Page 7 of Kingdom Of Veil And Vow

I shifted. It had happened after being shot with the arrow. Before the world went black. When I wake again, I am being carried into a tent. It is warm, and voices surround me, but all I can focus on is their hands. Fingers pressing into me. Sweaty palms gliding along my skin. Skin. Not fur. It makes panic swell until I think I begin to thrash, and their voices turn sharp. Angry men who hold me down until I can’t move. There is pain, so much pain, and I don’t want them to touch me. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Time slips, sunlight fades, and then I am awake again in someone else’s tunic. The arrow is gone, poorly wrapped gauze in its place.

They toss me outside. Leaving me to stare at the stars.

For a long while, I lie on the ground with the fallen leaves and don’t move. My heart beats, and my eyes observe, and I am alive, but I’m not sure I am living. Though that has been the case for such a long time. Eventually, the laughter of the guards nearby begins to slow as a group of them stay huddled around a fire, while others crawl into tents. It hits me then that, while death would have been a welcome companion, it is not the one that holds me close. Not yet. And if I don’t move, something worse will come.

It always has.

So I push through the pain searing over my hip and down my leg, my breath forced through clenched teeth as I sit up. My upper body sways, the movement of my limbs a foreign feeling after four years of being in my animal form. But the guards do not notice me. To them, I am no threat. I am merely a wounded animal. In many ways, they are right. But then I think of her. Rhea has always seen me as something more. Something precious. Something that is hers. And if they bring me back to the king, that will all be at risk. If they tell her they have captured me, she will come.

Standing, I tilt to the right and then to the left, uncoordinated and wobbly legs beginning to move away from the camp, and all the while, I picture Rhea. Her bright green eyes as she stares off at the sunset while we sit together on the balcony. I hear her voice as she reads to me, the fake annoyance in her tone when I choose a history book instead of one of the romances she so loves. I wish to tell her that I choose those books not because I enjoy them, but because they are the only ones she will read aloud. Before Flynn anyway.

I move not because I am finally in a mortal form but because I know. I know that if I do not try to escape, I will be no better off than when I arrived in this kingdom all those years ago. My heart pounds in time to my steps. One-two. One-two. One-two. I am sweating in a way my fox form can not, yet my mouth still hangs open as if that is the only way to cool myself. Blood rushes past my ears, and my fingers and toes tingle with the warmth that I remember comes right before a shift. I do not want to shift again, but perhaps I should. I could move faster as a fox, dart between the trees in a flash.

I turn and look over my shoulder, counting the men around the fire. Eight. Is that how many there were before? Licking my lips, I swallow and face forward again, only to have my path blocked.

“Well, where are you going, sweet creature?” The man’s voice is rough, his hands slick as he wraps them around my upper arms, my knees shaking beneath my weight.

“No,” I rasp, pushing at his chest as hard as I can. But his grip only tightens, his laugh rumbling beneath his golden armor. That roaring lion engraved on the front mocking me.

“Boys! We got ourselves an escaped birdie!” His shout rouses the men around the fire and draws even more from their tents. They surround me, and they smell so foul, and their hearts beat so loudly in their chests I swear I feel them reverberate in mine. The forest is then lost to a different scene in my mind. There isn’t the cold metal of armor pressing at my back but the soft fabric of a comforter. There aren’t many men looking at me with lust in their eyes, only one. Just like then, I am powerless. My chest heaves, and my eyes close, and I see the flash of pink fabric tied to a wooden beam above me. Run. Run. Run.

“Hey!” My eyes shoot back open. “Well look at you,” a blond guard says, tilting his head. He gleams with sweat, far too much for even a summer night. As he holds his hand to his chest, I take in the way white gauze wraps around it and down his wrist, my eyes flicking back up to meet his.

A different guard speaks, attempting to explain how he caught me trying to escape, but the man in front of me holds his uninjured hand out and silences him. He is important, then. I don’t like the way he looks at me. It isn’t sexual—at least not entirely. It is a predator sizing up prey. A monster lurking in the dark about to be exposed.

“A little soap and water, and you might be able to blend in well enough with the women of this kingdom.” The men around me chuckle, and the noise skitters down my spine in warning. “But you aren’t one of them, are you? A pretty creature is still just that—a creature. And creatures, no matter how lovely they may be to look at”—he drags a finger down the side of my face—“must be bound.”

