The High Guard gallops his pale white mare across the bridge to us, eyes livid and narrowed. My pulse ratchets up to frenetic—Skies, is he here for me? Does he know what I did? Who I was with?

  A cluster of guards follow him and they stop at the swell of the bridge, a discrete distance away, and avert their eyes.

  Prince Emory lets out a groan and drops my hand to jerk his horse’s reins to face the High Guard’s approach.

  My stomach coils tight.

  “Your Highness,” the High Guard says through clenched jaw when he reaches us. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “You knew I was going riding with the Lady Aubrey today,” the Prince says, chin raised as he steers his horse around the High Guard.

  The High Guard’s horse whips around, to almost no visible stimulus from her rider, and falls into step beside the Prince’s. His voice clips low, as if he doesn’t wish for me or the other guards to overhear. “Yes, I had the letter delivered. But you are not to leave the palace without my accompaniment.”

  I let out a tight breath. At least he isn’t here for me. Unsure what else to do, I follow a horse-length behind with my head bowed.

  “I am the Prince, I go wherever I please.” The Prince’s voice rings out loud, as if he does intend for me and all the guards to hear. He lifts his chin and casts his gaze down his perfect, straight nose at the High Guard. “You forget your place, guard.”

  I flinch. High Guard is a far cry from a regular guard. He’s only the highest rank of the entire royal military—and the King’s military advisor. The same role as Father’s. Hence why, I presume, the King trusts the man with Prince Emory’s safety. There’s no higher ranking for anyone in the kingdom, save for lordship and royalty.

  The High Guard glances over his shoulder at me and his voice grows so low I can barely make out the words. “I answer to the King, not to you, and I’m afraid your prior obligations have not been met.”

  I pretend to be very interested in a bird that’s fluttered down to pick at a worm half squished on the wooden bridge slats.

  “Whatever it is, it can wait,” the Prince snaps.

  The High Guard inhales like it pains him. “The King and Queen have been made aware.”

  The Prince yanks the reins of his horse, drawing her to an abrupt halt that leaves her mouthing the bit in distaste. Color rises in his cheeks. “Fine. What is it?”

  “Prisoners for the Pits need to be signed off.”

  The Prince scoffs. “They’re criminals, hardly a priority.”

  The High Guard’s jaw tenses. “Law decrees a hearing must occur within ten days. For some it has been nearly twenty.”

  “Surely that can wait until later!”

  “The Pitmaster complained to the King and the King has instructed me to have it addressed immediately.”

  The leather reins creak under the Prince’s grip. He huffs out a breath and glances at me. “My apologies, my dear. I have to make a quick stop. I understand if you’d rather postpone our ride until tomorrow, if you don’t wish to be bored by such trivialities as this one.”

  “I will, of course, accompany you on any task if you wish me to join,” I say.

  The Prince beams. “I always wish for your company.”

  I bow my head and follow him and the High Guard to the west side of the palace, where the peripheral city wall meets the outer towers of the palace. I struggle to ease the tension in my shoulders, certain that wretched High Guard will send me away any moment. Every second lost is one less to make an impression, to gain the favor I so desperately need. Everything—everyone—relies on this. And I was so close moments ago. Everything was perfect before that brute arrived.

  As we ride, the High Guard keeps glancing at me and murmuring to the Prince, the details of their conversation now drowned out by the clop and crunch of hooves on damp cobblestones.

  “Nonsense!” the Prince keeps exclaiming and waving Rahiid away.

  We round the southwest palace turret and stop at a recessed door. The Prince dismounts and holds out his hand for me to do the same.

  I take it, warm and comforting, and dismount into his arms.

  He flashes me a reassuring smile and tucks my parasol into its holder on Sebastian’s saddle. Still gripping my hand, he leads me to the door and gestures a hand at it.

  The High Guard sighs heavily and does an intricate knock on the door. Knock, knock, pause, knock, knock, knock, longer pause, knock.

  A slat at the top snaps open and a pair of bloodshot eyes squint out the gap. “State yer business,” they growl.

  “His Majesty the Prince is here to perform the Hearing,” the High Guard says, fast and with routine drabness.

  The slat slams shut and several loud sliding noises sound. It heaves open to reveal a short, round man with frail, age-spotted arms. Long, white brows curl up to his forehead as he scowls at us through squinted eyes. “Yer Highness,” he says with absolutely no feeling and dips into the shallowest bow I’ve ever seen.

  The Prince pulls me forward as the High Guard glares at our clasped hands—as if our entwined fingers are more repugnant to him than the stench of sweat and body odor wafting from the door guard.

