A Dove's Tale

Chapter 74

Restful sleep evaded me that night, as it usually did. I thought about going out to the hillside to look up at the stars one last time, but remembered the guards and pulled the blanket tighter around me. Maybe I could get away with sneaking out to the gardens in the palace one night. If I dressed in uniform, anybody who saw me would think I was running a late-night errand for Prince Chevalier.

Maybe he could come with me, and he could kiss me under the stars without me crying.

I buried my face in the pillow, my cheeks getting hot even just thinking about it. Losing Mother was a horrible price to pay for a new life with him, but this was what she wanted, and I felt a tiny seed of hope growing in my chest that things were finally going to get better for me, not worse. I really wanted better. I wanted to smile without feeling like I was faking it. I wanted to believe there was something to look forward to.

It was so quiet outside. I could just imagine the cool of the grass under my feet, the way the starlight shimmered on the water, the caress of the night breeze on my face. Thinking about it finally lulled me to sleep.

But I woke with a start when I heard a muffled cry. Or thought I did. I lay still for a moment, listening, and there was a soft scuffing outside my door. Probably the guards moving around so they wouldn’t fall asleep, I decided when the scuffing stopped after a few seconds. I must have dreamt the voice. The only thing calling for me was the pillow, and I closed my eyes and nuzzled into it.

The creaking of rusty hinges made me sit bolt upright in bed, my eyes wide open. I didn’t dream that, or the figure in the open doorway.

“Who’s there?”

I’d barely gotten the words out before a hand covered my mouth and a man dragged me out of bed, pinning my arms to my sides. Panic flooded my chest, and I struggled as hard as I could, kicking out and thrashing. The table and chairs went flying, the vase of flowers shattered with a tinkling of broken glass, but another man was there, grabbing my legs and helping the first wrestle me to the ground. An eerie silence fell, save for the pounding of my heart in my ears as they bound and gagged me. Neither of them spoke. A metallic stench drifted through the open door from a spreading pool of red, glistening in the starlight. There was another figure in the doorway, beckoning in silence to the two men as they stood. One picked me up and slung me over his shoulder, carrying me out into the dark street. I glimpsed the guards, sightless eyes fixed in an expression of shock, slashed throats, and then they were gone, bloody dirt transitioning to green grass as the men walked briskly and quietly away. My stomach was churning. The guards were dead. Because of me, two men were dead.

I retched and gagged, but the cloth over my mouth kept the vomit inside, forcing me to swallow it down, which only made me gag more. My stomach twisted and spasmed. I was choking, coughing and gagging. The man carrying me threw me to the ground and yanked the cloth from my mouth.

“What are you doing?” somebody hissed.

“We need her alive,” the man hissed back, gripping the back of my collar as I emptied the contents of my stomach on the grass. I wanted to scream, but I was helpless until the vomiting stopped.

“This is taking too long.”

“Stop your whining. The patrol’s dead, anyway. We can spare a few seconds.”

The soiled cloth was back in my mouth when all I had left was dry heaving. The man threw me over his shoulder again, and I squeezed my eyes shut, shedding silent tears as hopelessness overtook me. Not just the guards, but the patrol, too. How many men was that? At least four, murdered by these men who were tossing me onto a horse and galloping away. I opened my eyes to see the horse’s shoulder and one of its flying hooves in my limited field of vision. Even if those hooves crushed me, I had to get away. I squirmed, trying to edge my way off the horse, but a blow to the back of my head plunged me into darkness.

My head was throbbing when I regained consciousness. I wasn’t sure I was awake at first because I couldn’t see anything. But I could smell, and I could feel, and I could hear. Damp, mustiness. Cold metal clamped tightly around my wrists, pulled up over my head, my bare feet only just able to reach the cold stone floor below. Not much warmth from the thin nightgown. Silence around me. The pounding of my heart within me. I desperately worked and twisted at my wrists, trying to pull them free from the metal shackles. It was no use, but I couldn’t give up. Blood trickled down my arms, warm on my cold skin, adding its distinct metallic odor to the air.

This wasn’t Prince Gilbert’s doing. Sending others to use physical force, hanging me up like a slab of meat in some dungeon - it didn’t fit with what I knew of him. He would have come for me personally, using the lives of the guards to manipulate and coerce me into doing what he wanted. Unless I’d misjudged him badly.

The hours ticked by, my fear growing with each minute that passed. Finally, I heard the grating of metal across stone echoing down to me from a distance, booted footsteps, the snapping and crackling of a torch preceding its wavering light as a pair of men approached. The flickering flame threw their shadows into weird relief on the dark stone walls, the iron bars, the dark brown stains surrounding the floor below me. At least one other person had been tortured and likely killed here. The cold wrapping around my heart was suffocating.

“Good, she’s awake. Get started on her. I want to know everything she knows about Prince Chevalier. Everything. Even what he likes for breakfast.”

I didn’t recognize the voice, but what I could see of his face was vaguely familiar. The other man laughed.

“I can tell you that.”

A sickening realization hit me. I knew that voice.

“You’re Prince Chevalier’s cook,” I said, my trembling voice echoing off of the bare walls.

He slapped me, hard. “You’ll speak when you’re spoken to, missy.”

I tasted blood, but I pressed on. “Why are you doing this?” I asked, pleading with the hard face of a man I thought I knew. A man who hit me again.

“I’m asking the questions, not you.”

“This will be easier if you cooperate,” the other man said to me, setting the torch in a wall sconce. To the cook turned torturer, he said, “Don’t kill her yet.”

He walked away. The flickering torchlight painted the remaining man’s malicious smile in ghastly shadow as he cracked his knuckles.

