She went colder with every word he spoke. “No, you’re wrong. Jonas is wrong. I can’t stay here.”
“The more harm the king does out there, the more Auranians will see he isn’t as benevolent and generous as he claims to be in his speeches. They will finally see that he’s their enemy, not a true king to be obeyed and respected.”
Her thoughts raced. “Perhaps. But the king is going to tear apart this entire kingdom and kill anyone who stands in his way until he finds me. He wants everyone to see that I’m valuable to him—that he cherishes the princess of Auranos. Even though he couldn’t care less about my life if it didn’t help him fool the people into behaving themselves and not giving him any problems. Am I wrong?”
Brion’s expression had lost every bit of its previous humor. Onoria and Tarus looked on grimly. “Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re wrong at all.”
With the bonfire out and the camp now in darkness, Cleo looked up to see a glimmer of stars and a bright full moon beyond the ceiling of leaves. Across the camp, through the shadows, her gaze moved to Jonas, who was speaking to Lysandra, the muscles in his back tense.
“Jonas!” she called out to him.
He turned to look at her, moonlight highlighting his handsome face—just as an arrow pierced through the air and sliced into his shoulder.
He grasped the arrow and tore it out, his pained gaze frantic as he sought hers again. “Run, Cleo. Run now!”
Dozens of red-uniformed guards spilled into the camp. Cleo scanned her immediate surroundings for a weapon—a knife, an ax, anything that could give her some protection and the chance to help fight back against their attackers. But there was nothing.
A guard in a red uniform was headed directly toward her, his sword drawn.
With a frantic look over her shoulder to see her new rebel friends scatter in every direction, she began to run, ducking past trees and bushes in an attempt to escape the guard. Her impractical palace shoes, a stark contrast with the rest of her simpler clothes, sank into the soft dirt with every step.
But the guard was too fast to outrun. He easily caught up to her and grabbed hold of her, turned her around, and slammed her into a tree trunk so hard that she lost her breath and her vision swam. “Tell me, little girl, where is Princess Cleiona?”
When she couldn’t find the air to speak, to respond to his harsh demands, he peered closer at her, his sword biting into the skin at her neck. For a moment she was terrified he would slice her throat wide open and leave her there to bleed to death before she could claim her identity.
But then there was a flicker of recognition in his cruel, narrowed eyes. Even with her hair wrapped tightly into a bun, her face dirty, her clothes that of a Paelsian rebel, did he still recognize her as the princess he’d been sent out to find?
An arrow whizzed so close to her face that she felt the wind from it as it caught the guard in the side of his neck. He stumbled back from her, clawing at his throat as blood gushed from him with each beat of his heart. He dropped to the ground, thrashing in the moss and leaves for a moment longer and then went still. Before Cleo could think, could take a breath, Jonas was there. Her heart leapt at the sight of him.
He grabbed hold of her arm. “We need to move.”
“The camp . . .”
Whatever expression he wore was lost in the shadows, but his tone was tight. “It’s lost. We have a secondary location in case of ambushes. We’ll meet the others there tomorrow.” He grabbed her and they began running.
“Why didn’t you tell me there were search parties out looking for me, murdering everyone they come across?”
“Why would I?” His shirt was soaked with blood, but the wound in his shoulder didn’t seem to slow him down at all.
“Because I have a right to know!”
“You have a right to know,” he muttered, his tone coated with mockery. “Why? Could you have done anything to stop it?”
“I could have gone back to the palace.”
“That’s not part of my plan.”
“I don’t really care! I can’t let more innocent people die.”
Jonas stopped, his grip on her arm tight enough to be painful. He looked so frustrated that for a moment she thought he might shake her, but then his expression eased.
“Many people will die, no matter what happens next—innocent or not. King Gaius may have already stolen your kingdom, but the war continues. And it will continue for as long as he sits his royal arse on that throne. Do you understand this?”
Cleo’s jaw tensed as she looked up at him, angry now. “I’m not an idiot. I understand.”
His glare burned. “Good. Now shut up so I can get you to safety.”
Jonas’s viselike grip loosened only slightly as they hurried through the forest.
“We can hide here. I found this grotto only yesterday.”
Cleo was caught off guard when Jonas pulled her sharply to the right, through a curtain of moss and vines, and through the hollow of a massive oak tree. It led, very unexpectedly, directly into a cave six paces in diameter. It was formed from the thickness of branches and leaves arching over their heads and shielding them from both the guards and any moonlight peeking through the lush green canopy above.
Cleo opened her mouth to speak, but Jonas pressed her back against the wall of this natural barrier.
“Shh,” Jonas cautioned.
Cleo concentrated on trying not to tremble from the cold and her swelling fear.
She could see the guards from where they stood and she held her breath—even the sound of breathing might give away their location. The opening to the grotto was clearly visible through the hollow of the large tree by the torches the guards held. Red uniforms moved past the entrance and guards poked at bushes and shrubs with their swords. Their horses snorted and pawed at the ground.