  Emory leads us down a narrow stone stairway into profound darkness, lit only by sparse wall sconces every twenty feet or so. With every step, we descend into striking warmth and humidity.

  At the bottom, we pass through a long, winding corridor, as if we are traveling beneath the palace and towards the mountain spire on the other side. The stench of ash and metals and human filth grows stronger with every step.

  The narrow passage finally opens into a cavern and we emerge onto a platform surrounded by massive iron bars stretching from floor to ceiling. An iron-barred door at our right leads down another flight of steps to a level below…

  I nearly gasp at the cavern below where hundreds of men labor. Some pull carts of coal towards furnaces, others pound upon metal. Still others work on tasks I can’t make out. All are shirtless, their trousers in rags and shackles bind their wrists and ankles. A dozen guards watch—low ranking by the way their curse chain-mail shirts cover only their chests, leaving their arms unprotected. They didn’t even have chest plates.

  “Please, sir, I have a family,” someone pleas weakly behind me.

  A cage with blackened bars lines the opposite side of the platform. At least a dozen or more men huddle inside in varying states of filth and injury. The stench of sweat and excrement burns my nose and would’ve pricked tears to my eyes, if I wasn’t already upon the verge of sobbing at the sight of them.

  Skies.

  Composure. Commitment. Conviction.

  “Silence!” screeches a man sitting at a desk at the center of the platform. He’s thin and wiry and his disgusted sneer reminds me of Maurus Venon. His tone slides to slimy adulation. “Your Highness, so wonderful you’ve graced our fine establishment.”

  “The list.” Prince Emory thrusts out his hand.

  “Of course, Your Royal Highness.” The snake-like man lifts a roll of parchment from his desk and passes it to the Prince with a flair of great importance.

  The Prince snatches it and unceremoniously tears it open. He grabs a pen from the desk without asking and begins signing the bottom in several places.

  The High Guard’s jaw twitches. “Your Highness, the law requires a hearing.”

  “Yes, yes, fine, read the crimes to me, Pitmaster, hurry now, I haven’t got all day.” He continues to sign parchment after parchment. I can only make out the title at the top of each: Decree of Conviction. My stomach turns. He has no intention of changing any decision based on anything he hears.

  The Pitmaster picks up another parchment and begins to read. “Aye, Your Highness sir. We’ve got, er, let’s see, Mortis Fer-fer-ferbenan, theft of a…”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  I turn back to the prisoners, grasping the gravity of their situation. My heart pounds in my ears.

  This is the Pits.

  Growing up at the palace, us kids were often threatened with being tossed down here. I’d thought for years they’d made it up just to scare us. It was only a few years after I moved to the estate that our servants assured me it’s actually very real. Few ever return from the Pits. That little boy’s father is here, somewhere. My heart aches.

  And that’s when I see him.

  Farnell.

  He sits on the small bench beside three others at the far side of the cage. His face is so filthy I hardly recognize him. Something in my chest snaps and there is no Prince, no Pitmaster, no High Guard. There is only my cousin Farnell, huddled in an iron cage, holding his side, his clothes covered in soot and filth and…

  Blood.

  My stomach retracts sharply.

  Blood, dried to near black and almost colorless in the dim light, covers his face. One eye is swollen shut and over it a deep gash. His mouth is grotesquely deformed, his lower lip split in two places.

  A sound penetrates my numbed senses, “Farnell Ak-Ak-something. Theft of a book.”

  At his name, Farnell lifts his lifeless, tired eyes up from the floor. He sees me. His one good eye widens. He shakes his head sharply and fixes his gaze back to the floor, his body suddenly rigid.

  Theft of a book.

  My heart skips a beat as an unhearing chill washes over me. I can’t tear my eyes away.

  “A book?” I croak out.

  My book.

  The book that recorded the First King’s Conquering as premeditated slaughter—not heroic salvation, as we’ve all been taught.

  Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. My insides crawl, scream, burn with fire for me to move. To act. This is wrong. This is very, very wrong. This is why he wasn’t at the market. He was here.

  “Oh, my dear,” Prince Emory says, “don’t worry yourself. They’re just minor criminals, petty crimes, sentenced to work for a few years here in the Pits.” He turns back to his parchment, quill scraping across the paper with a flourish. “They can’t hurt you in there. We’ll be leaving in just a moment.”

  Sweat breaks out across my body. My hands shake. Everything within me seems to fall, fall, fall, like icicles clawing down my skin. It’s my fault. I insisted on going to the library. I’d put the book in his hands, taken the one for myself. I took a book I knew was important. And now Farnell is paying for it, here, with his body, his future. His life.

