A Thousand Heartbeats

After endless hours, we finally arrived at a castle in extreme disrepair.

Based on the path of the sun, my kidnapper had taken me east. It felt like we’d veered north as well, but I couldn’t be completely sure. I looked at the shape of this side of the castle, hoping I could remember it if I needed to.

My rider dismounted and held up hands to help me down. It irritated me that he was almost gentlemanly. Compared to his peers, he held his head higher, his back straighter. I supposed that was why he was in charge.

It took me a while to realize he was probably very close to my age, but his frown made him look older, more menacing. His dark hair contrasted sharply with his shockingly blue eyes, and while his jaw was a straight line, his nose was bent, as if it had been broken in his youth. He was scowling as he pulled me into the castle and down the hall.

“Do you want me to hold her?” the lone girl from the group of captors asked, coming up beside me.

“No. She’s mine,” he replied simply.

“You should see to your wound, Lennox,” she insisted, coming up beside us.

“I’m fine. Leave me be.”

She didn’t give in. “That was a long ride. You could get an infection. We need all—”

He whipped around at her, gripping me slightly tighter in his anger. “For goodness’ sake, Blythe, enough!”

They stared into one another’s eyes for a moment.

“You don’t need to be so hard on her,” another of the raiders commented.

“Not now, Inigo.”

“Lennox?”

We all turned to another young man, his fingers interlaced with the girl beside him.

“Rami, why don’t you go back inside? I’ll be in soon.”

She looked at him like she’d rather not, but she did as asked, locking eyes with me as she passed.

“I thought you’d be days, maybe weeks,” he whispered.

“Plans changed. What do you think we can get in exchange for a princess?”

The new person looked at me, and his eyes widened into a joyful skepticism. “I have to see this,” he said, falling into step behind the others.

I had been collecting information from the second I was placed on his horse. I had studied all the terrain I could, and I was trying to keep tracks of the turns we were taking in this ancient castle. And now I was learning about the dynamics of his group. In this moment, I needed to make a choice. I could either disrupt this boy’s plans and get him into serious trouble, or I could stay silent and still. Him losing some level of credibility would add nothing for me, and if I was about to be placed in front of their leader, the odds of me escaping in that situation were slim.

For now, the best path was proud silence.

He pulled me into a room that reminded me of the master hall back home. It was darker, with hardly any windows, and lit by numerous torches. The tables and benches appeared to be as old as the castle itself. As we walked in, the people who were still up finishing their meals turned and watched us. It only took a few seconds for me to realize I was a secondary draw; they were looking at him.

They were looking at this Lennox.

He marched me up the center aisle, toward a man who looked to be as wide as he was tall; it was hard to tell, as he was sitting in a massive chair that I assumed had to be a throne. On his arm, a beautiful older woman was practically pouring herself onto him in a way I would have called indecent at home.

Lennox knelt before them and focused on the man. “Kawan, I’ve returned from my Commission, and I come to make my offering.” He stood again, not seeming to want to be in a submissive position any longer than necessary.

The couple’s eyes landed on me.

“What’s this?” the man asked, staring at my face, looking horror-struck.

“Heir to the monster’s throne.”

The woman gaped at me. “She looks just like—”

“I know,” Lennox replied. “Seeing as you’ve been saying we’re going to reclaim Dahrain for years, I thought this might be the key to the castle.”

Dahrain. It was only now that I realized he’d said this name before. Was he confused?

“You . . . you went to Dahrain?” the large man asked in shock.

“Yes. It was easy. Killed a few guards, took a princess. Imagine how simple it would be for us to take an entire kingdom with a little bit of knowledge.” There was something accusatory to his tone. “Shall I bring you some answers?”

The man nodded wordlessly, still staring at me.

“Then we’ll get straight to work.” Lennox turned me around roughly—far more roughly than he had when he didn’t have an audience—and dragged me out of the hall as quickly as he’d brought me in.

“Take her downstairs and put her in some proper shackles,” Lennox said to the girl. Blythe? “Wait with her until I get there.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied bitterly, and pulled me away. “Come on.”

