It’s all starting to merge in my mind.
My mother digs the knife into the skin beneath Finn’s eye.
My hands shake as I sign the contract that will bind me to a monster.
And Thiago’s mouth captures mine as he hauls me against him, and I wilt into his arms, wanting nothing more than to lose myself in him.
I promised my mother I would sign the marriage contract.
I never promised her I would go through with the marriage.
“Fuck it.” I’m moving before I can think my way through the entire plot. The problem is this Finn. If I renege, she’ll kill him. Painfully.
But if he’s no longer here….
Then she can’t do a cursed thing to him.
And I heard the pain in Thiago’s voice last night.
If I can do nothing else for him, then I can give him this: I can set his friend free.
There’s no one in my mother’s tent right now, thanks to a private meeting with the queens of Aska and Ravenal, and I know the guard’s rotations. Edain will be with my mother, to serve as her personal protector. Andraste will be sitting on a cushion by her knee, smiling as she drinks down their wine and their threats.
The Asturian guards are good.
They know they can’t afford to allow my mother’s precious hostage to escape.
But they’re not looking for an attack on the inside.
No, they’re looking toward the tents of Evernight or Stormlight.
I need a cloak, I need a knife, maybe some of those hair pins that I learned to pick a lock with, and gloves, for the iron. Half a minute later I have everything I need and then I’m slipping from the tent and pulling the hood of my cloak up over my dark hair.
Night’s not far away. More bonfires. Middenmarch tonight. We will sing to the ancestors who fled to this world, and burn the pyres to remember them. Blessed Maia. Blessed Selena. Blessed Ambryn.
This is the night the queens plot.
This is the night accords are made, and treaties formed.
Nobody will be looking for me. I’m in disgrace with my mother. Forgotten. Barely watched.
I count to three as a guard strolls past, wait until he’s around the corner of the tents, and then I slip into the shadows. Five seconds later, I’m inside my mother’s tent.
A single torch burns. Veils of fine linen hang to separate rooms within the tent.
My mother’s bed is opulent—all red and gold cushions, with fine silk sheets and furs cast there.
Edain’s chambers settle off hers, with a neat pallet laid out on the floor. It barely looks used.
There’s a cage within his chambers, a shadowy figure curled up on the floor within it. I ease through the linens, pressing a finger to my lips as Finn’s eyes blink open in surprise.
It’s dark back here. I can see the shadowy figure of a guard pass by outside, carrying a torch.
Finn peers at me through his sweat-dampened hair, straining to see who just entered. His eyes widen in recognition and he opens his mouth, before he sees my finger. His mouth closes, but his surprise remains apparent.
The torch fades. The guard walks away. We’re as alone as we’re ever going to be, and we have three minutes until the next guard circles around.
A heavy iron ring circles his neck, and someone’s bolted it to the side of his cage.
Iron. This might be a problem.
I can pick a lock, but even touching those bars will burn my hands. The gloves will help, but iron seems to emanate with its poison and though my tolerance for it is higher than most, I’m not entirely immune.
“Well,” Finn says in a roughened whisper as I circle the cage. “I can’t say I expected to see you here. Princess, was it? Princess Iskvien?”
“Be quiet.” I kneel down. There’s a lock on the cage, and I’m sure the key is hidden somewhere in Edain’s chambers, but the problem lies with what I can’t see.
The cage will be warded.
The second I touch that lock, the owner of the ward will know about it. The question is, did my mother lay that trap? Or was it Edain?
How fast can they return?
And why the hell does my magic elude me? If I’d been able to wield it, I might have been able to break these wards with none the wiser.
“What are you doing?” Finn sits up, frowning a little.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m rescuing you.”
Apparently, it isn’t obvious, because his eyebrows almost meet his hairline. I study the lock and then realize those gorgeous blue eyes are searching my face.
“What?” I whisper.
There are shadows in his expression. “What’s the cost of this, Princess?”
“There is no cost. Not to you.”
He captures my wrist through the bars, moving shockingly fast. “I’m not talking about me. I saw and heard everything your mother did yesterday.” He shakes his head. “I always knew she was a bitch, but I didn’t realize she treated her own family like that.”
I wrench my hand back.
There’s a gaping wound in my chest, an emptiness I can’t fill. It’s one thing to know that my mother despises me, but another to have others see it.
He pities me. My enemy pities me.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whisper, and then try to force a smile. “It won’t be the first time she hurts me. It won’t be the last.” And then there’s the matter of this marriage to Etan. What’s the worst thing she can do to me when she’s fucking selling me to a monster?
A hand curls around mine and I realize I slipped away for a moment.
He’s watching me. Eyes full of sympathy.
“I’m Finn,” he says, as if he’s not locked in a cage barely big enough to house a dog.
“I know.”
His smile curves, slightly wicked. “I figured a formal introduction might be in order, considering you’re rescuing
