Defy

by Sara B. Larson

  “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.” His gaze dropped to my mouth and my stomach tightened, remembering the way he’d kissed me in the jungle, the feel of his mouth on mine, of his teeth grazing my collarbone. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe as he looked back up into my eyes. “But I won’t let any harm come to you, I promise.”

  “Shouldn’t I be the one saying that to you?” I asked, my voice shaky. Damian laughed quietly, a low sound that thrummed through my body. He let go of my hand, and trailed his fingers up my arm, my shoulder, my neck. I trembled beneath his touch, aching to feel his mouth against mine again. He gently pushed his hand into my hair, pulling me toward him, closing the gap until finally, finally our lips met, brushing in the darkness. Fire rushed over my skin, urging me closer to him.

  Rylan muttered something unintelligible in his sleep and Damian jerked back, leaving me suddenly cold and shocked to realize I’d completely forgotten we weren’t alone.

  “We’d better try to get some sleep,” he said.

  One minute, he was making me burn from his touch and the next, he wanted me to go to sleep? Then I realized he was smirking at me. “Thanks a lot,” I replied, trying to glare at him but not quite succeeding.

  “Sweet dreams,” he said and then closed his eyes, appearing to be completely relaxed.

  I was almost positive he was teasing me, but couldn’t quite believe it. The Damian I’d known didn’t tease. He didn’t laugh and carry young boys on his shoulders and kiss me and tell me he needed me — that it had always been me.

  But this Damian did. And I realized that despite my promise to Rylan, I was in danger of getting my heart broken by this Damian.

  THERE WAS NO definitive sign that we’d left our nation behind the first day that our journey took us out of Antion. But as the days passed, the lush green of Antion began to subtly merge with a more arid landscape. On the horizon, I could see sharp cliffs rising out of the increasingly barren land.

  We still carried Tanoori, as her condition hadn’t improved. Lisbet had dark circles under her eyes, and her cheeks were sunken. In the past three days, the gray streaks in her hair seemed to have grown and her shoulders had begun to stoop forward. She could no longer help shoulder the stretcher, and Eljin had finally broken down and ordered another of his men to help. She walked alongside us instead, holding Jax’s hand, while he continually looked up at his mother in concern.

  I also noticed Damian watching her. He kept his face impassive, but I knew him well enough now to notice the worry lurking in his eyes. He cared for Lisbet for some reason. But I didn’t dare ask why, afraid he wouldn’t answer my question yet again, making it harder for me to trust him.

  I wanted to trust him, but I knew he was holding pieces of himself back from me. He never did tell me what his message to the Insurgi had been, or when he’d learned to swordfight — and with whom. He hadn’t even told me how he’d figured out I was a girl. We hadn’t had another moment alone, though, except at night when we both tried to ignore the fact that we were lying inches away from each other, since Rylan was in the same tent with us. Maybe he was just waiting for real privacy. At least that’s what I tried to convince myself.

  And though Rylan no longer looked at me with the cold anger that had been so hard to bear, he didn’t reach out to me the way he used to. Sometimes, when I looked at him, my heart still skipped a beat and I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened between us if circumstances had been different.

  Every night, I had to lie between the two of them, feeling like I was being torn apart inside. I wondered how dark the circles under my own eyes were.

  When we stopped for the night, Eljin came over to where we were setting up our tent.

  “Tomorrow, we arrive. You will all be bound to keep you from making a spectacle of yourselves. I have been merciful in allowing you to travel so freely, but that time is over.”

  “What about Tanoori? How will we carry her if our hands are tied?” Rylan asked.

  Above his mask, Eljin’s eyes were unreadable in the dusky light. “I will have to use some of my men to carry her.” By the tone of his voice, it was apparent that he was extremely displeased.

  “Thank you,” I said anyway, grateful for his offer to help, no matter how unwilling.

  “You should take care to lower your voice. You sound like a girl these days,” he said and then he walked away.