  The Prince notices. “Are you well? Do you know this man?”

  Farnell’s eyes flick up to meet mine. Again, a tiny, very serious shake of his head. No.

  “I, I,” I begin, struggling to catch my breath through a throat that has squeezed shut. “I, I…” I search frantically for something to say to fix this, but I’m suddenly having difficulty seeing. Little block spots appear at the edges of my vision.

  “It’s the stench,” sneers the Pitmaster, almost gleefully. “Must be getting to the wee thing.”

  “Come, I’m finished here. Let’s get you some fresh air.” The Prince wraps an arm around my waist and leads us onto a caged, metal catwalk that stretches across the cavern.

  The High Guard catches Emory’s arm with a gloved hand. “Your Highness, I hardly think you should be—”

  Prince Emory looks down upon the High Guard’s grip with contempt. “Can’t you see she’s unwell? Check yourself, Rahiid.”

  I stagger after the Prince onto the metal walkway. Beneath us, the workers toil. One shouts up at me, something about a pretty thing and what he’d like to do with me. His words are garbled but the intention clear. A whip cracks and he screams. This sweltering, fetid prison is where my gentle, nimble Farnell is going.

  We descend into a darkened corridor on the other side of the cavern. I struggle to breathe. My knees buckle with every step. Prince Emory mostly carries me and I simply cannot pull myself together. All I can see is Farnell’s battered face. My fault. It’s all my fault. It’d been a game, a stupid thing we did. We’d done it too many times, gotten cocky.

  No, not we.

  Me.

  I did this.

  The corridor is long and winding. We made two lefts, a right, and another left before coming to another long staircase upwards. At the top, Prince Emory reaches high overhead to a small, barely noticeable notch in the wall. He fumbles about, then jerks back on something. A loud clunk sounds and he shoulders the door open.

  We burst out into a miraculously cool hallway. I suck in several breaths of dry, clean air. My limbs buzz and tingle, as if I’ve just woken from sleeping on them at odd angles. The discomfort helps ground me and I take in my surroundings.

  A corridor of the palace. I recognize the white marble floors and red velvet runners. On the wall opposite us, large glass windows loom, foggy with humidity.

  “Go make yourself useful, Rahiid. Bring us champagne and perhaps a pastry or something for her.” With his arm still wrapped around my waist, the Prince leads me down the hall a short distance to a glass door framed in gold. He pushes it open to more oppressive humidity and the rich, sickly sweet smell of flowers.

  Bile crawls up my throat and it’s all I can do to swallow it back down and suppress the urge to heave.

  “What a convenience, now I can show you the Conservatory. You said you loved gardens.” He guides me to a bench at the center of the conservatory, where several stone paths coalesce.

  I settle onto the bench, welcoming its relative coolness and croak out, “It’s beautiful.” But I can’t look around at the surrounding splendor. I can’t see more than a blur of colors. All I see is Farnell’s face. Bleeding. Swollen. Just a few days ago, he’d smiled and laughed at me. And I’d begged him not to run away into the forests, not to join the rebels.

  It’s my fault. I stole the book. I left him with one. I begged him to stay. If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t even work for the Venons in the first place. He made that choice, to be near me.

  Those monsters beat him, and still he hadn’t given them my name. He was loyal to me. He honored his promise to me. He endured torture for me.

  And I did… nothing.

  I stared and stammered and did nothing.

  Prince Emory takes both my hands in his and gazes at me. “How are you feeling, my dear? Better?”

  I want to tell him everything. To beg his help. But something small and pathetic and self-preserving stops me. Something in the way Farnell shook his head. A warning.

  Like the greatest coward that has ever lived, I force a small smile. “Yes, thank you.”

  I hate myself for it.

  The Prince strokes the backs of my hands, his blue eyes drowning me. “I shouldn’t have subjected you to such a sight. I simply loathe the idea of losing any moment with you. That was my mistake. I don’t know why Father bothers with it at all. Peasants are only as useful as they are obedient. Those who aren’t? There’s no fixing them. Father’s leniency with rule-breakers is why the rebels even exist. Cut off their hands or their heads, I say, depending on the crime. None of this manual labor nonsense. Ah! The Champagne!”

  A servant hurries up the pebbled path with a tray holding a bottle of champagne, two flutes, and a plate of pastries.

  The Prince waves him to set it on the edge of the bench and pops open the bottle, disregarding the cork that flies off into the flowers somewhere. He presses a filled glass into my still-tingling hands and helps me lift it to my lips.

  I take a small sip as the servant hurries away, leaving us alone. The bubbles burn and pop upon my lips and tongue and I drift away from myself. Back into that familiar place of numbness where my stepmother cannot hurt me, where I can act, function, do whatever it is I must.