They were going to be discovered any moment. Jonas’s grip tightened on her, betraying his own trepidation.
The sharp tip of a sword pushed back the vines only inches from Cleo’s face, and she stifled a scream with the back of her hand.
“This way,” one guard shouted at the others, and the sword withdrew. “Make haste, they’re getting away!”
She let out a shuddery sigh of relief as the sound of their pursuers faded into the distance.
Moments later, she jumped as a flame caught her attention. Jonas had struck a piece of flint from his pocket and lit a candle he drew out of a cloth bag hidden in the cave.
“Let me see your neck.” He brought the candle close to her, rubbing his thumb over her skin where the guard had pressed his blade. “Good. It’s only a scratch.”
“Put that out,” she warned. “They’ll see.”
“They won’t see. They’re gone.”
“Fine. Then give it to me.” She held out her hand. “I should look at your shoulder.”
Jonas winced as if he’d forgotten he’d caught an arrow.
“I’ll have to stop the bleeding.” He handed her the candle, then shrugged the shoulder of his shirt down to bare half his chest and his upper arm. Cleo brought the flame closer to see the wound and grimaced at the sight of all the blood.
“That bad?” he asked, glancing at her reaction.
“Not bad enough to kill you, obviously.”
Jonas quickly worked his shirt off all the way. His one shoulder was coated in blood around the wound. Otherwise, the flickering light showed his skin to be tanned and flawless and every bit as muscled as, if she admitted it to herself, she’d expected.
Cleo immediately snapped her gaze back to his face.
“Hold the flame still, your highness,” Jonas said. “I have a hole in my shoulder I need to fix or I’m going to keep bleeding.”
Her eyes widened as he pulled the dagger at his belt—polished silver inlaid with gold, a wavy, tapered blade, and a jeweled hilt. She
recognized it immediately as the same dagger once owned by Aron, the one he’d used to kill Jonas’s brother. “What are you going to do with that?”
“Only what I have to.”
“Why have you kept that horrible thing all this time?”
“I have plans for it.” He held it over the flame, heating the blade.
“You still want to kill Aron.”
Jonas didn’t answer her, but a little of the hardness in his gaze faded. “My brother taught me to do this, you know. Tomas taught me so much—how to hunt, how to fight, how to fix a broken bone or patch up a wound. You don’t know how much I miss him.”
The pain in his dark eyes pulled at her own. It didn’t really matter who someone was, princess, peasant, rebel, or just a boy or a girl. Everyone mourned when their loved ones died.
The past was far too painful and summoned memories of those she too had lost. Cleo wanted to change the subject. “What does that do, to heat the blade?”
“I need to burn the wound to seal it. Crude, but effective. I’ve taught my rebels to do the same when necessary.”
Jonas pulled the jeweled knife away from the flame. After hesitating only a moment, he pressed the red-hot metal against his shoulder.
The horrible sizzling sound and the acrid scent of burning flesh turned her stomach and nearly made her drop the candle. She scrambled to keep a tight hold of it.
Sweat now coated Jonas’s brow, but he hadn’t made a single sound. He pulled the dagger away. “It’s done.”
“That’s barbaric!”
He gave her a considering look. “You haven’t experienced much adversity in your life, have you?”
She immediately opened her mouth to protest but found that if she were honest, she couldn’t. “Truthfully, no. Until recently my life was a dream. The worries I once thought I had now seem incredibly petty. I never gave a single thought to those who had it worse than I did. I knew they existed, but it didn’t affect me.”
“And now?”
Now she saw with more clarity than she ever had in her life. She couldn’t stand by and watch those in pain without wanting to do something to help. “At the end, my father told me when I become queen that I’m to do a better job than he did.” The image of her father dying in her arms came back to her with agonizing clarity. “All these years, and Paelsia so close to us . . . we could have eased your suffering. But we didn’t.”
Jonas watched her quietly, silently, his face catching the small light of the flickering candle. “Chief Basilius wouldn’t have accepted help from King Corvin. I saw with my own eyes that the chief lived as high as any king did while letting his people suffer.”
Cleo looked away. “It’s not right.”
“No, you’re damn right it’s not.” He raised an eyebrow. “But you think you’re going to change things, do you?”
She didn’t hesitate in her answer for a moment. “I know I am.”
“You’re so young—and more than a little naive. Maybe too naive to be queen.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Insults, rebel?”
He laughed at this. “When we first met you called me a savage. Now I’ve earned the slightly more respectable title of rebel.”
One moment he mocked her, the next he seemed so sincere and real. “When I first met you, you were a savage.”
“That’s entirely debatable.”
“That you’ve held on to this weapon for so long makes me wonder how much has really changed.”
“Looks like we’ll have to agree to disagree.” He shrugged the sleeve of his shirt back on but didn’t fasten the ties across his bare chest.
“I guess we will.”
“We’ll have to stay here for the night.” Jonas glanced past the camouflage covering the entrance to the cave, his jaw tight. “I hope my friends managed to get away.”