  I stared at him with my jaw hanging open. Had I begun to act like a girl — to talk like one? I didn’t think so — I’d carried Tanoori with three other men without complaining once for days. I helped set up the tent, I took it down, I did everything every other man here did.

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s just antsy to be done with us, I think.” Rylan nudged my shoulder with his as he passed me to go start the campfire.

  I shrugged but didn’t respond. I hadn’t realized Eljin knew I was a girl. Maybe I was revealing myself. Lisbet had told me to keep up the pretense, but why? So that these men wouldn’t know? I didn’t see why it mattered if they did or not. Death probably awaited me wherever we were going anyway. Maybe it would be nice to die as my true self.

  I walked over to Lisbet’s tent and quietly parted the flaps. Damian knelt next to Lisbet, holding her hand in both of his. Tanoori lay motionless and unconscious on the ground next to them. I watched for only a moment, but the tenderness with which he looked at Lisbet and held her hand made me ache. I silently let the flap fall back into place and backed away.

  He looked at her with love on his face, the way a son would look at his mother.

  I wanted to know him. I wanted him to trust me, the way he asked me to trust him. I wanted him to tell me all of his secrets. Not just the ones he was forced to reveal, piece by piece. But his feelings for me were obviously not enough to make him willing to trust me with the whole truth.

  “Alex, can I talk to you?”

  I was startled to realize I had wandered a little way away from camp, and that Rylan had followed me.

  “Of course. Sorry, I was lost in thought.” I stopped and waited for him to catch up to me.

  Our camp was nestled in between two groves of trees — different trees from what I’d ever seen before. Lisbet had told us some were called pine trees and some were called quaking aspens because they appeared to shake when the wind blew. The grass here was thinner, almost yellowish, compared to the deep, verdant green of Antion. But the air was also a bit cooler, thinner. I wasn’t coated in sweat just from walking this short distance like I would have been in the jungle.

  Rylan gestured for me to follow him as he strode farther into the cover of the trees, away from camp.

  “What if Eljin notices we’re gone?” I asked as I followed him out of sight.

  “I don’t care. I don’t know what’s waiting for us tomorrow and I’m not going to waste what might be my last chance to really talk to you.” He stopped and turned to me.

  “What do you mean?” He wasn’t as tall as Damian, but I still had to tilt my head up to meet his eyes when he moved closer. “Rylan?”

  “I’m not going to let you go, to possibly face our deaths, without a fight,” he said, reaching up to brush my cheek with the back of his hand. He looked down at me with a look of such raw longing that my heart constricted. But not in the way it did when Damian touched me. When Damian was close to me, my heart raced. And I could hardly breathe for the desire coursing through me when Damian touched me.

  As Rylan stared into my eyes, waiting for me, I felt different from what I did with Damian. Rylan’s touch filled me with warmth and comfort. But I didn’t want him the way I wanted Damian.

  I didn’t move toward him but I didn’t pull away, either. The moment stretched out, with his hand cupping the back of my head, his fingers threaded through my hair, his face inches from mine, while I battled with myself, wanting to pull away but afraid of hurting him. Before I could decide what to do, he bent down and softly pressed his lips to mine. His kiss felt like a sigh, a relea
se. His mouth was so gentle on mine, moving slowly, tenderly. A spark of desire flared in my belly.

  My hands rested against his chest, my fingers tangled in his tunic. If I’d never come to know Damian the way I did now, I could have fallen for Rylan. I knew it as surely as I knew that it was too late. Rylan held me in his arms, and my body responded to his touch, but all I could see in my mind was the hurt on Damian’s face if he knew, if he came looking for me and saw Rylan kissing me. It didn’t matter if he was a prince, if we could never truly be together. It was too late to go back to what might have been.

  “No, wait,” I said, breaking away.

  Rylan immediately dropped his arms and backed up a step, breathing heavily.

  “I … I’m sorry, Rylan. I just —”

  “Don’t say it,” he said, his voice rough. “I thought I’d take a chance. I couldn’t face whatever might lie ahead of us tomorrow without at least trying.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself against a sudden chill. The nights here were shockingly crisp. The breeze made me shiver as it brushed over me and moved on to rustle the leaves in the quaking aspens.

