A Dance of Dragons: Series Starter Bundle (6 page)

"Mikza," she pleaded, "I am leaving,
tonight. With or without you, but I cannot stay. I refuse to be
married to that man."

He nodded, not certain enough to bind it
with words, but that was all she needed.

Taking the long route, Leena stepped between
the shadows, letting the light flicker over her, disappear, only to
illuminate her again. Mikza watched from behind as she finally
stepped back into the outskirts of the room. He followed from a
proper distance, the way a bodyguard should—emotionless,
detached—death with a sword to any who might mean her harm.

Leena spared no glances toward the interior
of the room. There was no one she wished to see again. Prince
Haydar would be her only regret, that she could not save him, that
she was giving up on him.

The halls were quiet, almost eerie, causing
goose bumps to rise on her skin. Unease curled her stomach,
quickened her pace, and she could not shake it. The emptiness
seemed to whisper in her ear,
it is too calm, too easy.

No one seemed to be around, even the guards
normally kept at the doors. Leena could not remember the last time
they had left their posts. Some of them she had actually wished to
see, friends, guards that had helped keep their secret, people she
wanted to thank and say a hasty goodbye to.

When they reached her room, Leena stopped.
The royal quarters had never been so abandoned. Holding up her
hand, she signaled Mikza to halt, to not follow her inside. Just in
case someone watched, he needed to keep up appearances for as long
as possible.

Heart in her throat, she turned the
knob.

The door swung open.

Leena broke.

Everything she had, every hope, every ounce
of strength, every dream, seemed to rush from her body, leaving her
empty inside. A shell of a person.

Their bag sat ripped apart on the bed,
empty, contents splayed across the ground. Their clothes, their
food, torn apart. Weapons broken to pieces. Jewels and coins
scattered.

And behind it, her father stood with his
personal guard, waiting for her arrival.

Hate coursed through her veins.

Pure.

Strong.

The sort of loathing that built over time,
waiting for the right moment to take hold, waiting for this moment
when she had nothing but that one feeling to give her the strength
to carry on, to fight.

"Father," she growled, muscles clenched.

"Will you deny it now, Daughter?"

Leena said nothing. Did not even move.

"You do not know this, but every time you
attend a ball, I send my guards to search your room. You and your
unmarried sisters. I've seen it all before." He was calm, standing
straight and tall, soldiers at his back, all the power in his
hands. "You are not the only one who has tried to run, but you are
the first to be so well prepared, to have men's clothes also packed
for the journey."

Still Leena remained silent, refusing to
give anything away, to give him any information he did not have.
Defiance was not something the king was used to. Leena tried to
picture any of her older sisters trying to run, but she knew them,
in her position they would have already fallen at his feet,
groveling to be forgiven.

The image only gave her more strength to
fight.

"Is that all?" She asked, voice as cold as
she could make it, hard like an Ourthuri.

In a flash, her father was next to her.
Before Leena could anticipate the impact, she was hit. His hand
slammed into her cheek, and she could not help but cry out as she
fell, landing cushioned by the clothes he had destroyed. Her veil
was ripped from her head by the blow, and it landed beside her with
a deafening ring.

"Who is he?" The king demanded.

Gripping her cheek, Leena looked up from the
floor, fearless. Mikza was the one thing the king could never have.
Love could not be slapped away, torn out of her heart by soldiers.
Her love would burn no matter what he did.

"I will never tell you."

With a roar, the king leaned down, gripping
her throat. "You will tell me now. Do not think I won't harm you.
There are worse fates than marriage, girl, far worse."

"I welcome them," Leena choked out the
words, coughing as his grip tightened and her airway seemed to
close.

"When I scar your pretty face, maim you,
make you unfit for the public so you must live in the shadows. What
will your love do then?"

"He—"

"It was me," a soft voice interrupted.

Leena gasped. "No!"

But Mikza walked into the doorway, head
bowed in surrender. He knelt down, removed his sword from his
waist, letting it drop to the ground with a resounding clang, and
placed his hands behind his head. All the while, he refused to meet
her eyes.

Leena fell back to the ground as the king
dropped her, turning his attention to a new conquest.

"Mikza," she murmured, voice cracking as her
chest burned, as her eyes blurred. Why? Why didn't he let her
fight? It was her father, her battle. He had no right to take that
away, to save her when she wanted to be the one to save him.

But it was too late. The king had a hunger
in his eyes, a feral gleam. There would be no escaping him now.

"A soldier in our own household," the king
said, his tone sadistically light. Leena closed her eyes, trying to
erase the pictures zipping to the front of her mind. Her father was
going to enjoy this. "Take him away."

At those three words, words she had heard
over and over again in her nightmares, Leena snapped. Invaded by
some animalistic spirit, she sprang from the ground, jumping on her
father, ripping the crown from his head and using her arms to
strangle him. She screamed, cried, fought with everything she
had.

