Page 29 of The Traitor Queen (The Bridge Kingdom 2)

Keris grimaced. “Serin doesn’t trust me, so I’m under near-constant surveillance when I leave the palace, which means I can’t contact your people directly. I need the harem to facilitate communication. But here’s the rub: They despise Valcottans as much as any Maridrinian, so there isn’t a chance of them agreeing to this plan of mine.”

“And your solution to this rub?” Aren asked, seeing exactly where the prince was going.

“The harem won’t help me free Zarrah. But they will help freeyou.” Keris smiled, his eyes gleaming. “Which is why you’re going to use them to help orchestrate your own escape, and when you run, you’re going to take Zarrah with you.”

17

Aren

For dayssince his conversation with Keris, Aren had spent every waking minute studying the palace’s defenses, swiftly recognizing what he already knew: There was no way out. At least, not for someone as well guarded as him.

Eight men always within a few paces of his person. Another dozen watched over any route that accessed him. Countless more were waiting to reinforce them if needed. And for Aren, only the very best soldiers were employed. There wasn’t a chance of his people silencing them all without an alarm being raised, and the moment those bells began to ring, the true defenses of Silas’s inner sanctum fell into place.

Gates barred and locked from both inside and out.

Dozens of men deployed to the top of the inner wall.

Countless more soldiers sent to patrol the base.

The list of contingencies seemed endless, much to Aren’s frustration, because every single day, he’d tried a different route of escape. Not because he had any chance of succeeding on his own, but because the only way to reveal all of the inner sanctum’s defenses was to trigger them.

Test after test after test, all of which left him battered and bleeding, but nothing he tried yielded anything other than the truth: Escape was impossible.

For all of his adult life, he’d been part of making Ithicana impenetrable, putting himself into the mind of his kingdom’s enemies to try to understand how and where they’d attack. How best to repel them. And most of all, how to identify weaknesses in Ithicana’s defenses. But no matter how much time he spent trying to put himself in Silas’s shoes, Aren couldn’t come up with a solution.

But that didn’t mean he had any intention of giving up.

His guards walked him through one of the covered walkways linking the palace buildings, two gripping his arms, the rest ahead and behind. Rain misted down from the sky, yet the wives were still out in the gardens, six of them working on some sort of dance while Silas looked on.

Predictably, Aren’s guards were watching the women dance—or rather the way the mist caused their dresses to cling to their lithe bodies—and Aren saw his window.

Throwing his greater bodyweight sideways, Aren smashed the guard on his left into the railing even as he caught hold of the man’s arm and lifted.

The soldier screamed as he went over the side, but Aren didn’t let go, using the man’s weight to pull him free from the other soldier’s grip.

They plunged down, Aren pulling himself against the soldier so that the other man’s body took the impact as they hit the ground.

It still hurt.

But this was the first time he’d gotten so far away from his guards, and Aren intended to capitalize upon it.

Ignoring the screaming wives in the distance, he clambered to his feet, moving as quickly as the chain strung between his ankles would allow as he shuffled in the direction of the open sewer grate to one side of the garden.

Alarm bells rang, the air filling with shouts as the Maridrinians fell into action, Aren taking in every move they made as he dodged around potted plants and statuary.

Ahead, he could see the grate sitting to one side of the opening. If he could just get inside, then—

Someone hit him hard in the back, knocking him down, then more piled on top of him until Aren could scarcely breathe.

“You just can’t give up, can you?” Silas’s voice drifted into Aren’s ears. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re more trouble than you’re worth, Master Kertell. If I wasn’t a man of honor, I’d have your head spiked on Vencia’s gates this afternoon.”

“I’ve met rats with more honor than you,” Aren spit out, elbowing one of the guards in the face, his efforts rewarded with a groan of pain. “And you’re wasting your time—Lara’s not going to risk her own neck to save mine. It’s not in her nature.”

“Are you so sure?” Silas bent low, his face only inches from Aren’s. “How long will you keep your sanity when we skin her alive and then hang her on the wall to watch you?”

He was being crushed beneath the weight of the soldiers, but still Aren clawed at them, caring about nothing more than killing the man before him.

“Like a feral dog trying to escape its cage,” Silas said to the wives waiting behind him. “Willing to break its own bones on the bars despite the futility of its efforts. It’s the nature of his people, my dears. They aren’t anything like us.”

---