“You heard him. Tell me what I want, and maybe I’ll leave enough of you to cart back to Prince Chevalier when I’m done.”

I stared in abject terror at him. It was pointless to try to reason with him, and yet I had to. It was the only chance I had.

“But - he doesn’t tell me anything. He doesn’t tell anybody anything. You know that.”

He grabbed my chin roughly, his fingers digging in so hard I whimpered.

“I know I made breakfast for both of you yesterday morning, after you spent the night with him. I know he keeps you like a favorite pet, close and cozy, and if you think you can sweet talk your way out of this, you’re in for a big surprise.” He released me with a shove, the chains creaking above my head as I swung back and hit the wall behind me. “Now start talking.”

The questions began. And I didn’t even have to lie. Military strategies, fortifications, plans - I didn’t know what he was asking about, and each denial brought another blow. Cold resignation overwhelmed the suffocating fear as I realized there would be no escape. I was going to die here. Without even knowing why.

The thought made me angry.

If he was going to hit me anyway, I may as well give him a reason to do it.

I unleashed my tongue. Taunts, insults - it didn’t matter what I said. The result was always the same. More pain. I goaded him into hitting me harder and harder, until there was only blackness, and the pain was gone.

For a little while, anyway.

But at least I was alone when I came to again, my face caked in blood. I felt sick, and not just because of the pain. If I’d let Rachel spend the night at my house, she’d be dead now. If I’d just gone back to the palace with Prince Chevalier, I wouldn’t be here. And the guards would be alive.

What if Rachel found the bodies?

This was all my fault.

At least this hadn’t happened when Mother was alive. At least I didn’t have to worry about who would take care of her. But I’d probably ruined her funeral.

I tried to picture how I wanted it to go, how it would have gone if this hadn’t happened. A beautiful, sunny day. Or a gentle spring rain. She loved the rain as much as the sunshine, maybe more.

It brings new life, Ivetta. It’s not gloomy at all.

I could picture her smile as she said it, holding me close as a little child. I had been so scared of thunderstorms then. She would sit with me in the open doorway, watching the storm, and she would stroke my hair and sing to me. That was always how she comforted me. Everything scared me back then, and not without reason. People were cruel. But she was always there for me, always a strong, resilient woman who could hold me and the weight of the world without losing her smile.

Except for those rare occasions when her soft sobs would wake me, and I would find her curled up in a corner, hugging Father’s journal to her chest. Then it was my turn to comfort her. Then it was my turn to stroke her hair and kiss her cheek, telling her everything would be okay, though I had no way to keep that promise. My saying it made her smile, and that was enough.

I missed her so much.

Did Prince Chevalier arrange for a bouquet of red roses? Red roses were her favorite flowers. I’d wanted to place a big bouquet of them atop her coffin when it was lowered into the ground.

I missed him, too.

Suddenly, it hit me. I knew where I’d seen that man before, the one who ordered my torture and walked away without a backward glance. He had been in the line to speak with Prince Chevalier at the ball. He was a member of Prince Chevalier’s faction.

The torchlight came back, its snapping and crackling echoing down the stone corridor to me with the booted footsteps. I lifted my head and waited for them to enter my vision. Two Rhodolitian traitors, not Obsidianite spies.

“You’re in Prince Chevalier’s faction,” I accused the nobleman who was staring down his nose at me. His face twisted into a hideous smirk.

“And you’ve just prolonged your miserable life. Either he told you, or you figured it out yourself, and you’ve been holding out on us.” He set the torch in its wall sconce, turning to the torturer. “Keep working on her, but keep her alive. She doesn’t die until I say so.”

“You’re already dead,” I called after him.

He stopped in his tracks.

“You know what Prince Chevalier does to traitors. Whether I live or die doesn’t matter, because you’re already dead.”

He turned back and walked up to me. His hand was suddenly at my neck, squeezing so hard I saw stars.

“You think he’s coming for you?” he hissed. “I’m counting on it. And when he does, I’ll set you on fire personally so he can watch the person he loves burning to a crisp, the same way I had to watch my family burn as one of his knights on Bloodstained Rose Day.”

He released me and stormed away, leaving me coughing and gasping for breath. The other man was laughing.

“Guess I better leave you in one piece, then.”

I didn’t have the luxury of being unconscious when he left me alone in the dark, too weak to do more than whimper in response to the never-ending questions. I hung there, in too much pain to sleep, wondering how long it would be until he came back for more.

Maybe I would get lucky and die before then.

I never finished The Romance of the Rose before my lunch breaks in the warm, sunny alcove ended a few weeks ago. There was another book I’d planned on reading next, another one of Prince Chevalier’s books. He'd caught me looking at it one afternoon in the middle of my dusting. I couldn’t remember why I was dusting in his library instead of the main library that afternoon. But I remembered my surprise when he was suddenly right behind me, plucking the book from my hands.

“My tea,” he said simply, taking the book back to his chair. He was flipping through it when I returned.

“I haven’t noticed that book before, Prince Chevalier. Is it new?”

He looked up at me thoughtfully. “You’re very observant. Yes, it is new.”

I hesitated to ask, but I really was interested in it. “Would you mind if I read it, your highness?”

“Return it when you’re done,” he said simply, handing it to me.

“Of course, your highness. Thank you.”

I couldn’t quite remember the title. A collection of poetry, maybe? I didn’t know. I didn’t even know if it was day or night anymore. Light was a harbinger of evil, as the torchlight only appeared when the questions and torture came again. Dark was cold and lonely, but there were no beatings in the dark.

He was better off without me, anyway.

Somehow, that thought inflicted more pain than anything else.