The Stolen Princess: A YA Dystopian Romance (Desolation Book 3)

by Kortney Keisel

  Drake smiled at Cora. “Yes, it was.”

  Myka glared at him as he held the door open for her.

  He leaned in and sniffed her hair as she walked by. The action sent a buzzing thrill through her stomach. “I’m glad you showered,” he said. A playful look danced across his eyes. “I was starting to get nauseated from your smell.”

  If the insult hadn’t been about her, Myka would have thought his lighthearted expression adorable. But it wasn’t adorable. It was anything but adorable.

  “I guarantee you smell worse,” she said with a flat smile.

  His eyebrows went up as he shut the door behind them. “You guarantee it? Wow. That’s coming on pretty strong.”

  His dancing brown eyes were on her, but she kept her focus straight ahead.

  They walked down the lane until they came to a fire pit where Winslow and Portlend were sitting. A black pot hung above the fire, and Myka could smell something like beef stew.

  Drake wrapped the rope around her waist and handed it off to Portlend. “You’re turn.”

  Great. The last time Drake had passed her off to one of his friends, the guy had touched her inappropriately. Was this going to be one of those situations again?

  “I’m going to go get cleaned up,” Drake said, then he turned on his heels and walked off.

  Myka sighed, watching after him.

  “You can sit,” Winslow said.

  She bit her lip as she glanced down at him. Old ’n Slow wasn’t her favorite. He dipped a bowl into the pot hanging over the fire and then handed it to her.

  “Lunch,” he said.

  Myka took the bowl and sunk down to the log next to him.

  So far, she hadn’t gotten much information about the plan out of Drake. Maybe these guys were different. Maybe they would tell her more.

  “What happens if my father doesn’t give up the so-called weapons?”

  Winslow exchanged a look with Portlend.

  “What?” she asked as she watched them. “Can’t I know?”

  Winslow shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “I would think it’s fairly obvious. You’re the princess and our prisoner, and we can’t have you running home to tell Daddy everything about what we’re doing here.”

  “Assuming I get back home to Daddy,” she said under her breath.

  “You’re not on our side,” Portlend added. “If you’re loyal to your father, then you are against us.”

  She raised her chin. “You have my father all wrong. He’s not a bad guy.”

  She watched as Portlend and Winslow exchanged another look.

  “He’s not,” she tried to convince them.

  “Well, it sure seems like he is, by the way he disregards the Council of Essentials,” Winslow said.

  She sucked in a deep breath, trying not to let her frustration show. “You sound like Drake.”

  “Well,” Portlend said, “Drake’s a smart man.”

  Myka bit her lip and looked away. She hated being surrounded by people who thought her father was capable of building and harboring deadly weapons. It couldn’t be true, could it? Ever since her conversation with Drake yesterday, she had thought about the possibility of her father having weapons. There had been enough whispers and conversations in her life about weapons that she supposed it could be true, but whenever her mind went down that road, she reminded herself that she was talking about her father—the most loving man she’d ever known.

  Myka sat in silence for a long while, eating her meal, watching the villagers move and work around her. The sounds of children laughing and playing behind her made her turn around. Surprisingly, it was a clean and shower-fresh Drake who had made the kids happy.

  He had a small girl on his back with two more kids chasing behind him. He turned over his shoulder, looking behind him at the boys. Myka was taken aback by the genuine smile stretching across his face. It was natural and full of pure delight. It seemed unfair that he could be so happy when she felt so low. Then he stopped running and moved the little girl from his back to his shoulders. She sat on one shoulder, facing the opposite direction as him with her back to the other kids.

  “Where’s Tasha?” Drake asked.

  “She’s on your back,” the little boy with buzzed hair on the sides giggled as he pointed up to Tasha.

  Drake’s expression went to disbelief. “She’s in the back?” He whipped his body around, pretending to look behind him.

  “No!” the other boy said. He had a giant smile on his face, making it easy to see that his two front teeth were missing. “She’s on your shoulder.”

  “She’s on a boulder?” Drake said back to them. “Why is she on a boulder?”

  All three kids bent over laughing, and Myka found herself smiling too.

  “No! She’s sitting on your shoulder.”

  Drake raised his eyebrows. “I’m getting older?”

  “Right by your head!” The toothless boy groaned.

  “She’s dead!” Drake yelled dramatically.

  A small puff of laughter escaped Myka’s lips. Then immediately, she clamped her mouth shut. She wasn’t going to laugh. He wasn’t funny. So what if Drake Vestry was good with kids. He was still a kidnapper. Not a kidnapper, kidnapper—at least as far as Myka knew—but a princessnapper.

  He was the enemy, wrong about her father. But in every other respect, Drake actually seemed good. If Drake was good, did that make her father bad? Was her father a terrible man who blew up villages, leaving the survivors to live in poverty? Myka shook her head. Her resolve couldn’t crack. She needed to shore up her defenses. Drake had taken her from her dying father. He was the bad man, not her father. She couldn’t let any of his goodness derail her from believing that.

  Drake

  Drake loaded supplies into the bag tied to his saddle.