  He looked at me for a moment longer, with unbearable longing. “I love you, Alexa. No matter what happens tomorrow, or any day after that, I will always love you.”

  My eyes burned. “I love you, too, Rylan.”

  “But it’s not enough,” he said. “I was too late.”

  I shook my head, unable to answer, not knowing what my answer even was. I did love him; I hadn’t lied. But I knew it wasn’t the love he wanted me to feel. Tears filled my eyes, blurring him. He reached out and touched my cheek, wiping away a single tear with his thumb, and bent to press his lips to my forehead. Then he took a step back.

  “I want you to know that I’ll always be here for you.” He paused and then rushed on. “When the day comes that Prince Damian breaks your heart and you need a friend to turn to, I’ll be right here for you, just like I always have been.”

  His words hit me like ice and I stared at him in shock as he strode past me out of the clearing, leaving me alone with the trees, the stars, and the cold breeze that sent a chill deep into my heart.

  WE’D BEEN CARRYING Tanoori for about four hours when I saw the buildings of a town in the distance. Above the dwellings, nestled into the rising breast of a hill, was a huge castle encased by an immense stone wall. I knew we weren’t near King Osgand’s castle — it was deeper inside Blevon, from what I’d heard.

  I remembered Papa’s stories about the land where his parents had grown up and I wondered if it was this town or one like it somewhere else. The irony of being here, in the country where half of my family had hailed from, as a prisoner of war, struck me to the core. If Hector hadn’t taken over Antion, and if his wife hadn’t been murdered, would I have come here freely to visit family rather than being dragged here, likely to my death?

  “Is that it, Mama?” Jax asked Lisbet, who trudged along next to us, looking paler than ever.

  “Yes, son. We’re almost there.” The relief in her voice was audible.

  I stared at the massive fortress with growing foreboding. What — or who — awaited us there?

  “Halt!” The shout was repeated until we all came to a stop.

  Careful not to jostle her, Rylan, Damian, the man Eljin had assigned to help us, and I laboriously set Tanoori down on the ground. Her lips were bloodless, and nasty-looking red streaks spread across her chest from the partially healed wound. I was afraid infection had set in and that we’d suffered all this time only for her to die once we reached our destination.

  “She’ll make it,” Lisbet said from beside me. “There will be help where we’re going.”

  Eljin marched over to where we stood, and began handing out rope to his men. “Tie up the prisoners; I want their hands behind their backs. Make sure there’s no slack.”

  The man who tied me up yanked my arms back with unnecessary force, making my already sore muscles scream in protest. I clenched my teeth to keep from crying out. Rylan and Damian stood on either side of me, both being tied up just as roughly. When Eljin’s men were done, one of them shouted something at us in the strange, flowing language of Blevon.

  “You’re going to have to use our language; they can’t understand you,” Damian responded, looking completely composed, despite the fact that his hands were bound behind him.

  The man hit Damian across the mouth with the back of his hand with a resounding crack. “I will decide what language I speak, and if they can’t understand me, then they will suffer the punishment. You aren’t in charge here anymore, little prince.”

  Damian spat blood onto the dirt, his expression murderous.

  “No, I am the one in charge, and you will never strike one of the prisoners without my permission again.” Eljin thrust his hand toward the man who’d hit Damian. He dropped to his knees, clutching his throat. The skin of his face turned red, then began to deepen to purple before Eljin dropped his hand, and the man fell forward onto his palms, gasping and sputtering for air.

  “Have I made myself clear?” Eljin turned to face the rest of his men, who were crowded around us.

  They nodded and murmured their assent, glancing warily at the one who still knelt on the ground.

  “Let’s go,” Eljin shouted. “No more stops.”

  Everyone quickly filed into line, we prisoners sequestered in the middle. Before marching away, Eljin looked directly at Damian with a strange look in his eyes. Some sort of silent communication seemed to pass between the two, and then Eljin turned and moved to the front of the line.

