Forced To Kill The Prince

by Hollie Hutchins

  It might be nice to save, rather than kill. I could pretend then that I'm a good person, even though I know I'm not.

  Anyway. I stick to the shadows, walking around the hallways, the thin corridors, into the kitchen, wondering how I'm even going to find Aradin. He might be out in the city, in which case, I won't be able to find him. The only places I can look are around the castle and in the grounds. I'm not about to risk walking the city streets at night. I might be an assassin, but if there's gangs of people roaming around, seeking prey, I don't plan to be the prey they'll catch.

  I know something's wrong, though. I feel it in my gut. So I keep looking. On a hunch, I decide to creep as close as I can to Ronar's rooms. Knowing that technically, I'm in prime position right now to assassinate the sisters. Maybe I've been dragging this on for longer than Ronar intended. I expect to get a letter from Ganned soon, asking what the hell is going on. I can't tell him, in case anyone I don't trust overhears the message, and fucks everything up further. It's a trap I don't want to be in.

  My suspicions are raised when I realize there's no guards in Ronar's wing of the castle. There's two standing outside the princess lodgings. Ronar's rooms are locked with a five pin lockpick, so I get out my apparatus and start fiddling with it. My heart's in my throat all this time. What do I expect to find? If Ronar's asleep... what if I assassinate him instead?

  Of course, the second I assassinate someone, my game is up, and I won't be able to contribute to Aradin's grander scheme of collecting Ronar's assassin dens. He wants to create a network where no one will be able to murder anyone in the royal family anymore.

  And I can ruin that if I use my blade too soon. My hand rests on the ornate sheath anyway for a brief moment, before I resume picking the lock. I'm a good lockpicker, but this one requires a good five minutes for me to get the pins aligned. My face is in a sweat at this point, since I'm paranoid about being caught, of someone coming into the corridor and raising the alarm. No one comes... which in itself is even odder. Why do all the other rooms have guards, but not Ronar's?

  Inside his room, I'm met with a pristine, opulent suite, where a heap of expensive, gaudy objects scatter themselves across my gaze. A golden grandfather clock, a rich teak table, a mahogany piano with a polished, carved armchair with patterns of birds upon it. The carpet itself appears to have golden thread woven through the edges. If I were to pick those threads out of the carpet, I'd have fifty gold in my hands after I've finished. It actually disgusts me to see wealth used in this manner.

  As much as I'm tempted to start lifting things and placing them in my pockets, I instead explore the room. Unsure of what I'm going to find. Just that something isn't right. Not Aradin missing. Not the fact that Ronar has no guards. And his empty chambers, since he's not sleeping in. I keep exploring until I start shifting things around. There's a gaudy red velvet carpet under a chaise, and when I move both, there's the thin outline of a trapdoor.

  Where does this lead to, I wonder? The thought pervades my head, even as I scrape fingers around the edges, and find a groove to lift it up. Darkness greets me, and a ladder that leads to a suitably ominous and tight passageway.

  My, my. Ronar sure is hiding some secrets, isn't he? I step through, now accessing my handy box of matchsticks, tucked in a sleeve pocket. Assassins and thieves can never have enough pockets to hide things. And we learn to have useful tools on us, such as lockpicks, matchsticks, a thin twine belt that can double as a rope in an emergency, a cloak with additional pockets, also to use to sleep in the wild at night if there is no shelter... and compartments to hide poison.

  Just a shame poison doesn't work on dragons. Gut instinct crawls at me when I light a match, illuminating a passageway that doesn't have much dust or cobwebs in it, or that strong, stale odor. It's new, and used regularly. A secret passageway, well hidden in Ronar's quarters. Yeah. Some fishy shit is going on here.

  I go through four matches before I reach the end of the passageway. It goes in a downward spiral, leading to an area that might be at dungeon level, or even lower than that. The tunnel is big enough to fit someone like Ronar in it, and because I'm small, I don't have so much difficulty walking through. When I see a faint light ahead, I extinguish my match, and move noiselessly to the end. Electricity powers a kind of wide corridor, with rooms branching off on the sides, like dungeon cells. A cold prickle goes through my heart. I have no guarantee that this will lead me to answers for the questions floating in my head. Compulsion causes me to keep searching. Keep looking.

  Each cell is locked, but has a slit for me to look into the room. I try the first few, but see nothing but gloom. There's no pockets in the corridor for me to hide, so if I wanted to stealth my way through, I'd need to get into one of the cells myself. I creep along, checking each cell just in case I'll find something intriguing, or horrifying. When I don't, I continue walking, passing a small room that has documents upon the tables, and empty ink bottles scattered everywhere, piled up in the trash, along with broken feather quills. Ronar's secret room – but with a bunch of empty dungeon cells. What does this mean?

  Past the rooms here, I finally stumble into a huge, pit like area. My heart gives a strange lurch when I see a yellow scaled dragon in the room, staring at a small, diminutive target. Prince Aradin. The prince is in his human form, chained by glowing blue manacles. A wizened old woman examines him, and she has what looks like a potion bottle in her left hand, with a vile green concoction in it.

