Authors: Amanda Hocking
“Accuse me of what?” Kennet appeared unnerved for a moment—his smile faltering and his eyes darting over to me—but he quickly hid it under his usual arrogance.
I met his gaze and kept my voice even. “I think you were behind everything that happened in Storvatten. You pulled all the strings to frame your brother and get his crown.”
Kennet laughed, and I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d expected his reaction to be, but he honestly didn’t seem upset. His laugh wasn’t one of nerves but his usual carefree booming one, like he genuinely found this whole scenario amusing.
“Bryn, you have made a terrible mistake.” He scratched his temple and smiled sadly at me. “I didn’t pull any strings.”
“You’re say you’re not responsible for what happened in Storvatten?” Mina asked Kennet, but kept her eyes on me.
Kennet shook his head. “No, of course not.”
“Now we find ourselves in a terrible predicament,” Mina said. “You, Bryn Aven and Kasper Abbot, stand before me accusing an allied Prince of heinous crimes without any evidence to back it up.”
“We do—” I began, but the Queen silenced me.
“He denies them all, and as a Prince, I will believe him over the unfounded word of two lowly guards,” Mina went on, and I clenched my jaw to keep from yelling at her. “But had I believed you, your claims could have easily led to a war with a peaceful friend.”
I lowered my eyes and swallowed hard.
“Ultimately, that would’ve led to the deaths of many innocent people—both Kanin and Skojare,” Mina said. “Do you know what that means, Bryn? You attempted to cause the deaths of your own people and to hurt the King.”
“That’s not at all what I meant,” I insisted desperately. “I was trying to defend the King and the kingdom.”
“It’s too late.” Mina shook her head and attempted to affect a look of sadness, but it fell flat given her cold expression. “The damage is already done. And so you must be punished.”
“Punished?” I shook my head, not understanding.
“Yes, both of you, actually.” She looked between Kasper and me. “You both attempted to commit treason.”
“
Treason?
” I shouted.
“My Queen, there has been a terrible misunderstanding,” Kasper said, hurrying to defend himself.
“Elliot, arrest these two and take them to the dungeon until they can stand trial,” Queen Mina commanded.
“This wasn’t Kasper’s idea. It’s not his fault,” I tried to argue for him.
“Elliot,
now
!” Mina raised her voice, and he hurried to comply.
Members of the H
ö
gdragen had a pair of iron shackles on the back of their belts in case they needed to restrain someone, and Elliot pulled them out now. He walked over to his friend, giving Kasper an apologetic look before locking the cuff around his wrist.
Then Elliot moved on to me, meaning to lock the other cuff around my wrist, but I pulled away.
“Your Highness, please, you have to listen to me,” I persisted.
“I am the
Queen
.” Mina sneered. “How dare you tell me what I have to do.”
It was then that I realized my pleas were falling on deaf ears. There was no point in fighting, and I let Elliot arrest me.
The iron shackle around my wrist felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Kasper and I walked with our heads down, saying nothing because there was nothing to say. Another guard had joined Elliot, in case we decided to put up a fight, and the four of us walked in silence through the cold corridors of the palace.
I heard hushed whispers as we walked by, but I never looked up to see who was speaking. As defeated as I felt, my mind raced to figure out how to get out of the situation. My father might be able to leverage his position as the Chancellor to get us free, and while I normally hated nepotism, I didn’t want Kasper to spend years in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed.
Both of us would most certainly lose our careers, but if we were lucky we might not have to forfeit our lives. There was a chance King Evert might not act as harshly as his wife, so hopefully we wouldn’t end up in prison for life or exiled.
The highest punishment for treason was execution, but I had to believe it wouldn’t come to that.
When we reached the cells located in the dungeon below the palace, we weren’t the only ones in there. An old man with a long graying beard had gotten up from his cot to watch our arrival, holding on to the bars and pressing his emaciated, dirty face against them.
This was a long-term prison, which was why it only housed a solitary inmate. There was a jail behind the H
ö
gdragen dorms where everyday criminals were kept: thieves and tax evaders, drunks who needed to cool off, even the rare murderer.