“I hope so too.” Cleo didn’t want any of them to die—not even the unfriendly Lysandra. The girl only acted as she did out of pain. She’d lost so much. They all had.
Jonas turned from her. “You need your beauty sleep, princess. I’ll keep watch.”
“Jonas, wait.”
When he glanced back at her she pulled the tie from her long hair and let it cascade over her shoulders. His dark eyes followed the fall of her golden hair down to her waist as if mesmerized. “I need to go back.”
Jonas’s gaze snapped back to her eyes. “Back where? To camp? Can’t do that, your highness. It’ll be watched by soldiers for days to come. We’ll go to the other location at daybreak.”
“No . . . that’s not what I meant. I need to go back to the palace.”
He gave her an incredulous look. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“Then let me make it very clear to you, princess. You’re not going back to the palace. Not a chance. Got it?”
Cleo began pacing back and forth in the cramped space, her heart pounding. “The king will not agree to any rebel demands to have me released—but he still wants me back for the wedding to his son. The road will continue on and your keeping me here will have no effect at all. The longer you hold me hostage, the more people will die!”
“I thought I already explained to you, princess, that in war people die. It’s the way it is.”
“But your plan isn’t working. Don’t you see? Keeping me in your camp does nothing except give King Gaius full permission to kill. My absence has not solved any problems for me or for you; it’s only created more of them. I must find the search party and . . .” She tried to picture it, what she could possibly do to end this without more blood spilled. “And I’ll tell them I escaped during their attack. That’s why I took my hair down; they’ll recognize me immediately, even in these clothes. They’ll take me back.”
“And then what?” His tone grew sharper. “Nothing has changed.”
“Nothing will change if we continue along this path.”
Jonas stared at her as if he honestly couldn’t understand why she insisted on arguing this point. “Is forest living too hard for you? Too scary to make your home deep in the Wildlands with the rest of us? Need to return to your luxurious life? To your beloved betrothed, Prince Magnus?”
Her cheeks flushed. “I despise him every bit as much as his father.”
“Words, princess. How am I to believe them? Perhaps you’re so committed to the prince and your upcoming royal wedding that you’re having second thoughts about the defeat of King Gaius if it means joining me and living away from such luxuries. After all, your road to become queen is split into two paths, isn’t it? One is alone as heir to the throne of Auranos, the other is on the arm of the Prince of Blood when he takes his father’s place.”
This boy seemed to live and breathe to argue with her. “Don’t you remember, Jonas? You yourself told me that would never happen. That they’d kill me before I ever become queen, no matter what. You think that’s suddenly changed?”
He faltered. “I don’t know.”
“Exactly. You don’t know. Apart from those who are being slaughtered by the king’s men, I have friends at the castle who are in danger without me there. And—and I have something else of great value I can’t turn my back on.”
“What?”
“I can’t say.” The ring was a secret that she refused to share with anyone. She desperately wished she had it with her right now.
Jonas glared at her. “Princess, you are such a—”
But then he froze, grabbed the candle to snuff out its flame, and pushed her against the wall.
Then she heard what he had—voices outside the safety of the cave. The guards had returned to give the area another sweep. Her heart pounded so loud she was certain it would give away their location. It felt like hours that they stayed like that, as quiet and still as marble statues. Pressed up against him, Cleo smelled his scent again, pine needles and open air
.
“I think they’re gone,” he said at last.
“Perhaps I should have called out to them. They could have rescued me from you.”
Jonas snorted softly. “I’m good, but I’m not sure I could take on a dozen guards to save not only my neck but yours as well.”
He was so unbelievably frustrating! “Sometimes I really hate you.”
Finally Jonas eased back from her a fraction. “The feeling is entirely mutual, your highness.”
He was still too close to her, his breath hot against her cheek. She couldn’t put her thoughts in proper order. “Jonas, please, would you just consider—”
But before she could speak another word, he crushed his mouth against hers.
It was so unexpected that she hadn’t the chance to even think of pushing him away. His body pressed her firmly against the rough cave wall. His hands slid down to her waist to pull her closer to him.
And just like that, with his proximity, with his kiss, he managed to fill her every sense. He was smoke from the campfire, he was leaves and moss and the night itself.
There was nothing gentle in the rebel’s kiss, nothing sweet or kind. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, and so very dangerous—every bit as deadly as the kiss of an arrow.
Finally, he pulled back just a little, his dark eyes glazed as if half drunk.
“Princess . . .” He cupped her face between his hands, his breath ragged.
Her lips felt bruised. “I suppose that’s how Paelsians show their anger and frustration?”
He laughed, an uneasy sound. “Not usually. Nor is it typically the answer to someone who tells you they hate you.”
“I . . . I don’t hate you.”
His dark-eyed gaze held hers. “I don’t hate you either.”
She could easily get lost in those eyes, but she couldn’t let herself. Not now. Not with so much at risk. “I need to go back, Jonas. And you need to find your friends and make sure they’re all right.”