Her hands were decidedly firmer than Lennox’s, which surprised me. She didn’t care that I was tripping down the stairs, and when we rounded the corner to what must have been their dungeons, she slammed me up against the wall, knocking my breath out of me and setting off a ringing in my head.

“Don’t move,” she warned.

I stood obediently against the wall as she pulled my new restraints off a hook and brought them over to me.

“He shouldn’t have yelled at you,” I offered quietly.

“Don’t talk, either.”

She put my new shackles on before removing the rope, a move that showed she knew what she was doing. I had the feeling everyone here did.

She sighed, grabbing me by my injured arm and throwing me into a cell. There was something that might make an excuse for a bed against the wall, and a hole with a bar across it that doubled for a window.

“Might I . . . I need to . . .”

She pointed to a bucket in the corner.

“Oh. Lovely.”

“Are the accommodations not up to your standards, Your Highness?”

I was left without a choice, so I squatted over the bucket, holding my dress the best I could with chained hands, and looked away from her. If I survived my time here, this would be the one detail I left out of the story.

“Can you tell me where I am, at least?” I asked the girl. “I’ve never been this far east. I didn’t even know this land was inhabited.”

For all I’d known, it was all but impossible to get here.

She scoffed. “I’m not surprised. Your people have gotten everything you wanted already, haven’t you? No need to worry about us rounding up the scraps?”

I stood, making my way closer to her.

“Do these scraps not have a name, then?”

“We call it Vosino Castle,” she spat. “If the land itself ever had a name, it’s been forgotten.”

I nodded. It seemed the words unclaimed land on our map were very, very wrong. “Remarkable. Have you been here long? This castle looks like it needs some tending.”

“The castle was found a decade or so ago, and we’ve done our best to keep it up. We don’t have your resources, though, do we, Your Highness?”

She kicked herself off the wall and started walking around the room. “I wonder what they’re going to do with you,” she said idly. “We haven’t used the rack in ages.”

I tried not to let her see that this line of thought was shaking me.

“But since you’re royalty, maybe something with a little more finesse might be in order. What do you think?”

“Seeing as we don’t torture people in Kadier—which is where I’m from, by the way, not this Dahrain place—I have no opinion. I can’t imagine any form of brutality is better than another.” I wished I could move my hands. I hated feeling so defenseless.

“Wouldn’t it be fun if they just let you and me outside for a bit?” she mused. “We have an arena out there, and it looked like you could at least carry a sword from what I saw. Perhaps we should go toe to toe?”

“I’d hate to kill a lady,” I replied politely. “Besides, with the way my captor was behaving, he seems more likely to be on my side than yours.”

She crossed the room in three quick steps and slapped me hard across my cheek. A whimper escaped without my permission, and I wobbled a bit on my feet. This did nothing to help the headache that had been growing since she’d slammed me up against the wall.

“If it were up to me, I’d tie you to a rock and wait for the tide to come in.”

“Fortunately for her, it’s not up to you.”

We both turned to the low sound of a calm and steady voice.

Lennox walked into the room looking much cleaner and, somehow, more sinister because of it. He’d washed his face and swept his long hair back. He was wearing a coat similar to the one he’d had on before, with tight sleeves and buckles that latched down one side. This one didn’t have a slash across it.

“You can go, Blythe,” he said.

She stood there with crossed arms for a moment, then turned on her heel and left.

He waited until she was gone to shut the door. The large key, it seemed, worked from either side. He locked us in and propped himself up against the wall with his arms crossed.

“So. You must be Annika,” he said calmly.

I shook my head. “I’m impressed with how much you think you know about me. Especially considering that I never knew of your existence until today.”

He looked away, wandering around the room much in the same way that Blythe girl had.

“I didn’t know you existed, either. Well, I wasn’t sure. I heard your name once,” he said, turning to face me. He watched me closely, clearly hoping for a reaction with his next words. “It was the last thing your mother said before she died.”