  “Let’s get some lunch, then get back on the road,” Grady said, coming up beside him to get his canteen from the saddlebag on his horse.

  Drake looked behind him. “Did the princess eat?”

  “Yeah,” Grady said, looking over to where Myka sat by Winslow and Portlend. “Man, she’s something else.”

  “What do you mean?” Drake asked, looking over at her too.

  “You know what I mean.” Grady wagged his eyebrows. “I bet you enjoyed the ride here, having her cozied up next to you.”

  Drake wouldn’t say that he had enjoyed the ride. There was a war raging inside his head, a battle between wanting to comfort Myka while also trying to keep everything professional.

  Grady smiled. “Maybe I want a turn riding with her.”

  Drake tried to mask his irritation. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think the princess is starting to trust me. We should probably build upon that relationship.”

  Grady scoffed. “She’s never going to give you any information about the weapons. She’s way too stubborn for that.”

  “No, I bet I can get her to trust me.” Drake didn’t really believe that, but it was better than having Grady next to her, trying to gain Myka’s trust.

  Grady’s expression turned to disbelief. “There is no way you can get the princess to trust you. You kidnapped her.”

  Before Drake had kidnapped her, he had thought Myka had liked him. She tried to act like she didn’t, but he could see through it. There was a big part of him that wanted to get back to that relationship—the relationship where she didn’t look at him with so much hatred.

  “I still think I can get her to trust me,” Drake said, keeping his gaze on her. Her brown hair was tied into a long braid, and the gray working-class dress hung around her legs and knees. Her chin rested against her hand and she stared blankly into the fire in front of her.

  “Do you want to make some sort of wager?” Grady asked.

  His eyebrows shot up. “Like a bet?”

  Grady shrugged. “Yeah.”

  Drake should say no. Bets were never a good idea, but there was something really tempting about this bet—the buil
t-in excuse that it gave him to always be close to Myka. “How would we even measure a bet like this?” he asked.

  Grady leaned his elbow against his horse’s saddle. “Well, we know her father is sick and dying, and she’s hiding that information from us. So, let’s make that the bet. I bet that you can’t get the princess to tell you the truth about her father.”

  “And if I do?” Drake asked. “What do I win?”

  “What do you want?”

  If Drake was honest with himself, he wanted Myka not to hate him, but he wasn’t about to tell Grady that. “I’ll take the extra bag of pine nuts that you bought at the market.”

  “All right, but if I win the bet, I want your jeweled knife.” His eyes darted to Drake’s weapons belt.

  “That’s way more expensive than your pine nuts.”

  Grady shrugged. “How confident are you?”

  “Confident.”

  Not that confident at all.

  “Then you shouldn’t be worried about losing your knife.”

  Drake pursed his lips together, glancing one more time back at Myka. He liked having a reason to be near her. “Fine.” He reached his hand out to Grady to shake on it. “You have a deal.”

  13

  Myka

  Once they left the village, Myka spent the last hour and a half of the ride with the blindfold back on. When Drake finally took the fabric off, she found herself in the middle of a wooded area with tall trees surrounding them. In the distance, a winding river snaked through the edge of the trees.

  “Welcome home,” he said into her ear as the horse trotted through the woods. His hot breath sent a wave of chills from her neck down to her arm. He needed to stop doing that. Nobody whispers in another person's ear. It was a violation of personal space. Myka scratched the side of her neck, hoping to scratch the goosebumps away.

  She scanned the area. Small, rundown houses dotted between the trees. Half of them were missing a door or part of their roof. In the distance was an open field where a more significant building had once stood, but the damage on that structure looked severe.

  “Are these pre-Desolation houses?” she asked.

  “Nope. They aren’t that old. This used to be a Tolsten army training camp.”

  Myka searched her memory. “I don’t remember any other army base besides the one in Camgrove.”

  “That’s because it’s one-hundred years old.”

  That explained why all of the houses and structures were falling apart.

  “Why did they stop using it?” she asked.

  She felt Drake shrug behind her. “I don’t know. It probably had something to do with how far away it is from Tolsten House or how remote this area is.”

  “Does my father know this is here?”

  “Are you asking because you’re hoping he will think of this place when he’s looking for you?”

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  “If King Adler knew, he’s long forgotten about it. This land has absolutely nothing of value to the king—rough terrain, poor dirt, colder temperatures. It’s a place no one would think to look, a great place for people who don’t want to be found.”

  The other men peeled off from the group, stopping at some of the shacks. Drake led her to the very end before he pulled the horse to a halt. A small wood shack stood before them. The outer walls were made up of boards splintered with cracks and holes that could easily let in outside air and light.

  They dismounted the horse, and Myka watched as he tied the animal up to a post by the shack.

  “This is my house,” he said as he worked the knot that fastened his bag and supplies to the saddle. “This is where you’ll be staying.” He looked up at her with his almond-shaped eyes. “With me.”

  “With you?” Myka swallowed. She had made it twenty-four hours without anyone taking advantage of her, and although Drake hadn’t laid an inappropriate hand on her yet—despite being nicknamed Mr. Grabby Hands—that didn’t stop Myka’s anxiety from settling in.

