The Maid and the Monarch

Chapter 7: Accused and Framed

I burst into the hallway still tying a clean skirt around my waist. Other servants, in similar levels of dress, poured out of their rooms. The source of the screams turned out to be one of the younger maids; she shrieked and wailed until someone caught her in a fierce hug.

"What's going on? What's happening?" Questions rose out of the crowd like air through boiling water--overwhelming and fast.

"There's been another attack!" the girl cried. "The twin princes--they killed the assassin!"

The assassin had been caught? Shock rippled through the assembled servants and hit me like a runaway cart. If the king's murderer had tried to take the twins' lives, what did that mean for their plan? For the letters I had hidden in Prince Leon's rooms?

A guard appeared at the end of the hallway. Someone gasped. Across his breastplate, the unmistakable splatter of red blood glistened. He signed to the crowd, (Everyone gather in the Great Hall immediately. Order of the Princes.)

No one wanted to argue with that.

We filed into the Great Hall silently, held solemn and subdued by the atmosphere of violence. Guards were everywhere, exchanging rapid hand signals and boasting what looked to be the entire castle armory.

At the center of it all stood Prince Xander. He was naked from the waist up, adopting a pose of almost careless superiority. It was probably easy to feel confident when you had abs as defined as his, when your shoulders and arms had the obvious strength to sweep a girl off her feet, when the perfect brown locks of your hair gave several women in the room--myself included--the unconscious urge to straighten our skirts and tug our collars into more favorable positions.

Prince Xander had in one hand an unsheathed sword, the tip of which still dripped blood. At his feet, a body lay crumpled in a slowly growing pool of red. The body of the murderer, I guessed, dragged here from the princes' rooms if the streaks along the hallway floor were any indicator.

"People of Andan Castle," Prince Xander called out. He had the voice of a showman, and it echoed off the Great Hall to magnificent effect. "Loyal servants. I must apologize for summoning you all here, but I thought it best to air these matters publicly, so that we might bear this hardship together."

"What is the meaning of this!" Prince Leon burst through the doors, more irate now than when we'd been interrupted the night before. I tried not to take offense at that.

"Older brother, dearest." Prince Xander didn't miss a beat. I wondered how much of this he had planned ahead of time, and how much he improvised. "As you can see, we've caught Father's murderer."

The prince gestured to the corpse at his feet. Nearly everyone's eyes followed his outstretched hand. I looked elsewhere, bothered by a sudden thought. Where was Prince Matthias?

"And you saw fit to gather everyone in the castle?" Prince Leon didn't spare a moment of appreciation for the assassin's body. "Without my permission?"

"We felt it was necessary," Prince Xander replied, "given what we discovered about the assassin's collaborator."

A gasp ran through the crowd. My eyes flicked back and forth between the two princes.

Two hands grabbed my shoulders from behind and pulled me away from the scene. I spun to find Prince Matthias, hooded and grinning in one of the Great Hall's many shadowed alcoves.

"Hush for a while," he whispered. My jaw locked tight. He pulled me deeper into the alcove with him, the other servants too distracted by the arguing princes to notice.

Prince Matthias wrapped me in a tight embrace; I could feel the exited beat of his heart, the quick pace of his breath on my neck. What was happening? What did he want from me? He held my head still with one hand and leaned his lips mere inches from my ear.

"Answer my twin brother's questions inaccurately," Prince Matthias breathed into my ear, barely loud enough to be heard. The Imperative didn't care about volume, however, and I felt the order snake its way into me, where it coiled up, waiting.

Prince Matthias continued, "Ignore the next command I give you." This order felt strange, like the wrong sort of key being forced into a lock. But the handle still turned, and the Imperative still took hold.

Then Prince Matthias spun me around and marched back through the crowd, throwing off his hood in a spectacularly dramatic fashion.

"I've caught her!" he announced to the room, "She was trying to sneak away."

Prince Leon looked as bewildered as I felt. What was going on?

"Tell us," Prince Matthias thundered at me, "Tell us the truth."

His Imperative washed over me like a wave, powerful and oppressive, but then broke apart without effect. Ignore his next command. Dark realization settled in my stomach as Prince Xander stepped towards me.

"You-you think Eve is the murderer's accomplice?" Prince Leon sputtered, "I questioned her myself, she had nothing to do with it!"

Prince Xander's mouth twitched, clearly trying not to smile. "Eve," he asked, "did Leon kill our father?"

The room tensed at the accusation. Prince Leon's mouth dropped open in surprise. It was an insane question, one that I couldn't possibly know to be true. And one that I had to answer incorrectly.

"Yes," I said.

Prince Xander continued, using the stunned silence of the room to his advantage, "Did he conspire with this assassin to try and have us killed."

"Yes," I said.

Prince Leon finally found his voice. "This is ridiculous!" he shouted. "She's lying!"

His words failed to convince the crowd. They had seen me ordered by Prince Matthias, they assumed I could only tell the truth.

(Restrain him,) Prince Xander signed.

Two guards lunged at Prince Leon, one pulling his arms behind his back and the other seizing his head, forcing his jaw shut.

"Let go!" he shouted, just before the headlock cut off his ability to speak. But the guards, being deaf, were immune to the Imperative.

And that was it, I thought. A later investigation would find the evidence I had planted, further proving the twins' claims. Prince Leon would be executed. In a matter of hours, Prince Xander and Prince Matthias had seized control of the entire kingdom. It was fortunate, I reflected, that I'd done what they asked. Being on their side was infinitely preferable to being in their way.

But Prince Xander had another question for me.

"Did you," he asked, "willingly help our brother murder the king?"

Ah. Betrayal. Of course. I was a game piece to the twins, not an ally. They would clean up their loose ends.

I tried to fight it, but the Imperative pulled my jaw open, formed the answer that would doom me with my own mouth and then...

And then, for what I assumed was the first time in his entire life, Prince Leon did something kind.

He yanked against the guards, breaking free long enough to get his mouth open, and shouted, "I ordered her! She was under my command!"

And just like that, he saved my life.