Aren
The wind gusted through the garden, rustling the manicured rosebushes and sculpted hedges before whistling away through the cornices adorning the wall, leaving behind the creak creak of the ropes from which the corpses swayed. There were eighteen of them now. Eighteen Ithicanians dead in the attempt to rescue their king. In the attempt to rescue him.
He didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve their lives. Not when all that had befallen Ithicana was the result of the choices he’d made. Lara might have been the one who wrote the letter with all its damning details, but if he hadn’t trusted her, if he hadn’t loved her, she’d never have had the power to harm his people.
Yet still the bodies swayed, a new man or woman added to their ranks every few days. Sometimes a longer stretch would go by, and Aren would foolishly hope that his people had given up. Then Serin would arrive with another struggling form in tow, and Aren would retreat into himself, the only way he could stand to sit through the things Serin subjected his people to without giving up every secret Ithicana ever had.
Emra’s corpse was little more than a skeleton picked dry by the crows, unidentifiable except by his memory. But the fresher bodies watched him with empty eye sockets, familiar faces blackening and bloating with each passing day he was chained to the stone table in this garden of hell.
From which there was no escape.
Though God knew, he’d tried. A dozen of the guards bore black eyes, broken noses, and one a necklace of bruises courtesy of the chain linking Aren’s wrists. He’d killed another after managing to take his sword but had been immediately overpowered by a dozen more. All it had netted him were bruised ribs, an aching head, and more security surrounding him day and night with never a moment of privacy. He was regularly searched for anything he might use to pick the locks of his manacles, forced to sleep bound to a cot under a brilliant lamplight so there was no opportunity to free himself using the cover of darkness. The only piece of cutlery he was allowed was a goddamned wooden spoon.
He’d exhausted every trick that he knew in desperate attempts to escape, when the logical strategy would’ve been to bide his time. But logic meant little when every day that passed saw more Ithicanians tortured and killed in their attempts to free him.
Which left Aren with only one alternative: to take himself out of the equation.
He stared at the stone of the table, gathering his will, feeling his heart thunder in his chest. Sweat ran in a torrent down his back, the fine linen they’d dressed him in saturated. Do it, he silently commanded. Get it done. Don’t be a damned coward about it. If you’re dead, Ithicana will have to move on without you. He leaned back as far as his chains would allow, and took a deep breath—
“The wives are starting to complain about the smell. Can’t say that I blame them.”
The voice startled Aren enough that he jerked, his chains rattling as he took in the blond prince he’d met the day Emra had died, a worn book tucked under the young man’s arm.
“It’s a terrible practice,” the prince said, squinting up at the bodies lining the walls, their putrefying flesh crawling with insects. “Never mind the smell; it invites flies and other vermin. Spreads disease.” His attention shifted back to Aren. “Though I expect it’s far worse for you given that you know them, Your Grace. Especially given they died trying to break you free.”
This was the last topic of conversation Aren wished to discuss, the sight and smell and knowledge bad enough without idle words to go along with it. “You are . . . ?”
“Keris.”
The prince sat across the table from Aren with surprising boldness, given what Aren was capable of, and yet the gleam in this man’s eyes suggested he was no fool. This was the philosopher prince whom Aren had given permission to travel through the bridge to Harendell, where he’d supposedly planned to attend university. The escort accompanying him had really been soldiers in disguise, a key part of the Maridrinian invasion. If Aren could’ve reached across the table, he’d have gladly snapped the prince’s neck. “Ah. The inadequate heir.”
Keris shrugged one shoulder, setting his book, which appeared to be about ornithology, on the table. A philosopher and a bird-watcher. No wonder Silas wanted nothing to do with him.
The prince said, “Eight older brothers who fit the mold, all dead, and now my father is stuck trying to weasel his way out of naming me heir without breaking one of his own laws. I’d wish him luck in the endeavor if not for the fact that his and Serin’s weaseling is likely to see me in a grave next to my siblings.”
Aren leaned back in his chair, manacles rattling. “No desire to rule?”
“It’s a thankless burden.”
“True. But when you have the crown, you can change the décor.” Aren gestured at the corpses lining the garden walls.
The laugh that exited the prince’s mouth was eerily familiar, the hairs on Aren’s arms rising as though he’d been touched by a ghost.
“To rule is a burden, but perhaps especially so for a king who enters his reign desirous of change, for he will spend his life wading against the current. But you understand that, don’t you, Your Grace?”
It was the second time the prince had used Aren’s title—something Silas had expressly forbidden. “You’re the philosopher. Or was that, too, part of the deception?”
A wry smile formed on the prince’s face, and he shook his head. “I think Serin took particular glee in using my dreams in such a perverse fashion. It is one of the only instances in which he has successfully pulled the wool over my eyes, the shock of being trussed up and stuffed in a corner while my escort invaded Ithicana not one I’ll soon forget. Even still, I might have forgiven the duplicity if my father had allowed me to carry on to Harendell in pursuit of my studies, but as you can see”—he stretched his arms wide—“here I am.”
“My condolences.”
Keris inclined his head to Aren’s sarcasm, but said, “Imagine a world where people spent as much time philosophizing as they did learning to swing weapons.”
“I can’t,” Aren lied. “The only thing I know well is war, which doesn’t say much given that I’m on the losing side of this one.”
“Losing, perhaps,” he murmured. “But not yet lost. Not while Eranahl stands, and not while you still live. Why else would my father insist on these theatrics?”
“Bait for his errant daughter, I’m told.”
“Your wife.”
Aren didn’t answer.
“Lara.” Keris rubbed his chin. “She’s my sister, you know.”
“If you meant that to be a great revelation, I’m afraid I have to disappoint you.”
A soft chuckle, but Aren didn’t miss how the prince’s eyes swiftly scanned the garden, the first crack in his façade of amused indifference. “Not my half sister. We have the same mother, too.”
Despite himself, Aren straightened, the memory of that brutal game of truth he’d played with Lara coming to the forefront of his thoughts. Her worst memory, she’d told him, was of being separated from her mother and being brought to the compound where she was raised. Her fear that she wouldn’t recognize her mother now, wouldn’t know her. Logic told him that it had been nothing but a story intended to manipulate his sympathies, but his gut told him otherwise. “What of it?”