  I sped up a bit to walk next to Damian. “Are you okay?” I asked quietly.

  “I’m fine” was his gruff response. He didn’t look down at me, and I couldn’t help feeling like I’d been rebuffed for some reason. He picked up the pace a bit, leaving me to either hurry to keep up or to fall behind. I was afraid that he was trying to keep his distance from me.

  He and Rylan had both been very quiet all morning, tension rolling off them in waves. But I was probably the same. I felt utterly miserable.

  I’d gone into the tent as soon as I came back from the grove of trees the night before, avoiding the log where Rylan sat and the pit in front of Lisbet’s tent, where I could see Damian’s dark silhouette in the firelight. I couldn’t bear to talk to either of them, so I’d taken the spineless route and crawled onto my bedroll, pretending to go to sleep.

  Was he mad at me for that? Or did he somehow know what had happened with Rylan?

  Rylan didn’t come to walk beside me, either, leaving me to go in silence, alone with my thoughts as we drew closer and closer to the fortress on the hill. We skirted the town, keeping our distance from the homes and people I caught glimpses of in the streets. Many of them had dark hair and olive skin. Like me. Like Damian.

  Walking with our hands tied behind our backs, after hefting Tanoori around for so long, was simultaneously a relief and pain. I just wanted it to be over with.

  Finally, we began to make our way up the hill, to the front gate of the wall surrounding the citadel. It was heavily guarded, but when they saw Eljin, the sentinels parted, raising their spears and signaling for the gate to open. With a loud grinding sound, the metal bars slowly lifted into the air and we walked through the archway and entered a dusty courtyard, surrounded by at least twenty men with swords and spears.

  Eljin shouted something in the foreign sounds of Blevonese, and a murmur went through the gathered men, until every one of them turned to stare at Prince Damian. The sun was hot on our backs as we stood there, but it was a different kind of heat than I was used to. It was dry and relentless.

  Across from the courtyard was a massive wooden door, what I assumed was the main entrance to the castle, which soared into the air above us. It opened after a moment and a tall man, dressed in military uniform, walked out, flanked by a contingent of armed guards.

  The men in the courtyard saluted him until he raised an arm in acknowledgment. Silence
fell upon the courtyard the moment he began to speak in their language. Then he switched so we could understand as well.

  “I am General Tinso, the supreme general of the Blevonese army. I declare you, Prince Damian of Antion, our prisoner. You are now at our mercy, and as such, must acquiesce to our demands or suffer the consequences. Three cheers for my son and his victory over our enemy!”

  His son? Eljin was the general’s son?

  The men around us raised their voices in three loud shouts of celebration. Then Lisbet stepped forward. General Tinso’s eyes widened and he rushed to meet her, enveloping her in his arms. With one arm still around her shoulders, he turned to face us again.

  “Now that we have captured the king’s son and only heir, let us pray that victory is soon at hand!”

  The men went wild, cheering and stomping. Some even spit in Damian’s direction, making me wish my hands were free to access a bow and arrows.

  Through it all, Damian stood ramrod straight in front of me, his shoulders thrown back and his chin lifted in defiance. Pride filled my heart in that moment, even though I realized that it was a futile gesture. We were doomed.

  We were ushered into the castle at spear point, Damian first, then Rylan and me right behind him. Lisbet had already disappeared into the depths of the fortress with Jax and the men who still carried Tanoori on her heels. I wondered what her relationship to General Tinso was.

  The great hall was sparsely decorated, but still luxurious. Thick tapestries hung from the walls, depicting barren cliffs with a wild, stark kind of beauty, and fields of green and gold, rolling on as if they never ended. A blade bit into the skin on my back, forcing me to keep moving forward before I could take in anything else.

  If only I could loosen these ropes, get a hand free. I could swipe a sword and try to fight our way out. But the Blevonese soldiers had done their job well; I could do no more than rub my wrists together, chafing the rope against my skin. And even if I succeeded, Eljin would just use his sorcery to stop me. There was nothing I could do to save us.