothing from the border to indicate that any effort is being made. Though I could be wrong. I must say, I would make an effort to recover her if she were my child,” stated Wolfric in a tone of voice that demanded complete belief from his listeners.

  The other diners nodded their heads in agreement.

  “I can’t imagine a father who wouldn’t risk any danger to retrieve his daughter,” stated Arabelle stiffly.

  Cal chose not to respond to this. He thought any lack of action quite honorable in its own way. It showed the king did not value his own family over the well-being of his subjects. Wolfric would risk his entire army to retrieve his child, but was one life worth hundreds? No. At least, not the lives of most of Wolfric’s children.

  Perhaps King Middin was simply a lazy ass, the knight amended, his eyes wondering back to Ann of their own accord. He jerked his attention back to the high table.

  “Of course, the Tokë people may not value their children as we do,” commented the king in a magnanimous voice. “Especially the youngest child. I know nothing of this Bethany.”

  “I met her once,” said Gia in a quiet voice.

  “Did you?” asked the queen, her voice bright with surprise and interest. “Is she very pretty?”

  “We were very young and she had promising looks, though, what has become of her since, I do not know.”

  The queen asked a few more questions about the lost princess’ skills with harp and needle, and Cal and the other men quickly lost interest. The knight’s eyes wandered around the room, finally resting on Ann. A strange new look had brought her eyebrows together as she stared intently at the stone floor. She had the countenance of one doing complicated sums in her head. Slowly, a deep blush rose to her cheeks and eventually covered her entire face. Whatever she was thinking, it was bringing forth strong emotions.

  Was she daydreaming again?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Bethany knew the knight was watching her, but she didn’t care. She had to get away before the tears broke through her barriers and began streaming down her cheeks. During her months of captivity, Bethany had forced herself not to think about her family and home, or the life she had once led. She occasionally slipped up, but overall she tried to avoid the memories; they made the here and now harder.

  But how could she escape her past while listening to her enemy discuss her family? She couldn’t, and the result would be hot tears. Bethany bolted down the narrow staircase, while those she bumped into cried out in protest. She ignored them, focused on nothing but getting to a place where she could safely release the moisture pressing against her eyes. Bethany rounded a corner, her left hand holding onto the doorframe to keep herself from sliding into the opposite wall. The seldom used passage led to an old storeroom, now too small to be of much use for the growing population. The kitchen staff used it to store broken tools that waited to be repaired. Bethany rounded the corner, ducked behind a pile of broken crates and slid to the floor, safe in the shadows.

  She felt as though Wolfric’s critical speech had driven a rod into her stomach. She hoped with every fiber of her being that her father was searching for her, but after five months it was hard to maintain hope. He was likely worrying about the war. Bethany knew in her head that her father would do the right thing for his people, but her heart wanted him to raise his army for her and fight to the very last man. She wanted to be home, where princes wouldn’t proposition her, slaves wouldn’t hate her, and knights wouldn’t beat her.

  She wanted to be home where she was loved, cherished, and praised. Where she wore pretty clothes. Where she had hordes of servants to do her bidding and meet her slightest whim.

  Could her father really just forget about her? Would he let her rot in captivity without exerting any effort towards her salvation?

  Bethany couldn’t believe it, and yet she had five months of proof to the contrary.

  The tears that had been sliding silently down her cheeks were no longer enough. A choked cry burst from her mouth, tearing at the flesh of her throat, and making her chest heave with exertion. Bethany wrapped her arms around her knees and buried her face in her arms. She sat there and cried her heart out in great, wrenching sobs.

  Often she had suffered the tears to leak out as she fought to find the peace of sleep, but never before had the princess allowed herself to be so completely crushed by the hopelessness of her situation. It was a relief and a torture, all at the same time.

  Cal watch
ed the slave girl run from the room and down the narrow hallway leading to the lower levels. The royal family was too busy eating and drinking to notice her hurried exit, but Cal seemed attuned to her every movement. After all, he had to be to keep her from doing more damage.