  I straighten my posture, force my face neutral. I endure.

  The Prince is talking again, and I make myself hear him. “… It’s my mother’s masterpiece, really. She’s had all these plants imported from places all over the world, even so far as Pachuate and the kingdoms beyond it. She already has another order placed, now that the trade lines are open again. You look much better, my dear. I forget others aren’t used to the rougher side of life, like I am.” He laughs.

  I make my lips curl into a smile. “I should do better to endure it as gracefully as you.” I don’t know where the words come from.

  He beams and slides closer along the bench.

  I yearn to pull away, but resist.

  He touches my hair, pushes a lock of it back behind my ear.

  My skin crawls and I stare at his chin, at the spot of stubble he’s missed shaving on one side of a shallow cleft. So swiftly he’d let go of that place. Forgotten it. Moved on to the rest of his life. So little those men meant to him, condemned to servitude for crimes he didn’t even hear an explanation for.

  “You are such a mystery to me,” he breathes. His fingers trail along my jaw and turn my face to his. Yet his gaze isn’t quite on mine, but on the gold reaching up my neck. He touches it, slides his hand to the gold splattered across my collarbone. “And your markings are… so rich and beautiful and smooth. They all say you’re the goldest Gold in the entire kingdom.”

  His eyes meet mine and I wish his blue eyes would captivate me again. Wish his adoring gaze would warm me, soften me, make me forget. But all I see is a man who signed away Farnell’s fate—my cousin, my best friend—without even a passing glance. This man sees the lives of others as lesser. Peasants like my father, like Farnell, like the little boy in the market. Unworthy of even a moment’s consideration as to the conditions of their so-called crime.

  Or, in Farnell’s case, my crime.

  Would Emory look at me like this, if he knew I love horses and books and running through the fields and the forest? Would he look at me like this if he knew I’m friends with peasants, that I’m a sympathizer? If he knew I stole that book, that I’ve read it. That I helped a rebel save a boy from being beaten?

  “Emory, I—”

  His mouth comes down upon mine.

  I recoil.

  He follows me, his hand slinking around the back of my neck and up into my hair. His mouth moves over mine, wet and rough. Every part of my body screams, balks.

  “Shhh,” he tells me, his lips over my mouth, breath hot and sharp with the taste of tobacco. “We’re alone here, it’s alright.”

  Alone.

  I try to turn away but his fingers tighten on the back of my neck. His other hand pushes the strap of my gown from my shoulder. “I wish I could see more of this gold, of you—all of you. The texture… it’s so smooth, so soft, so much finer than any gold-marked I’ve ever touched.”

  I press my palms against his chest, trying to ease him away, even as Clara’s voice screams in my head, kiss him back!

  He moves over me, ignoring the press of my palms against his chest. His knee moves between my thighs as he half lays me back, half presses my spine into the biting wood. His lips drag down from my mouth to move along my jaw and down my neck. “I know you want me as much as I want you. You don’t have to pretend to resist.” His voice comes out low, husky. One hand descends to my hip and he yanks me roughly against him.

  Everything inside me ices and coils. “Emory,” I begin, desperate to defuse. He’s the Prince. I force my tone lighthearted. “Emory, this isn’t proper decorum.”

  “To hell with decorum,” he growls at my throat, his tongue flicking at my skin. “You make me wild.”

  My insides scream. Flee. Run. Escape. I press my hands more firmly against his chest. “Your Highness, I must insist you stop.”

  He jerks back as if I’ve slapped him, eyes wide, brows furrowed. “What?”

  I extricate myself and scramble to my feet, tugging at my disheveled dress. Flee. Run. Escape. “I’m sorry, I beg your forgiveness, I—I cannot.” I scan the plants, trees, and glass all around, searching for that damned door.

  “What?” This time anger laces his tone. He rises to his feet.

  “I’m sorry,” I stammer. There it is, the door, shimmering glass framed in gold. “I—this is all too overwhelming. I—I just need a moment to compose myself.” I back toward the door.

  He stalks after me.

  Somewhere overhead a bell tolls. So loud it rattles my bones.

  The memory of fiery-hot pain sears across my back. Ray’s amputated finger falling into the grass. Maurus’s wicked, bloody sneer looming over me. Father racing across the clearing towards the wyvern—my last sight of him before his death.

  A death not solely because of me. Murder.

  That knowledge, however flimsy and ill-defined, fills me with fire.

  The Prince’s head snaps up to angle at the ceiling. “The Wyvern Bell.”

  Wyvern or not, I run.