Page 40 of Kingdom Of Veil And Vow

“Most of what we did was patrolling the streets, watching and listening for dissenters. Sometimes, we would be forced to enter businesses who were late on their taxes and demand payment on behalf of the king.” I check down the hall again, lowering my voice another octave. “Shame has often accompanied me in my endeavors, but none more so than when I was forced to take a family’s only source of income away because what the king demanded was too high a price for them to pay.”

“You could have said no,” Bella says, tilting her head so that I catch her gaze. Two tight lines punctuate her brow, her lips tense with anger. “You could have taken a stand.”

“And where would that have gotten me? I take a stand once, and that is it. At best, I’m banished from the castle. At worst, I’m killed over the transgression. Neither of those options gives me the opportunity to bring change on a larger scale. They just cut one head off and allow two more to grow in its place.”

“And is that what you want? To bring change?”

My stomach twists. I want to dive beneath my shields, plaster on that mask of apathy so that she doesn’t see more than she should. Instead, I force a short nod of my head. Bella moves her gaze from mine, scowling as if she doesn’t believe me.

“Cade hated it as much as I did, and during our patrols, we would often talk about what it might be like if someone else were in charge. If someone were to challenge King Dolian’s reign. It was blasphemous talk, of course, but our friendship was only strengthened by knowing that Cade felt as strongly as I did about the injustices brought to those who already shouldered so many of the kingdom’s burdens.” I press my lips together to keep myself from saying any more. The foundation of the resistance had been my risk to take, but Cade’s belief in it—in me—was one of the main reasons why I thought that, perhaps, it could actually be a force for good. “One day, before heading out to our assignment, we were stopped by Commander Miles. He had just been promoted and put in charge of our unit. He told us that one of the business owners in Vitour—a butcher—overheard his neighbor trying to rouse others to rise up against the king. To demand change. We were to bring him in for questioning.”

Of course, this man had no idea that there was a quiet rebellion brewing. But his brashness reinforced the idea that, in order for this to work, we needed to take our time. We needed to be patient. I didn’t want to arrest him. To send him off to his death when his ideas mirrored my own. However, I understood then just as I do now that sometimes the only way to best an opponent is to make sure that they don’t view you as a player in the game at all.

“On our way there, Cade expressed that he was growing weary of always obeying the king. That he was tired of taking from good men and women. And he knew, I know that he knew, that there would always be sacrifices required in order to help the greater good. Yet, on that day, Cade was tired of being the one to execute those sacrifices. When we showed up to the man’s home, we were greeted by his wife and children at his side. I moved to arrest him and bring him to the dungeon, but Cade stopped me. It was the first time we had ever fought in our many years of friendship. The first time we deviated from our duties.”

Her voice is soft when she asks, “What did you do?”

“Despite my better judgement, I gave in to what he wanted, and we came up with a plan. We would give the man and his family a day to leave Vitour. Then we would go to the commander and tell him that the man attacked us and we were forced to execute him in his residence. We were sure they would not question it, as the man was going to be dead either way. And we’d never broken protocol before.” The plan had seemed foolproof at the time. It should have been foolproof. Except that I forgot just how much my father hated me. Forgot just how deeply his obsession with ensuring that I suffered every moment of every day ran.

“I take it the commander found out,” Bella says, dread thick in her voice.

“We were being watched because of—” Me. It had been because of me. But those words lead to a deeper conversation than I am willing to risk, so I cast them aside and push forward, ignoring the way she looks curiously at me. Clearing my throat, I add, “I knew that we’d been caught once we were both called to the throne room. I found Cade in the hall on my way there and made him swear to let me take the fall. He had a family he was close with—parents, siblings, and grandparents. He would often send them money, the steady income from being a guard helped to make their lives easier. At best, he would lose his job and be forced into becoming a laborer for someone else. At worst, the king would kill him.”

“Did you not fear for yourself?” she asks, a breathlessness to the question that wraps around me.

