For a minute, the girl looked thoughtful, her tongue moving around in her cheeks like she was tasting each word to choose the right one. She pulled her legs up and tucked them under her. Tipped her head back and forth, shifting through the thoughts rolling around in there. But she didn’t look especially afraid, which was unusual for Daivad.
Finally, her lips parted with that same little pop and she said, “I offer help.”
“All that time thinking and you found only three words?”
She shrugged and looked up at him with innocent eyes. “Well, last time I slipped up you chased me all over Urden—I took that time thinking to make sure it was the right three words.”
He made sure to give her an unamused look. “I don’t need help.”
“Obviously,” she agreed, rocking to one side, legs still tucked under her, to look behind him, out the gate. “A fugitive guilty of high treason, yet not only have you managed to evade capture, you’ve built a whole little village in one of the most dangerous areas of the queendom to house those you’ve freed from the queen’s work camps.”
She rocked back upright, eyes back on him. “What are the chances you’d tell me the story of how the fuck you managed that?”
He continued to look unamused.
“Yeah… Well, help named Unnecessary can still be named Useful.”
“Find your point.”
This time she chewed her lips while she searched for the words. She twisted her neck, which popped alarmingly, then her spine, which did the same. Then rolled her shoulders in an unnatural way—
“Stop doing that,” he grumbled.
“Oh, sorry. Helps my magic flow better. The point is: of all the plans your mother—”
“She’s not my mother,” he snapped, sharper than intended.
Nyxabella’s face went serious, her furrowed brow apologetic. She gave a brief nod and said, “It won’t happen again.”
Before he could find something to say to cover the moment of unapproved emotion, she continued, “Of all the plans the queen likes to draw up, the ones inked in blood? I think the one she’s drafting now might be the bloodiest of all.”
“And how can a mad little girl name the queen’s plans?”
She gave him a dark smile at her new moniker. “Same way I found the Traitor Prince. I listened. You’d be shocked, what secrets the world reveals if only you open your ears.” Resigned, she added, “But it’s so rare that I meet anyone who does.”
Nyxabella sighed, then continued, “The mines at Toll, you know them?”
He’d damned thousands to those mines during his time in the queen’s army, but had only visited them once himself. That was just a few months before he was branded the Traitor Prince.
Daivad said, “She bled those mines dry long ago.”
Nyxabella shook her head. “They found a new vein. Aran has started up ‘recruitment’ again, though she’s doing it quietly. Any families who sign their able-bodied teenagers away to the army are rewarded, so long as they keep their lips sewn tight. I don’t know how long before her request for bodies becomes a demand again. And she’s pulling from the work camps, sending everyone she can to Toll.”
She sat back, eyes distant, and there, in her pinched brow and the arms she wrapped herself in, was the fear. “The Mothers only know how many more collars she’ll be able to make now.”
Just like that, Daivad felt one around his neck.
An electric itch buzzed through Daivad’s fists, one that would only be scratched if he reached up and touched his neck to ensure it was bare. Had his arms not been crossed over his chest and his fists buried in his elbows, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself. But he maintained control, didn’t even let himself glance behind him to make sure that gate was still open. To make sure he was free.
Daivad made sure his voice was even. “Even if your words hold truth, it still doesn’t mean they hold value. The queen’s plans concerned me ten years ago, not now.”
Nyxabella’s gaze drew an erratic path around him. She cocked her head, surprised. “Do you actually believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s with the work camp crusades?”
Through his teeth, he said, “I get bored.”
“Hm,” she said, eyes narrowed, unconvinced.
All it had been was a “Hm,” but it irked him.
“Well,” she said, leaning back on her hands. “She’s making it your concern. If she wants to dump as many bodies on Toll as possible, she needs to deal with the thorn in her royal ass. The one that keeps chipping steadily away at her workforce.”
“The camps I’ve taken are a fraction of what she has. A thorn means nothing to her.”
