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Copyright © 2020 by Morgan Rice. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright zeferli used under license from istockphoto.com.
CHAPTER ONE
When Lenore woke, for one beautiful second, she thought that it had all been a nightmare. She could feel the softness beneath her, and she saw the simple comfort of the inn’s room, and she assumed that the awful things she remembered must have been no more than the terrors of the dark. They couldn’t be real, they…
They were. Lenore knew it a second later as consciousness came back to her, knew it in the bruises and the pain. She shook her head, trying to make herself not think about where she was, but she could no more hold back those thoughts than she could hold back an ocean.
The Quiet Men King Ravin had sent for her had kept her here, a prisoner. When she’d tried to break free, they’d beaten her. Eoris and Syrelle were the worst…
Lenore forced herself to look around, to think of anything else but this.
The room at the top of the inn was empty now except for her, and Lenore knew this might be the only chance she would get to survive this. Shaking, having to ignore the pain with every motion she made, Lenore started to stand.
She fell against the bed for a second, catching herself, but she didn’t fall back. If she let herself fall back, she wouldn’t get up again, and then she would just be waiting for them to carry her away to King Ravin’s lands.
I will be strong, she told herself.
She made her way to standing. She didn’t look much like a princess now. Her dress had tears in it from the violence of her capture, but Lenore pulled it back on anyway, tying the torn elements together as best she could.
She padded toward the door on silent feet. Outside, she could hear Eoris and Syrelle talking, and Lenore’s heart hammered in her chest, fearing that they might be about to come back inside.
“…sure we don’t have time to tarry here with the princess?” Syrelle asked, in that wheedling, half mad voice of hers.
“We need to get her back to the south, my love,” Eoris said. “And if you hurt her too much she won’t transport easily.”
“King Ravin is no fun,” Syrelle said.
“And when I tell him you said that, what do you think he’ll do to you?” Eoris shot back. “No, we leave in an hour. We’ll head for the nearest bridge and be across soon enough. Remember to leave some of the maids alive. King Ravin wants them to talk.”
He wanted them to talk? Lenore found herself caught between happiness that at least some of her servants were still alive and horror at all the things they must have suffered alongside her, fear of how many of them might have died, and confusion, because why would King Ravin want any of them alive to tell people that he had King Godwin’s daughter?
That didn’t matter right then. The only thing that mattered was trying to get away. She’d tried that before though, and hadn’t gotten even as far as the stables. How was she supposed to get away when she’d already been caught once, when they had shown that they could catch her whatever she tried?
No, she wouldn’t give up, she couldn’t. Once they got her beyond the river… how could anyone hope to escape from there? It had to be now, while they were occupied; while they still thought that she was helpless and caught here.
Knowing that there was no way out through the door, Lenore went over to the window. It was chipped and sticking, hard enough to open that Lenore was sure it would creak and protest as she pushed the shutters apart, giving away what she was doing to anyone listening. Lenore opened it and froze in place, waiting to see if there was any reaction. No one burst into the room though, no one shouted or raised an alarm.
Lenore looked over the ground below her. There was a low roof for the floor below, and beyond that the open space beyond the inn, with a courtyard leading over to the stables. There were bodies in that now, dragged into a pile as if they were mere refuse, something that didn’t matter at all to the Quiet Men who had killed them. Lenore could see some of those Quiet Men now, no longer dressed in peasant garb, but in dark leathers and dulled scale armor that made them look ready to fight an army’s worth of foes.
One, a woman, was standing over a group of four of Lenore’s servants. She pointed to two and set them running, far enough away that Lenore couldn’t see which ones they were. Then she raised a small, hand-sized crossbow.
“No,” Lenore whispered to herself in horror, even as the first bolt flew out. It struck the first servant in the middle of the back and she fell, tumbling into the dirt. She rose up, screaming, looking back toward the one who had shot her…
That only meant that the second bolt took her through the chest.
Lenore wanted to scream too, her heart breaking at the sight of an innocent girl she’d thought of as almost a friend being butchered for no reason. She didn’t scream though, because then it would have been over; there would have been no way to escape. She focused on the one who was still running, knowing that at least one of them was going to get free.
Lenore waited until she saw that the Quiet Men were all moving in different directions, looking to their preparations to leave rather than at her. When she saw her moment, Lenore screwed up her courage and stepped out of the window. She crunched down onto the roof of the overhanging section, hoping against hope that it would bear her weight.
She moved to the edge of the roof in a crouch, checked that there was no one beneath, and tried not to catch her breath at the sight of the drop below. She could do this; she had to. Swinging off the side of the roof, Lenore hung on by her hands for a moment, took a breath, and dropped.
She hit the ground hard, the breath coming out of her in a whoosh of air that was only good because it stopped Lenore from crying out loud enough to be heard. She rolled to her knees, waited for her head to stop spinning, and forced herself to stand once again. She managed to get up and started into the shadows of the next building.
She didn’t try for the stables this time. There were too many Quiet Men around it, and no hope of getting a horse clear of them without being spotted. Instead, Lenore knew her best hope was to make her way away from the inn on foot, staying in the trees and bushes near the road and hoping that one of her brothers would be coming with the forces that should have been there to protect her in the first place…
Why hadn’t they come? Why hadn’t they been there to save her? Vars had been sent to protect her, and Rodry had said that he would take over the duties partway around the wedding harvest, yet neither of them had been there when Lenore needed them. Now she was alone, having to sneak out of the village and hoping all the time that she could avoid the Quiet Men for long enough.
She kept going; it wasn’t far now. Just a few dozen paces, and she would be out of the village. Once she was in the