  He noticed when she irritably brushed her dirty hair out of her face, only to have it fall back across her forehead, or when she slouched into the shadows to avoid the notice of the slave master. He couldn’t help but notice her actions.

  Now, he wasn’t the only one to see her rebellion; Hepner, the steward, had seen her hasty retreat. Before the steward could pursue her, Sir Caldry rose from his seat and reached the door hidden in the shadows where he met Hepner.

  “I’ll deal with her, Hepner. You have enough problems with the king’s guests.”

  The steward hesitated a moment before nodding and returning to his post. Cal followed the sounds of annoyed voices until he stopped outside the small storeroom, where the kitchen staff kept those items that had no other home. From within its walls, Cal heard the sound of muffled crying.

  In the few months he had known the slave girl, he had never seen her cry, not even when she received fierce beatings for her misdeeds. She didn’t even voice her discomfort when he kept her up for days on end to cut reeds, but now, for some reason, she wept as though her whole world was coming to an end.

  For a moment, the knight wondered if this slave girl could be the lost princess recently discussed by Wolfric and Arabelle. It would certainly explain many things, but how could a princess become the slave of her enemy? It was ludicrous. Cal fiercely pushed the idea away.

  If she were a princess, the recent sympathies he felt for her would mean nothing. No, it couldn’t be true. Perhaps she was a Tokë, but not a princess. She certainly had the coloring of a Tokë. She was likely upset at the idea of her princess being in captivity, or maybe the conversation simply made her homesick.

  Cal quietly stepped away from the doorway. He no longer felt the need to punish her.

  Surely this is punishment enough.

  The knight shuddered, realizing just how soft he was becoming. It didn’t change his mind.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In a burst of frustration, Bethany rose to her feet and marched out of her hiding place. She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve, stormed through the corridor and burst out into the bailey. Bethany knew her face would be splotchy from crying, but she didn’t care. No one would be able to see her tear-streaked face that well, as it was already dark. The royal family had eaten late due to the present festivities. For their guests’ entertainment, they had hosted a large horse race, which Féderic won due to a great deal of fixing. The bailey was crowded with soldiers, slaves, and workers all scurrying about their tasks in an effort to return the castle to some semblance of normalcy. The race itself had finished just before the family’s dinner. In fact, most of the local horses used by the racers were still in the process of being watered and returned to their stalls.

  Bethany weaved her way through the crowd, using the practice of walking with purpose to keep people from giving her a new chore. Halfway across the bailey, Bethany felt a sharp stone dig into the thin soles of her battered shoes. Absently, she bent down and retrieved the offending stone. Just as she suspected, she felt a sharpish edge. It gave her the desire to destroy something, anything, in protest to her situation.

  She knew it wasn’t a healthy response to her problems. Bethany remembered her father reprimanding her for smashing an elaborate rocking horse after being told she was too big to use it any more. The memory flooded her mind.

  “Violence should never be our first response to our problems. It seldom solves them.”

  Bethany had pouted at her father, her young lips sinking into a grimace. She wasn’t sure what the big deal was. If she wasn’t allowed to play with the rocking horse any longer, why not have the joy of smashing it into splinters?

  “How could you have handled the situation better?” her father had asked.

  Bethany racked her brain, trying to think of an answer that would satisfy her father. Though demolishing the toy obviously wasn’t the right response, she wasn’t sure what a better one was. Finally, in an effort to end the confrontation, she shrugged her tiny shoulders and glanced at the door of her father’s office, a pathetic pout reforming on her young lips.

  “No, you can’t go yet. Not ‘till you answer the question,” said her father, knowing his daughter’s train of thought.

  “I could have asked for a bigger rocking horse,” she said, certain that such a request would be denied her now that she had acted out.

  “Yes, though rather greedy sounding, that would have been better than destroying something so valuable. Do you think it would have been better to voice your frustration at the situation with words, rather than violence?”

  Bethany shrugged again, determined not to see the wisdom of her father’s words.