  “It will take a few hours to work, my prince,” the old woman says. “But until then, you'll need to keep him here, so the poison has time to settle in.”

  Poison? One that works on dragons? Neither of them look my way. Neither of them expect someone to be here, lurking in patches of shadow. My heart gives a strange twist. Aradin is awake, but clearly disoriented. Blood trickles from his chin. The yellow dragon towers above him, and could probably try and kill him in one bite.

  “You hear that, brother? You can forget everything that's happened,” Ronar croons. “You really shouldn't have come looking for me.”

  “B... bastard,” Aradin says, his eyes hot and fierce for a second, before dulling over in pain. He jerks pathetically against his chains. Ronar lets out a gurgling, triumphant laugh.

  “You know – that woman you were so falling in love with – she's an assassin. I paid her to murder you and our beloved sisters. She was supposed to win all your confidences, and then execute the plan. You, however, have forced me to accelerate those plans.”

  “You're a rotten corpse of a man,” Aradin hisses. “Have you no shame?”

  “Shame?” Ronar smiles. “Why would I have shame? I was named a bastard from birth. I was denied the chance for the throne because father couldn't keep it in his pants, and doesn't want to take responsibility and legitimize me. I resent people like you.”

  It sounds like Ronar's gotten impatient. And now he plans to kill his brother. But not after extracting information from him. And he can't kill Aradin by conventional means, because he's a dragon. So he's using a type of poison.

  Perhaps the woman is some kind of witch. I grit my teeth, creeping closer. If I'm going to save Aradin, I'll need to work my dagger in a vulnerable spot. Aradin told me once that dragons can't feel a human walking on their skin. It was during one of our romps together, when he had me tied up by sheets in the bed, with my ankles wrapped at either end. Yeah... that time was fun.

  Ronar's so massive in this form. I have to reach his skull if I have a chance of killing him with the dagger. The weapon itself spreads some kind of magic that will poison and kill him, but it'll be too slow before he kills Aradin and me. I have one chance.

  If Ronar kills him, I bet Ronar will withhold his payment because I wasn't fast enough to do it. He's that kind of bastard. Either way, all plans will go up in smoke. Aradin dies, I get nothing. Ronar dies, I'll be on the run, because I don't see how this can be hidden.

  Taking a deep, quiet breath, I glide over the stones, putting power into my
legs to glide silently. It take strength to move like this, and patience. The best way to clamber up onto Ronar is to use his back leg, since his tail swishes. He's big enough so that I can obscure myself from the witch. Aradin either planned to meet with one of his contacts tonight, or tailed Ronar somewhere. And it went irrevocably wrong.

  I hate this. And I hate the pulsing fear in my heart. Fear makes people do stupid things. I have to remain calm. I keep evenly spacing my breaths, and finally reached Ronar's back foot, ducking under a tail lash. I can't see what's happening in front, but I can hear it.

  “Why don't you feel more betrayed that your little lover was one of mine? I fucked her, you know. Every afternoon when you weren't there, she came to my room to report and to fuck. She's a little whore.”

  It's a blatant lie, but I worry Aradin might believe it. Ronar's just seeking to inflict as much damage as he can on Aradin's psyche.

  Aradin doesn't respond, though. I hitch myself onto Ronar's back. He might not feel it, but that doesn't mean I stomp around like an idiot. The scales are spaced out to allow me to climb them, and I crawl up to Ronar's broad back. No one is looking at me. The witch and Ronar mercilessly taunt Aradin. The witch glances to the tunnel twice, and I dip to the right side of Ronar's scales, in case she looks. Aradin's head is lolling.

  My muscles tremble with the effort. I scrabble up to Ronar's neck. He has a short, stumpy neck. Soon I'm at the base of his skull, tucked between the bone frills. I'm amazed I got here without anyone noticing. If I go any further though, I'll definitely be noticeable. But I should be able to kill him here. If I slide the dagger at the base of the skull here, I should access both his brain and the top of his spinal cord. Shivering, I take the dagger out. So small. Yet so lethal.

  Then, I drive it into Ronar's skull.

  The dragon stiffens immediately, then collapses, lifeless. Instantaneous death. The witch gapes, just as I throw the bloodied dagger at her, and she crumples, potion spilling on the ground.

  Aradin stares up at me, a little groggy. “... Charlotte?”

  “Hi,” I say, the adrenaline swamping my veins. “I killed them for you.”

  The prince blinks. “You... how?”

  “You didn't think I just accidentally killed the people you sent me against? I'm an assassin.” I walk up to him, trying to hide the relief from my face, and start figuring out how to break his manacles.

  I've killed my former master. There's no way out for me now. But I had to do this. I couldn't let Aradin die. “You do realize that I'm fucked now,” I say. “It's going to be obvious this is my dagger to everyone in the underworld, because there's only three daggers in the entire city, and two of them are in control of other thief lords.”

  “We'll manage,” he says. “Maybe... change plans a bit. But I'm not losing to lose you.” His eyes glitter then, fierce. His mouth seeks and covers mine. “I won't lose you.”