“Except that the little wound you’ve made has gotten infected.”
Daivad frowned at the image in his head. “Choose a different metaphor.”
Nyxabella actually laughed, a short, bright chuckle that seemed, as she was, impossibly genuine. “Sure. Plainly then: you humiliated her. You know Lushale has been conflicted about the Earthbreakers since they took the crown, about how hard they pushed Order. Then here comes a queen, a woman, whose husband would rather die than keep living by her side and whose son was … well, Richard. If she didn’t want to lose what little faith the people still had in the Earthbreakers, she had to prove Order could break anything. Anyone. Even an Inhuman orphan boy.” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “She staked her entire reputation as queen on the belief that she could control you. But you left and humiliated her—”
“I know my own story,” he growled. Every word brought up an old memory, an old feeling, and she needed to shut the hell up.
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“And so does the rest of Lushale, as much as Aran tries to wipe all memory of you from its collective mind. I’d say that plays a role in how you’ve managed to evade her for so long. She could have your face plastered all over Lushale, a huge price stamped on your head, but that would require admitting you exist. Did you know,” she asked, “that every time you free a camp, she has it played off as an earthquake, a fire, even a band of Chaos terrorists?”
“But…” a slow smile crawled onto her face, her eyes unfocused, “there are some people who still listen, so they hear the truth anyway. And they’ve been telling the story of the man who the queen could never break. So much so that the story even found its way back to her. Every time you take a camp, you humiliate her all over again, and loosen her grip on the people of this land. You’ve finally burned her patience down, no fuse left. As we speak, she’s hand-picking a team of Lushale’s most talented, whose only goal is to find you.”
She looked at him expectantly, like she was waiting for him to gasp or something. But he only stared evenly at her.
“And?”
Nyxabella raised an eyebrow. “You’re so sure she won’t find you, even though a mad little girl did?”
“If she wants my death,” he growled, “she can come fetch it.”
Daivad had been so ready for her to come right back with another argument that her silence threw him off. He wondered if he’d actually managed to win this argument—and then remembered he didn’t have to explain himself to anyone, let alone this strange girl who had come out of nowhere, so why was he even worried about “winning” this argument? No, it wasn’t even supposed to be an argument. He was supposed to be interrogating her. How had he gotten so turned around?
Quietly, she said, “Name the straw.”
Just like that, he was back there. Looking down at a town full of people just trying to get through the day so they could live to get through the next one. From this hill, he could see children playing, a woman singing as she walked the streets, a man selling bouquets of half-dead flowers, a dog chasing a cat.
Behind him stood row upon row of soldiers, ready to “recruit” on his command. Tomorrow, that town would be smoldering, and empty except for the bodies of those who resisted. Unless he did something.
Back in the present, Daivad growled, “No.”
Nyxabella’s head tipped sideways as she analyzed him. “You just went there. The past told you a story.”
He said nothing.
“What lesson did the story teach?” she asked with a hushed tone and bright eyes.
“It didn’t.”
“Sweet shit,” she said, standing and taking a step toward him. He was careful not to balk. “No story of a man rejecting his home, his family, and his queendom in one fell swoop lacks a lesson, and a powerful one at that.”
He said nothing.
Another step. “Most guilty of treason would run from the crown’s reach, but you stayed in Lushale to help those still dragging chains behind them. You feed me the story that you do this out of boredom, but it tastes like sweet shit, Daivad.”
He needed to get this conversation back under control. He needed to get himself back under control.
“Toll’s got a firm grasp on her attention right now,” Nyxabella said, staring up at him, close enough that her face was tipped all the way up to look at him. “She’s pulled guards from camps in Wileili, Duxon, and Bredenton to send to guard the mines. Duxon’s not two days’ ride from here, practically with dripping thighs spread wide, just waiting for the Traitor Prince to come f—”
“Enough,” he said, slightly whiplashed by this most recent metaphor.
