The Crowned Captive

Morana could have very well punched whatever woke her up from her first dreamless sleep all week. Her only issue was that she was not sure what that was. As she sat up, peering through the darkness, she could see nor hear nor smell anything amiss. Rowan lay beside her, his red hair a tangle against the plush pillows. His soft snoring ensured her he was not the cause. Turning to the large bay window (which Rowan assured her was spelled against people seeing in) she saw nothing in the gardens. Yet there she sat, her every hair standing on end.

She nearly laid back down, but the sense of wrong simply grew greater as she attempted to relax. Her heart thundered in her chest, and her every thought told her to run. She turned to the window, eyes closing to focus on her other senses. And then she smelt it.

Death.

Morana was on her feet in mere moments, dressing to meet that all too familiar foe. She wasted no time in finding her clothes, grateful that she had chosen her training leathers to be what she confronted Rowan in. As she remembered her presence, she turned to see him blinking at her bleary-eyed. He was awake, that was something. She hoped he took her seriously, prayed they would not repeat her past. When Death came for her, it always took someone back.

“Princess, usually when a dame wishes to sneak away in the night, they do so silently,” Rowan murmured teasingly, and Morana had to fight the lash of anger which flashed through her. He was somehow still oblivious to the danger.

“I smell death, coming from the forest and now within the castle,” Morana said as she fastened the last of the stays on her leathers. Boots, she had to find her boots next.

“The castle wards are impenetrable, formed by the gods and only able to be breached by one. We are fine. Come back to bed, let me work the worry from your nerves.” Rowan’s voice dropped to sultry depths at the last line, a promise of bliss that only worked to stoke the anger blooming in her heart.

“Rowan, I do not care if you think I am a worrying fool. For the sake of my peace of mind, get dressed, please.”

“Fine. But when we prove it is nothing, we are going to come back here and you are going to have to make it up to me for waking me in the middle of the night.”

Morana fought to leash her anger at Rowan’s incessant teasing but still could not help shoot him a look of wrath. He merely grinned at her as she finished lacing her boots. As he dressed at a leisurely pace, she began braiding her hair to put her nervous energy to work. The scent of death only grew stronger - how Rowan could not smell it she did not know. But finally, after preening in the mirror for a minute, he led her out of his rooms.

It was the silence that struck her the hardest as they emerged. Cordan would have told her guards exactly where she was by now, yet they were nowhere to be seen. She was about to voice the fact, to break the silence, when the second most worrying thing struck her - blood. Down the hall, straight ahead, she could smell blood. No weapons clattered, nobody groaned in pain and nobody yelled for help. Death had already taken His first victims of the night.

Rowan was already moving ahead of her, sticking to the shadows the wavering witchlights offered along the hall. She moved low behind him, wishing that she had been given some lessons in stealth as her boots clattered along the marble floors. They halted, Rowan peering around the corner before turning to her, face grim. She knew that another set of her guards lay butchered ahead, and he was offering for her not to see their demise. Their death would not change by her not seeing them, and to pretend they did not exist would be an affront to their sacrifice. She shook her head, steeling herself for the sight.

It was worse than she could have thought. Each of them, all four, had been pinned against the wall like bugs, hacked and slashed and tortured. How she had not heard them, how neither of them had, was astounding. They had to have been silenced by magic, their cries rendered soundless. To experience such pain and not be able to respond must have been agony in itself. In the halls, more bodies were strewn, those of the occupants of the surrounding rooms. Every door in the hall was open, and every person within them was dumped lifeless in the hallway. This wasn’t an attack, it was an all-out massacre.

So lost in her fury and fighting the bile that threatened to climb from her throat, she barely heard the movement in the closest room. It was only as Rowan snagged her back around the corner, pressing a finger to her lips and boring into her with green eyes that she registered what she had heard. She nodded against him, knowing her mouth could make no noise without vomit following it regardless, and waited for his commands.

“They’ve hid her well, can say that much,” one voice said, his words punctuated with the thud of another body. Morana prayed that their end was at least a quick one.

“Unless they were told the attack was coming, they would not have hidden her like this. A potential liability would be in rooms easily accessed in case of misbehaviour, and rooms easily guarded against all positions to prevent escape. All of the places we were told she should be were characterised as such, yet all of them were empty. No, our little princess has snuck away in the night.”

The second voice chilled Morana to the very core, liquefying any fury that had once sat there and turning it to icy fear. Its chill reached her every limb, causing her to shiver whilst Rowan guarded her with his body. He glanced at her, worry on his face, as he listened and calculated his plan. He knew the voice too, the one that had spoken through a different malicious man. It was one she had told to come to retrieve her.

A plan clicking to place behind his eyes, Rowan mouthed something as his hands moved, and then he was dragging a shell-shocked Morana to her feet once more. They hurried through the halls, her feet no longer making noise on the floors. Nobody stopped them, nobody moved around in the darkness. They were shadows, unnoticed and unhindered.

When they turned into a hall with two men standing there, a dead woman at their feet, Rowan did not bother to ask questions. Morana watched in awe as he moved from his crouched and silent walk to one of an assassin, tall and proud. His feet still did not make noise as he stalked forward, his dagger in one hand and flames creeping along the skin of the other. This was the king’s blade, his shit-shoveler as his last victim had so eloquently said. Nary a falter in his step, he came up behind the taller, dragging the blade across their throat and spraying himself in their lifeblood. Before the other could even respond, the flames leapt from his fingertips, forcing their way into his mouth. A choked gag on the flames invading his throat was the only sound he made until the dagger found itself buried in his chest, emeralds still winking through the crimson which soaked them.

“We need help, someone to alert the rest of the castle, a team to protect you and a team to dig the rest of the rats from their new hidey-hole. Do you think you can make it with me to the guardhouse?” Rowan asked as Morana stopped dead, staring at the ruby liquid that covered Rowan’s arms and quickly pooled on the floor.

“I can make it. Their death isn’t enough to irk me,” Morana said, taking a steadying breath and centring herself. Their death was a payment for their sins, and their fate after rested in the hands of the gods. She would not shed a tear for them, not after what they had done.

“Good. Keep low, and follow closely. If anybody gets close enough to you for you to use your dagger I have failed you, but do not hesitate to use it on them. If you think you can control that magic you used in the training field, do not hesitate to kill. It is their life or yours.”