The dungeon was for crimes against the kingdom.
The old man in the cell was unrecognizable from who he’d been when he was thrown in the dungeon over three decades ago, but I knew immediately that it was Samuel Peerson. In our textbooks, I’d seen pictures of him from when he’d been arrested in the 1980s. He’d been a young man then, protesting the King’s high taxation.
It had been under Karl Strinne’s reign, our current King Evert’s uncle. Karl had been a much stricter King than his two predecessors, and so even though Samuel had been a Markis—a Kanin of good breeding and the heir to a fortune—King Karl had imprisoned Samuel for publicly disagreeing with him at a meeting, calling Samuel “a traitor” and “an enemy of the kingdom.”
And here Samuel remained, wasting away in a prison cell. His skin was pale with years of no sunlight, his eyes bloodshot, and a few of his teeth appeared to be missing.
Even though the Kings who followed Karl were more lax in their rulings, they had never pardoned Samuel Peerson. They wouldn’t undo the wrong that had been committed because they refused to undermine a King, even a long-dead one.
If Queen Mina decided that we should spend the rest of our lives in these cells, there was a good chance that King Evert wouldn’t overrule her. It would seem like a weakness on his part, as if his wife had been allowed to act without his guidance and he didn’t have a handle on the running of his kingdom.
We would die in here, if that’s what the Queen wished, and after how she’d acted today, there was no reason to think she wished otherwise.
My eyes were locked on the sad, weepy eyes of Samuel Peerson. I stopped, frozen in my tracks, as I realized that Kasper and I couldn’t risk waiting for a trial. Elliot had been leading Kasper along, and the guard that had been charged with me nudged the small of my back.
“Get moving,” he barked, and I knew what I had to do.
He was standing directly behind me, so with one quick move I lifted my arm back and slammed the iron cuff into his head. He let out a groan, then fell to the floor unconscious. Kasper and I were still attached by the shackles, so when I moved to the side, he moved with me.
“Hey!” Elliot shouted in surprise and drew his sword on us.
“Elliot, don’t do this,” I said.
“Please.” Kasper pleaded with his friend. “You know we didn’t do what the Queen is accusing us of, and if you throw us in these cells, we’ll end up just like him.”
“They’re right, boy,” Samuel Peerson said in a hollow, craggy voice.
Elliot looked at the old man with a stricken look on his face, and I knew he had to be making one of the hardest decisions of his life. It was hammered into the H
ö
gdragen again and again that they must never disobey the orders of their King or Queen.
Finally, he let out a shaky breath and lowered his sword. He took the keys off his belt and tossed them to Kasper.
“You did the right thing,” Kasper assured him as he hurried to unlock his shackle, then handed me the keys so I could take care of mine myself.
“I hope so,” Elliot muttered and handed Kasper his sword. “Before you go, will you do me a favor and hit me on the head, so I have an excuse for letting you get away?”
“Okay.” Kasper nodded. “And thank you.”
Elliot closed his eyes, steeling himself for the blow, and Kasper raised the sword and slammed the bell handle into his head. Elliot cried out in pain and stumbled backward, but he didn’t fall unconscious.
“Do you want me to hit you again?” Kasper asked.
“No, no,” Elliot said hurriedly. His head had already begun bleeding, and he touched it and winced. “I’ll just run and get the guards after you’re gone, and tell them I was knocked out.”
“Can you give us a ten-minute headstart?” Kasper asked.
Elliot grimaced. “I’ll try.”
“We have to get out of here,” I said, because ten minutes wasn’t very long at all.
He nodded, and we turned to make our escape. Before we did, I stopped and tossed the keys to Samuel, who reached his arm out of his cell to catch them.
“There’s one key for the shackles, and one for the cell,” I told him. “Get out of here as fast as you can.”
He’d move slower than us, but since the guards would most likely be far more interested in catching us, Samuel actually had a good chance of making it out.
Kasper reached the top of the steps at the end of the dungeon before I did. They were curved, so I couldn’t see the top, and I actually thought he might have left without me. But he was waiting with his back pressed against the wall, peering out around the corner.