Despite my fear of being stuck again, despite how my magic feels out of reach, I still call to it. I growl and snap my teeth at them as they roughly tug me past the tents and the campfire and towards the thick trunk of a nearby tree. Their laughs scrape against me just as harshly as the tree’s bark does when they force my arms to wrap around it, binding my wrists to keep me in place. Knees tucked beneath me, I can do nothing. Despite how I thrash.

The blond man squats before me, and I finally recognize his face in the firelight. He is the guard who held the rope. The one whose hand I had bitten. “I am the commander of this unit, creature. You are only alive because you carry knowledge that King Dolian might need.” He smirks, then outright smiles when a tear streaks down my cheek. “Also because my men listen to me. Behave, creature, or I might turn them on you.” Then he gestures to his injured hand. “And don’t think you won’t be punished for this.”

The days that follow are lost in a blur of rough handling of my body, as if I am no better than a sack of dirt. In that passing of time, my mind begins to grow clearer. I know being stuck in my shifted form for so long can lead to madness, and I assume I was well within the thralls of it after four years. However, it feels like a veil is being lifted inch by inch as we travel. I am forced to ride with a different guard each day, my body recoiling at how close they are to me. At how they smell and how they talk and how they watch me. When the gray stone castle of Vitour comes into view, my breath seizes in my chest. When I spot the top of the tower, I try to leap off of the guard’s horse. Instead, he wraps his hand around my neck and squeezes tightly enough that it hurts, his cheek rough as he scrapes it against my own. “I’ve always liked them with a bit of fight.” I pretend not to feel the way his hand holding the reins skirts up my thigh. I keep myself still after that. Then they bring me to the dungeon, a lightless place void of anything except more disgusting odors and mostly empty cells.

Lying on my cot, I stare up at the black ceiling of the rancid cell I was deposited into, the scent of mildew so strong down here that I have to fight off gagging with each breath. Not that I have anything to throw up. My fingers stop playing with the gauze wrapped around my wrist, the cloth covering a cut made when they sloppily removed my restraints. Turning my head to the side, I listen to the approaching footsteps, fear unraveling down my spine as I draw my knees in towards my chest.

The first guard comes to a stop in front of the bars, and I recognize him. He visited not that long ago. A second guard appears, and then the scent of cedar hits me. The king’s steps are slow and casual. They always were in the tower. The guards of the forest taunted that I was a creature, but did they have any idea just what sort of beast they bent the knee to?

“You,” he says, slipping a hand into the pocket of his black pants and squinting his eyes as he tries to make out my features where I’m tucked into the dark, “are going to tell me everything you know about Rhea Maxwell.”

Chapter Four: Siyala

The wound at my thigh burns as I shift position. I’d try to stand, but I’m not sure if my balance is normal yet. My heart races, its incessant drumming in my ears forcing me to bite down on my lip to stay focused.

“Do you understand what I’ve said?” the king asks, no shortage of disgust in his voice. “Surely, the ability to shift into an animal doesn’t make you mute in this form?”

“She can speak. Commander Miles confirmed it,” the guard next to the king says. Commander Miles. That must be the man I attacked.

“So she is choosing not to answer her king.”

“You are not my king,” I bite out, though lack of food and water has left my throat ravaged, and the words come out hardly louder than a rasp. King Dolian cocks his head to the side, the gold crown resting atop it somehow staying in place.

“You dare insult our king?” The guard who spoke earlier presses a hand to the dagger strapped to his thigh, while the one I recognize from before stares into the cell. I don’t answer, pressing myself back against the cold, damp stone wall. It seeps through the thin fabric of the shirt I’m wearing, urging my teeth to chatter.

“A slight I’m sure she will not make again,” the king growls. Doubtful. I may not have watched him hurt Rhea, but I heard it. Her cries as he beat her, as he belittled and threatened her, are burned into my memory forever. “When did you join Princess Rhea in the tower?” I press my lips together, my fingers gripping the fabric of the too large pants the guards gave me. When I don’t answer, King Dolian clasps his hands behind him. “Who brought you there? Was it Alexi? Another guard?” Then he spits out, as if he can’t bear to say the name, “Flynn?”

I lay my head back against the wall, a small laugh tumbling out of me. “All the power in the kingdom. All the glory behind your name, and it was a guard who rescued her from you.” When I tilt my chin down again, I glare at the king through the soupy darkness of the cell. My muscles strain like I might shift, but the magic isn’t there. It rests deep within me, as if hibernating.

The skin above the king’s beard brightens, a flush taking over as he looks at the familiar guard. There is no greater insult to a man high on false pride than a hit to his fragile ego. “Xander, it seems our new guest might need some lessons on what happens when you disobey your king.”