I shrug, offering her a grim quirk of my lips. “I did not. There was no one but Cade left for me to care for.” Grayson too, but again, a thread that doesn’t need exploring now. “We both assumed that all they could possibly know was that the man had gotten away. So the story would be that while Cade searched the man’s home, I attempted to apprehend him. But he managed to overpower me. This way, the brunt of the blame would fall on me and hopefully leave Cade unscathed. We entered a full throne room, the king there with Commander Miles, the councilmen, and Simon—his advisor. We fed them the story we came up with and waited for our punishment. But then King Dolian made a command, and suddenly, the man we let go was thrown before us, bloody and beaten to the point he could hardly open his eyes.” Bella’s amber gaze widens, mirroring the horror I felt then. “He told them everything. Explained that it was Cade who wanted to free him. I tried to insist that he was lying, that it was me who let him slip through my fingers, but it didn’t matter.” The man had sobbed his apologies as he was ordered to die at our hands. I thought that might be the worst of it, but I was so terribly wrong. “That day, I realized that our deviation had damned us, and so I vowed to never do so again.”

Silence in the wake of my words trickles in, and while a part of me wishes I wouldn’t have to speak this next part out loud, I know that there is no avoiding it.

“What happened?”

“Commander Miles spoke of having knowledge that Cade and I were great friends. I think he did it with the hope that the king would just kill us both, but he underestimated just how much my— Just how much the king hates me.” I blow out a breath at the near slip in my words, my heart suddenly pounding. “King Dolian demanded justice for the slight of lying to his face. He ordered that Cade’s dominant hand be severed from his body so that he might never again work in the guard or any other job that could bring in decent coin.” My eyes close, bile working up my throat as I remember how his screams echoed out into the room, permeating my soul with his agony. “And he commanded that I be the one to do it.”

Chapter Twenty-Six: Siyala

My finger trails along the title of the book sitting in my lap, my head foggy. Distantly, the last interaction I had with Kenji circles my mind, floating in and out of my consciousness. Just when I think I’ve pushed it out of my head, it returns again, trapping me within myself until I’m no more useful than the dirt on the ground.

And then there is Xander, the guard’s words from a few days earlier battling for attention as well, keeping me from sinking too deeply into the pages spread out before me. I want to believe the tale he wove. One where he is clearly in disagreement with everything the king stands for. One where he is no more a willing participant to the king’s schemes than Rhea was. But Xander has come down to this dungeon nearly every day for weeks and weeks. Has spoken of Alexi. The king. The other guards and oaths and his need for information. And through it all, he has let me believe that he is no more than a regular guard. But Xander is one of the king’s Trusted, a fact the commander let slip when he and that man came to the dungeon to torture Immie. That knowledge places Xander not only there on the days the king came to abuse Rhea but also inside that tower the night Alexi died.

How can I believe anything he says knowing that he was so involved in the murder of a man whose only crime was caring about Rhea? How can I push past that and think that his motives only serve this greater good instead of just the king?

I have been lied to before. Manipulated. Backed into a corner where I was given choices that were hardly choices at all, and I refuse to be lured into this false sense of security with him. He wants what I know and is clearly willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Those rules…

I could practically see the sadness rolling off of him as he spoke about his mother. The guilt he possessed when he told me about Cade. Despite how I rationalized the truth of who I now knew him to be, my attention had immediately—annoyingly—focused on that third rule. “Never let anyone get close.” So I ignored the anger that I still felt pulsing in my blood and asked him.

“That is a far less interesting story,” he had answered, and my foolish curiosity begged to differ. “If they return to… question Immie, don’t draw attention to yourself. I am not given access to the king’s advisor’s schedule, so I cannot know when he, and Commander Miles, might return. I understand it is in your nature to fight, but this”—his gaze flicked down the hall to Immie’s cell—“is a battle you can’t win.” And then he left.

I slam the book in my lap shut. No. Fuck him. Fuck him and his lies. His stories meant to get me to trust him. Fuck his apathetic voice and his stupid handsome face and his captivating eyes. A battle I can’t win? Oh, he will find out soon enough just how wrong he is.

Staring at the spot where he had sat just outside my cell, I think through how I might use what I know now about Xander to my advantage and come up with a plan. It’s a faulty one at best, a sure death sentence at worst. But I have a feeling that if I can catch Xander by surprise, if I can make him falter for even a few seconds, I can gain the upper hand. Specifically, I need to snag the keys to the cells from where they hang on his belt. Maybe I can even secure a dagger too. He won’t kill me. Of that, I am certain. I am still too valuable of a resource to him. But he, like all the men that have forced their way into my life, underestimates me.

“Immie,” I call out, hoping she will hear me over the chatter of the other prisoners.

“Yes, child?”

Sighing in relief, I tuck the book under the thin blanket at the head of my cot. “How are you fairing?”

It is a dumb question to ask of someone who has been tortured but my anxiousness is alive in my chest, an animal all its own as it crawls between my ribs and curls over my heart.