“Is anyone coming?” I whispered.
“Two guards went around the corner, so just to be safe we should wait another thirty seconds.”
“Once we get past here, we won’t be going the same way, so you don’t have to wait for me.”
He turned back to look at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to find Kennet. Our only way out of this is getting him to confess his part in this. Otherwise we’ll have to spend the rest of our lives on the run.”
I wasn’t sure how much knocking guards out and escaping a pair of shackles would do to help convince anyone I was innocent, but once I found Kennet and got him alone, I’d do whatever it took to get him to tell the truth.
And if I couldn’t get him to admit everything, I would get him to tell me something that would help me gather more evidence to convince Evert that he was working with Konstantin Black and Viktor D
å
lig. Evert would take his wife’s side in many things, but he would never stomach any aid to his nemesis.
“I’ll go with you,” Kasper said.
I shook my head. “No, you need to take Tilda and get out of here as fast as you can.”
“You think I want to drag Tilda and the baby along with me into a life in exile?” he asked. “I need my name cleared just as much as you do, so I’m going with you. We started this together, we finish this together.”
I relented. “Okay.”
Kasper leaned forward, craning his neck out into the hall, and it must’ve been clear, because he dashed out into the hall and I ran after him.
We sat in wait behind the door of the en suite bathroom. I’d left it partially open so I could peer through the narrow crack. When the bedroom creaked open, I held my breath and leaned forward, trying to see the figure who had come in.
In the late 1800s, the Kanin had enjoyed an influx of cash thanks to a few well-placed changelings and the industrial revolution. That allowed Queen Viktoria to undertake a massive remodeling project on the west wing of the palace, including the installation of dumbwaiters in the guest rooms.
Guests of the palace were always dignitaries, and the Queen didn’t want them to be forced to trek down the cold halls to the kitchen or wait for servants to bring up inevitably chilly food. (Even in the nineteenth century, we had a problem keeping the massive stone palace warm.)
All Kasper and I had to do was get down to the lower level beneath the west wing, which was separated from the dungeon under the east wing. That required a lot of moving quietly, hiding against walls, and dashing into broom closets and restrooms until guards passed by.
And it all had to be done very quickly. Right now, hardly anyone knew that we’d been arrested, let alone that we’d escaped, so our sneaking around was more of a precaution. But we were in no position to take chances.
Once we made it down to the west wing, I left Kasper to choose the appropriate dumbwaiter because he had more knowledge of the palace. As a H
ö
gdragen, he knew most of the ins and outs of the palace, since that had allowed him to better protect it.
Given the cozy relationship between Kennet and our King and Queen, we both surmised that he would most likely be staying in the finest room we had. That fortunately made finding the dumbwaiter a bit easier, because the nicest guest chamber was on the south corner of the palace, in a massive turret.
Once we made it up to the bedroom, I set about checking to see if it was Kennet’s room. Thanks to the servants who made the beds and tidied up, it was nearly impossible to tell if the room had been used at all.
The heavy drapes were pulled back from the massive windows that ran along the rounded walls, leaving only sheer curtains to let light in, but I didn’t know if that meant anything. Though it was a lush suite, I noticed absently that the French windows were in need of repair—the paint was chipping and the wood appeared warped.
Confirmation that we’d found the right room came from the massive wardrobe across from the four-poster bed. When I opened it, I found a fur-lined parka and silver suits hanging up, including an all-too-familiar sharkskin one.
Kasper and I decided that our best course of action was to surprise Kennet, especially since we couldn’t know if he had a guard or two in tow, so we hid in his bathroom. Kasper stood slightly behind me, leaning against the embossed wallpaper, with Elliot’s sword still clutched in his hand.
We’d waited for what felt like eternity, but in reality, it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes until the doors finally opened. I caught a glimpse of a shadow—someone moving in the room—but I couldn’t tell who the person was, and if it was merely a maid instead of Kennet.
I leaned so close to the door that my nose brushed up against it, and finally he turned enough so I could see his face—it was Kennet. He took off his jacket and tossed it on the bed, and as far as I could tell he was alone. I decided to go for it.