Page 44 of To Ride the Wind

It was all excuses, though. She should have been able to feel the difference.

“Where is it?” she asked, new steel in her voice she’d never heard in it before. “Where does she have you put the drugs?”

Tears ran down Alma’s cheeks. “I never wanted to do it, Princess Gwen. I swear it. But if I refused her order, she would punish the others. You do understand, don’t you?”

“Never mind that.” Gwen still spoke in the hard new tone. “Where are the drugs?”

“In your drink,” Alma admitted softly. “It’s always in your drink.”

Gwen groaned. All her efforts to eat less had been pointless.

“What else aren’t you telling me?” she asked, suddenly remembering the rest of Alma’s words. “You said something about a rumor about my people. What rumor?”

Alma hesitated, clearly nervous, but Gwen could see she was wavering. The fevered light in Gwen’s eyes wasn’t scaring her—quite the opposite. The longer she gazed at Gwen’s determined expression, the more hopeful her own face grew. Gwen just needed to convince her old friend that she was serious this time.

“I have to get away from her.” Gwen’s voice came out hoarse, although she’d been aiming for strong. “I always dreamed of escape, but I always thought it was nothing more than a fantasy. This is different, though. This time I’ll do anything to get away.”

Alma stiffened, her face closing up. Whatever she had wanted to hear from Gwen, it wasn’t that.

But it was too late for Gwen to take back the words, and she didn’t know if she wanted to do so. She had made the declaration as much for her own sake as to convince Alma, and she had no idea what the woman had been hoping to hear instead.

Alma let Gwen’s hands drop, stepping back and bowing formally. “I apologize, Your Highness. I hope you can forgive me for my role in this. And I hope you will see fit to keep our secret.”

“Alma,” Gwen cried. “Please! Will you not help me?”

Alma hesitated. “I think that’s all the help I can provide. After all, I’m securely locked away each night. Just like you.”

For a second she held Gwen’s eyes, a message in her gaze that the princess didn’t understand. Then she left, gently closing the door behind her.

Gwen stared at it for at least a minute, trying to make sense of the interaction. Her thoughts were too muddled to think clearly, and her emotions were even more of a mess. Should she feel gratitude to Alma for telling her about the sleeping potion or anger at her betrayal in keeping it a secret all these years? And why had she refused to tell Gwen anything further?

Or had she…? What had she been hinting at?

Gwen’s circling thoughts slowed, focusing. Something in Alma’s eyes had been pleading with Gwen to understand, but what exactly had she wanted her to grasp?

Just like you. The words echoed in her mind, and Gwen drew in her breath sharply as she realized she hadn’t spoken of her recent discovery. Alma knew Gwen was locked in every night. Were the servants the ones to turn the key, just as they were the ones to place the potion in the drink they served?

Betrayal surged up again, but Gwen tamped it down once more. If they locked her room, it was at the queen’s command. Her mother was the one hiding things from her, not Alma. Alma was locked up herself.

Gwen’s mind circled around that thought. Alma had mentioned it specifically, although she knew Gwen was well aware of the captives’ predicament. Almost as if she wanted to remind Gwen of their limitations.

What was it she had said at the start? She had mentioned rumors of the mountain people as if the servants didn’t know the truth of those rumors—even after so many years in the heart of the mountain kingdom.

The two thoughts came together in Gwen’s mind, making a conclusion that seemed so obvious she couldn’t think why she hadn’t seen it from the start. Alma hadn’t been refusing Gwen information so much as goading her to go in search of it for herself. And she had been telling her where to start. Nighttime.

Everything pointed to the hours of darkness. And now Gwen knew why those hours were always lost to her. Which meant she could reclaim them. The answers were finally in front of her—she just needed to work out how to make it through an evening meal without drinking and without her mother noticing it.

Her fork clattered against her plate, and Gwen could barely restrain a wince. Years of discomfort during the meals she shared with her mother hadn’t prepared her for her current level of tension. At any moment she expected her mother to stand up and accuse her of not drinking. Would she turn on the servants immediately or wait to order Gwen’s punishment first?

A hundred times she had reconsidered her plan, wondering if she could truly put others at risk alongside herself. But no matter how many times she hesitated, she always returned to the same truth. Knowing what she did now, she couldn’t sit there and drink the sleeping draft. She couldn’t placidly accept a forced marriage and a lifetime of misery.

A curly-haired face appeared in her mind, the warm eyes laughing at her. She drew strength from Easton’s encouraging expression, even if every part of his image in her mind was imagined. She hadn’t dreamed up his personality and character, and she knew he would tell her to fight. He would never passively accept the queen’s schemes—the evidence of that was in his disappearance.

But he also couldn’t be dead. Gwen couldn’t believe it—she wouldn’t. If this worked, if she succeeded in escaping at last, she would find him, whatever it took.

The thought bolstered her as nothing else had done, and she lifted her goblet to her mouth, tipping it back against her firmly closed lips before taking another bite of food.

Her stomach roiled, but she forced herself to eat well, clearing her plate. If her mother saw how much she was eating, she was less likely to notice she wasn’t actually drinking.

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