  “We'll see,” I reply, popping the first of the manacles. Instantly, his arm holds me to his chest. He's exhausted, but takes the time to cradle me.

  “Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you truly.”

  My heart does a little lurch as he says this. Like I'm in love with him or something. I can't be, of course.

  Or can I?

  I sigh and close my eyes for a moment.

  “We'll get through this,” he whispers in my ear. “I swear to you.”

  I allow myself to experience his warmth for a little more. “Okay,” I say, now reaching to start on the second manacle. Ronar's sightless eye stares at me. “We'll be together.”

  I don't know what the future holds. But I do know that part of it involves freeing Aradin, and figuring out how to control the contacts he has. It's going to be a lot of work.

  But at least we have one another, I suppose.

  At least I made my choice. And I don't regret it for a second.

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  Abducted and Stimulated

  ~ Bonus Story ~

  An Alien Abduction Romance

  Reina had considered herself a lonely librarian in a small town that had lost all chance at any sort of romance like the books she faithfully tended to each day. However, things began to change as vivid, sinful dreams come to her at night, thrusting her into a new world full of gauzy lights and delicious, handsome men.

  However, there is something ominous lurking beyond the beautiful dreams, something that strikes Reina with fear to her core. Determined to resist them, she finds herself embroiled in an otherworldly plot that she never could have foreseen.

  * * *

  Chapter One

  I sighed drowsily, rubbing my eyes as I slid into bed. It had been an exceptionally long day at the library and I was utterly exhausted. It had felt like we had been slammed from every side, with donations coming from the local high school, secondhand shop and church. My entire day had been a frantic rush of processing, printing labels and getting as much done for the closing shift as I could.

  “Stop that,” I hissed to myself as I snuggled under my covers. “No more work talk. Go to sleep.”

  I didn’t need to tell myself twice. Sleep, luxurious and warm, slipped over my head and I dove down into it’s comforting hold.

  *

  I had always been a good sleeper, since I was a child. In fact, I had prided myself on it throughout all of college. Naturally, confusion began to rise in me after I felt myself waking up after what couldn’t be very long at all.

  Slowly, my eyes slid open and I sat up, rubbing my eyes drowsily.

  The bed I was in was not my own. It was a four poster, elaborate bed with a gossamer canopy above that diffused the gentle light shining down from the ceiling.

  “Where am I?” I mused, looking around in wonder, my head still heavy with sleep.

  “My home.”

  My eyes slid to the door, just realizing it was open. How long it had been that way, I couldn’t be sure. But what I could be sure of was that the most gorgeous man that I had ever seen was standing in the open doorway, staring at me with an intense gaze.

  He was tall, with a golden crown of pin-straight hair atop his head. His features were noble and refined, with a strong jaw that made my mind flood with impure thoughts of how it would feel against me. He wore only a pair of low, plasticine pants, the rest of his physique completely exposed to me.

  And God he was delicious. Every inch of him was sculpted to perfection. Abs upon abs and muscles on muscles. He wasn’t bulky, or intimidating like certain bodybuilders. Simply cut from stone like Adonis made flesh.

  “Who are you?” I asked breathlessly, my body thrumming with a strange sort of heat.

  “Does it matter?” He asked, striding towards me. His voice was low and rumbling, sending shivers up my spine. Part of my mind was telling me that this was very strange and I should be asking a whole lot more questions, but I was much too attraction-drunk to think properly.

  “I…I think I probably should.” But then he was less than a foot away from me. He gripped my wrist, placing my small, pale hand on his rock-hard musculature. How tiny I looked compared to him, and slender. He could probably break me without working up even the slightest amount of sweat.

  And yet he didn’t.

  Slowly, carefully, my fingers explored the landscape of his flesh. As I traced along the striations, I grew bolder, until I was almost pressed against him.

  No words were spoken between us, and perhaps there should have been, but then he was pressing his lips to mine and gently tilting me backwards. I complied, my body alighting with wanton passion.

  How long had it been since I had attention anything like this? I couldn’t say. It wasn’t like there was an abundance of sexual tension between myself and the elder ladies of the library.

  His lips
moved to my jaw, teeth just barely grazing the skin there, and all thoughts of the library staff fled from my head. My hands roved his body, trying to pull his only scrap of clothing from him.

  It was only when I felt him fully lower himself onto me, his flesh salaciously burning into mine, that I realized I was completely naked. Normally I was much shyer about revealing my thin, geekish form to perfect strangers, but I found myself not caring in the slightest.

  Then his hand found my center, fingers dancing cautiously, teasingly, around that sensitive junction hidden just between my legs. I gasped, allowing his lips to return to mine and his tongue to invade my mouth with vigor. I melted into his ministrations only to have pleasure strike through me like a lightning bolt as his fingers began to work on me.

  Much of what happened after was a hazy, euphoria clouded mess of sighs and gasps. I had never been worked over so thoroughly and expertly. While I wouldn’t describe myself as a cold fish, I wasn’t a lover to be left panting and moaning and writhing under a lover.