  “A shrug is not an answer. You know that. Answer the question.”

  “Yes,” Bethany mumbled.

  The whole situation was getting annoying. She wanted to return to the nursery and play. Bethany kept her eyes focused on the floor in protest.

  “As it happens, part of the reason you are no longer allowed to play with the rocking horse is because we have purchased you your own pony. But now that you have proven yourself so unprepared for such a responsibility, you will wait three months before learning to ride.”

  Bethany’s small mouth had dropped into a wide look of astonishment. Her father couldn’t have been serious. There was a new pony in the stables, just for her, and she wasn’t allowed to ride it.

  “Can I at least see it?” she asked, thinking this was the best she could get until she’d spent a few days proving herself reformed.

  “No. You are not allowed to see it, or even ride with me or your brothers until three months have passed.”

  Of course, Bethany hadn’t obeyed the injunction. That very night she had snuck away from the nurse and ran straight to the stables. She was caught halfway across the bailey and another week of punishment was added. It happened three more times before she learned her lesson. She never had been a quick learner of life lessons. In the end, she had been forced to wait over four months before getting to meet her new pony.

  Despite the rough lesson, Bethany felt justified in her need for violence as she stood in the cold bailey of Wolfric’s castle. With the rock in her hand, she made her way towards the stable. After a few close shaves, she made it to the large stables, where Josiah was barking orders at his stable hands. The number of beasts tied to the rings was nearly double the castle’s usual capacity. Of course, the prince’s stallion was already watered, groomed, and stabled.

  Bethany slipped into the corner where the saddles were stored, took up an oiled rag, and moved to the prince’s saddle—an elaborate thing with gilded nails and accented with a lighter shade of leather. Bethany began to rub the oiled rag in circles, hoping she was doing it correctly. While her left hand made careful circles on the fine leather, her right hand slid up under the skirt, found the cinch, and began sliding the sharpened edge of the rock against the leather. If she could weaken it enough, it would give way while the prince rode—assuming no one checked it too thoroughly.

  After twenty minutes of carefully rubbing, Bethany flipped the skirt up and checked her work. Sure enough, the leather was thinner than it should be for hard use. Now all she could do was hope no one would notice it until it was too late.

  Bethany carefully left the stable, still acting as though she was on a mission, and returned to the slave dormitory. That night, she slept with the rock in her closed fist.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Pelor carefully lowered himself onto the bench and rested his injured foot on the stool provided. It had been nearly a month since the wolf attack—or rather since he attacked the wolves. His foot was still sore and prone to swelling, but he was able to walk short distances on it. His left hand was ano
ther matter. Gavius’ wife was determined to save the fingers. She had reattached them, but the healing process required that he didn’t use the hand. It was bandaged around a thin board. The bandaging itched, and he was continually being reprimanded for taking it off. Pelor was all for just removing the stupid fingers, but the women were determined to “preserve his good looks.”

  The sellsword tried to focus on his dinner while his hand itched. Gavius came to his seat and slumped down, while his wife placed a steaming bowl of stew in front of him.

  This family seems to really like stew, he thought sullenly to himself.

  The men ate in silence, while the women fetched their own food. Once the others were seated, Gavius swallowed his bite and spoke:

  “So, I suppose you want to know where that slave boy is. Jos is it?”

  Pelor grunted before swallowing his own, half chewed food. “What’s the point?” he asked after clearing his throat with a large gulp of beer. “The trail’s gone cold.”

  Gavius shook his head. “You only think it’s gone cold, lad.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Pelor.

  “Jos has been here, in the village, the whole time.”

  “He what?” snapped Pelor as he tried to climb to his feet in outrage.

  The end result was a bashed toe, a spilled drink, and Pelor reseated, trying his best not to black out. Over all, it was not his most impressive moment. Dana and her mother crowded around him, trying to ease his pain. Mostly though, their efforts only annoyed him. He brushed Dana aside, who was trying to mop his clammy head with a dirty rag.