“I don’t know how he discovered the passageways,” Zes said, leaning in close to the man. “Give me time and I’ll figure out how.”
“What is your name?” I said to the unfortunate wretch.
The Titan didn’t look at me and only stared at the floor.
“Why did you come here?” I said.
Again, he wouldn’t respond.
Zes leaned in close to the man’s ear.
“Your lord is asking you a question,” he said. “Answer him.”
The man still wouldn’t respond.
Strange, I thought, considering the energy he had entered the room with. Or maybe he’d only been defending himself. Zes did have a history of pushing prisoners too hard.
Could he be the maid’s little boy we used to play with at a young age? The little one that disappeared the moment we were sent to the capital to continue our studies?
I often thought of him when I was alone and without friends in the emperor’s palace. He was the only member of the townsfolk I knew. The others I only saw from a distance. When I returned home a young man, I looked for the maid’s son but found the entire family had moved on.
The only person I knew in the area and he was no longer there.
That was when I began to build my little model town—to feel a part of them, to the men and women I was meant to help rule over.
If he was the maid’s boy, time had not been kind to him. He was a regular little boy when we played, with no scars or marks on his body. Looking at him now, I couldn’t reconcile the little boy I had known with the full-grown man I saw before my eyes.
There was no telling how a man might grow up when he came of age. Fate had a funny way of tossing unexpected events in the way, forcing us down avenues we never would have chosen for ourselves.
He might be the maid’s little boy. But then again, he might not. But if he was…
“Was there a message?” I said. “Contained in a handmade envelope?”
“No,” Zes said. “Only this.”
He reached into his pocket and extracted a simple stiletto blade—not dissimilar to the one I now held in my hand.
So, he really had intended on murdering me in my sleep. After my dishonorable decision to call off the Titan army, I thought someone might make the attempt.
“Do you deny it?” I said evenly to the man.
He continued to stare at the floor.
Had he lost his mind? Had he listened to the voices in his head? Or was the voice a real one, whispered in a tavern somewhere?
So many questions, but no answers.
“Take him to the cells,” I said. “Give him bread and water. Don’t harm him. We’re not his enemy.”
Zes said, “Sir, if we act fast and question him now, we could learn about others like him—”
“I won’t repeat myself,” I said. “Double the guards on duty until we figure out what’s going on here.”
And that was that.
Zes didn’t like the order, but I didn’t care. He nodded and seized the man by the arm. He led him roughly out the door.
The prisoner paused for a fraction of a second over the threshold and peered up at me through the hair that hung limp and straggling over his face. His eyes burned with the intensity of someone who knew what he wished to achieve—to upend the world and make a real change.
It sent chills up my spine.
A guard bowed and shut the door.
At least they went silently this time.
I moved to the papers that’d been knocked to the floor during the struggle and gathered them up.
Sirena came out of the bathroom with my robe still wrapped around her. She must have witnessed the whole scene.
“Is everything all right?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, collecting up the last of the papers. “Everything’s fine. Just a local caught in a passageway. Nothing to worry about.”
But it was something to worry about. What if someone else attempted to murder me in my sleep? No amount of guards on the outer walls would protect me from a naked blade in the shadows.
The castle was very old and who knew how many forgotten passageways there were within it?
I placed the collated papers on the desk.
“Now,” I said, turning to her with a smile, “there was something you wanted to tell me.”
She peered between my eyes.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “It can wait.”
I hugged her. She felt so warm and soft in my arms. Her neck was right there, exposed, and I couldn’t help but nibble at it.
“I’m here for you, if you need me,” I said.
She giggled and playfully tried to push me away.
But I’d already stopped.
When she pulled back to look me in the face with her smoky eyes—what ordinarily would have sent me into a crazy whirlwind of desire—I was instead focused on the papers I’d picked up from the floor.
They were reports and notifications of battlements and defenses my brother had set up when news of the Changeling attack first came to us. I hadn’t removed them yet. I still hadn’t gotten used to being the lord.
But it wasn’t the report that grabbed my attention.
It was what had been scrawled across it.
There, written in an unpracticed hand, was a depiction of the playful letters we’d created to pass notes to each other as kids. They were rushed and very rough… but then, how neat would my handwriting be if Zes was busy wrestling me at the same time?
The man must have seen the desk the moment he entered and dived for it. While Zes wrestled him, he hurried to scribble a quick message.
The man was the messenger.
It was the final message he wished for me to have.
It was so rough it took me a moment to understand. My hand shook as realization dawned.
“What is it?” Sirena said. “Is something wrong?”
I had no words for her. I stepped aside and fell into a lounging chair.