  He nodded back at her.

  “I’m not staying here with you.”

  Drake gathered his bag, sleeping gear, the medic kit, and canteen and began walking to the door. “You don’t have a choice.”

  “I’m not going.” Myka dug her heels into the ground and pulled the rope between them. This would be a tug of war that she would surely lose, but she was nervous about what might happen to her if she went into that house alone with Drake Vestry or any of the kidnappers.

  “I’m sorry, but the castle suite you requested was already booked for the night,” he said in a tone so sweet it could only be mocking.

  Myka was being ridiculous. She would end up in that house with him whether she liked it or not, but her stubborn pride wouldn’t make it easy for him.

  She lifted her chin, shooting him a stiff smile. “If the suite isn’t available, you’ll have to find the next best thing.”

  “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough. This is the next best thing. Your only option. You don’t have a choice.”

  “Why not?” She looked around at the camp. “There are dozens of little wooden houses all over. Surely this isn’t my only option.” She went on her toes, checking back behind her. “What about that one over there?” She pointed at one that they had passed on the way to his house.

  “That one is missing a wall,” Drake said flatly.

  “Or that one?” She pointed to another one forty feet to their right.

  “That’s Dawsick’s. Would you rather be bunkmates with him?”

  Myka raised her eyebrows. “I’ve got a better idea. You bunk with Dawsick, and I’ll sleep in this one by myself.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought you would say. This is your only option because everything else is broken down, and you are my responsibility. I’m in charge of making sure you don’t escape.”

  She shook her head in defiance.

  Drake threw the items in his hands onto the dirt and slowly started walking toward her. With each step he took, Myka took one back. Then he grabbed the rope and pulled her toward him. It was like he had some sort of super-strength that couldn’t be beaten. Her chest slammed into his, and she stumbled back, tripping over his shoe, almost falling. His large arm—the one she’d appraised in great detail when she’d shot him—wrapped around her shoulder and back, steadying her, and for some reason, Myka’s fingers splayed across his chest.

  Terrible hand placement, especially considering her wrists were tied together.

  Slowly she looked up at him. His brown eyes burned into her in their unreadable way.

  “Don’t fight me,” he said calmly. “Because I’ll always win.”

  It was true. Myka would never be able to fight against his strength. The thought devastated her, and a fresh wave of hatred filled her to the brim. She hated that she was tethered to him and not home helping her father fight for his life. Anger flashed through her body, and she leaned forward, spitting in Drake’s face. She’d never spat on anyone before. In truth, it was kind of fun and satisfying to see her frothy saliva spread across Drake Vestry’s cheek. Then she used her terribly placed hands to push away from his body. She stood on her own two feet, lifting her chin.

  His gaze never left hers as he slowly wiped the spit away with the back of his hand. Then without warning, he dipped down and picked her up—for the second time that day—throwing her over his shoulder. She screamed as she kicked and pounded on his body, hitting him wherever she could with her restrained hands.

  His head.

  His back.

  His shoulders.

  There wasn’t much power behind her punches, but it felt good to hit him nonetheless.

  He swung the door open to his house that was really nothing more than a rundown shack and dropped her onto one of the cots pushed up against the wall. A curtain was strung across the other end of the room, so at least there would be a little privacy between them. The house had a small wood-burning stove, two cots, a table, and chairs. A couple of square
windows let in light, but they were both too high to look out of.

  Myka leaned up on her elbows to see Drake standing over her. They were alone. Her heart raced. Would this be the moment he showed her how helpless she really was? She watched his every move as her mind scrambled to come up with some options for survival, but there weren't any. Dread flowed through her veins, and her chest lifted up and down with each of her heavy breaths. He leaned over. A piece of his hair fell, crossing over his brow. Myka scooted her knees closer to her stomach, like she could somehow protect herself. His eyes swept across her face, and she swallowed as his hands moved to the rope at her waist and untied it. Myka did the only thing she could think of. She jammed her foot into his groin.

  Drake let out a groan as he doubled over on the side of the bed.

  Myka scrambled to her feet, backing away from him before he could hurt her.

  “What was that for?’ he coughed out as his body coiled into a ball.

  “Oh, that’s a really great question coming from my kidnapper!” she spat. Frantically, she looked around for something she could use as a weapon, but there wasn’t anything. Where were all the frying pans?

  “I was untying you!” he winced as he rolled himself up to a sitting position.

  “Yeah, untying me so you could do more.”

  “You are the last girl I would try to do something physical with.”

  Myka straightened. “And you’re the last man I would ever want to touch me.”

  “I won’t touch you,” he said it like he was baffled that she even assumed he would.

  He stood and walked toward her—somewhat stiffly, she noticed with satisfaction. Then he loosened the tie around her wrists and shoved the cord in his pocket.

  “Take a nap or something,” he said, then he opened the door. “I’ll be back later.”

  Myka flinched at the sound of the slamming door and released her breath. Outside, she heard Drake fasten a lock around the door. She supposed she should be happy about the lock. No one else, including Horseface, could come in. She closed her eyes, grateful that, at least for another minute, she hadn’t been harmed.