“From inside the castle, I can feed you information, and with your numbers and strength? You could actually free this land. In fact, you might stand the only one who could. Or, you do nothing and Aran clamps her collars on anyone who resists her, beginning with Lushale but certainly not ending with it.”
“What role in the castle gets your ears so close to such information?” Daivad’s voice was low, even.
She must have known the question was coming, but still she leaned back from him just a bit. Under the glowlight, her pale cheeks flushed. She took a steadying breath and said, “I was recruited five years ago. Almost five.”
He’d found his way to take control back. “For?”
“Don’t worry,” she waved a hand and feigned a lighthearted tone. “It’ll be five days before I’m named Absent.”
“You want my trust?” he growled. “Answer my question.”
She pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth while she thought. Finally, she said, “My story’s a long one. You sure you have time to scowl your way through it right now?”
“All I asked was your role.”
“Yeah, but …” she danced her hands around like it might bring the words to her. “The real answer requires context, and the concise answer is entirely insufficient.”
He grumbled, “I doubt you’ve ever been concise in your life.”
“True.” Another bright chuckle, and her smile turned her round, freckled cheeks even rounder. “So why start now?”
Daivad started to ask his next gotcha question, but stopped himself. Why? he wondered, frustrated with himself. A simple question, and he knew it would tear that smile from her face, and he’d be completely in control again. Why was he hesitating?
Right. It would tear that smile from her face.
He cursed himself. He was all turned around—he needed to find Ben and Tobei, relay everything she’d told him. They deserved to know what he’d brought into the only home they’d ever had. And they would help him get his head on straight.
“Five days, huh?” he asked.
“I’d need to be gone in two to make it back on time—three at the latest, but Jac won’t be happy about trying to rush back without a horse. And I need to find somewhere for Clarix to stay. Wait,” she perked up, “you couldn’t take her, could you? Just keep the bigger monsters away from her and, you know, help her remember how to be wild?”
He stared at her. “Why do you never make sense?”
“Clarix,” she said, swallowing down giggles. “My monster friend, who I gave the ham. This asshole had her muzzled and declawed, whipped to shreds, hauling him and a wagon around, so Jac and I … well, mostly Jac, liberated Clarix and some of the man’s things. Guess we took a page out of your book. But the Traitor Prince doesn’t just abandon those he’s freed when they’ve got nowhere to go, right? And I’m worried that Clarix doesn’t realize she isn’t muzzled anymore, you know?”
“I don’t free monsters, and I sure as hell don’t protect them.”
“But she’s so sweet,” Nyxabella said with big, pleading eyes. “Even though a human was so cruel to her, she trusted me right away. All of those bones in her crooked frame and not one of them mean. I’m sure once she’s healthier she can help around camp somehow—”
“I am not babysitting your monster,” he said. He couldn't believe he even had to say it.
She bit her lip and considered him. After a beat she said, “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Exasperated, Daivad exited the cell. Nyxabella waited for him to bend the metal back into place before stepping forward and resting her forehead against the bars.
“Daivad?”
He was right there—he didn’t know why she said it like she was trying to get his attention. He should just walk away.
He looked at her, waiting.
Her pale face caught a bit of moonlight and shone from behind the bars. “When Jac makes her entrance, it’ll be a big one, but if you just tell her I’m here and you’ll take her to me, I’m sure she’ll calm down and probably won’t hurt anyone. Tell her I said ‘bubble sandwich’ and she’ll understand I’m in one piece.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “And how the hell would she find us?”
“Same way she does everything.” She smiled. “Brute force.”
When it was obvious Daivad wasn’t satisfied with that answer, she clarified. “With Jac, it’s not the how that matters, it’s the will. She’ll wreck all of Urden if she has to, and if that doesn’t work she’ll start on the forest itself.”
Daivad eased. No one in Urden knew the location of his camp, and one woman, strong or not, could search the forest years and never find them.
“Right,” he said.