Like a fly, he swatted her away.

It took no effort at all to throw her back
to the floor, where one guard came to hold her down. Try as she
might to break his grip—pulling, biting, scratching,
pinching—nothing would loosen his grasp. For the first time, she
realized how much strength Mikza had to control, how gentle he had
truly been with her.

And that thought broke her in a different
way.

It stilled her.

Slowed her.

Made her eyes rise, watching as he was led
through the door, slowly out of her room, disappearing in the night
never to be seen again. Her body shook, a tremble that grew more
violent with each passing second. A wave of cold splashed over her,
stealing her thoughts, vanishing her strength, and she collapsed in
a ball.

Sobs wracked her body. Sobs that sounded
less than human, as though her soul was being ripped from her
chest. Sobs that even a soldier could not bear to hear.

"Princess," a warm hand landed on her arm,
caressing her, trying to soothe her. Through blurred eyes, Leena
looked up toward the sound, barely recognizing the figure as a man,
let alone a specific person.

But his features gnawed through the
numbness—she remembered them. Childlike almost, as though he had
the body of a man but the innocent face of a boy—plump cheeks with
dimples and round eyes. Mikza's closest friend, a friend who had
always risked much to help their doomed romance.

"Tam?" She questioned, hushed and weak.
"What will they do to him?"

"I don't know, Princess," he shook his head.
Hurt was written across his face. Hurt that he had been a part of
the capture. Hurt that he had not been able to keep Mikza safe.
Hurt that he could not help her. Leena saw each thought flicker
across his eyes, like an apology, one she did not want from
him.

"Tam, you need to go to him in my place. I
will not run, I promise. I will not break your trust. But you have
to go and pull him back from the brink of death, which is where my
father will surely leave him."

Her voice did not waver, did not break.

"I will, Princess. And here is my promise to
you. When he is safe, I will bring you to him. I will give the two
of you a proper goodbye."

Tam squeezed her hand, then dropped it,
gently releasing his hold on her body. With one glance back, he
left and closed the door behind him. Like a strong tide, her heart
went with him, sucked from her body, pulled free.

Leena walked emotionless across her room,
throat raw, limbs weak. Then she stepped off the edge and sunk deep
into her pool, letting its warm waters embrace her, not sure if she
would ever surface again.

Six

Time ceased to exist underwater.

Had it been hours? One day? Two days? An
entire week? Leena did not know, and she did not care. Her stomach
growled, but she ignored it. Her limbs ached for their weight, but
she continued to drift, to float, ambivalent.

Down here, it was easier to pretend. To let
her memories take over, to let her dreams unfurl. Sound was
muffled. Light was softer. The world seemed far away and out of
reach.

Leena was happy to leave it that way.

Without Mikza to save her, Leena could just
drift until the end of her days. No one else dared enter her
quarters without permission, not while she was inside. He had been
the only one willing to save her, to ignore protocol. The servants
might inform the guards of her silence, the guards might inform the
king of his daughter's deep mourning. When she started to miss
events, balls or dinners, he might be angry enough to
intervene.

Leena almost hoped her father would be the
one to discover her, to see her at the bottom of the pool. Maybe he
would think her drowned, defiant until the end. Maybe then she
would be free of him.

As if reading her mind, a body slid under
the surface, distracting Leena, tearing her eyes open for the first
time in she didn’t know how long. Arms encircled her, and for a
moment, she let herself dream it was Mikza, let her heart soften
and her body curl into the warm chest.

And then they broke through the surface, and
the dream shattered. Noise jerked her senses, unwelcome after all
the silence. The roar of waves, the tinker of metalworking, the hum
of human voices screaming from below. The sounds of her city
infiltrating her peace.

The sun was bright, painful, and its heat
stung her cold skin, sizzling the water droplets away.

"He said you would be in the water," a soft
voice said, and he gently placed her on the ground.

"Mikza? He's alive?" Leena turned over,
rolling up from the ground to face Tam. She recognized his caring
voice, but his face seemed older, somehow aged since the last time
they had met.

Tam nodded, but held something back, words
he seemed unable to bring himself to say aloud. "Come, Princess,
there isn’t much time. He is to be moved from the palace dungeons
in a few hours."

Leena needed no other prompting. Despite her
protesting muscles, soft from so much time spent unused, she stood
and then raced into her bedroom for dry clothes. Within minutes,
hair unpinned and face free of powder, Leena met Tam outside her
quarters. Mikza wouldn't mind. He preferred her this way, simple
and uncovered, more like the girl she wanted to be instead of the
princess she was.

"Follow me, my Princess," Tam whispered.

Leena noticed that there was no new guard
stationed outside her door. Maybe Tam had inherited the honor, or
maybe he had bribed someone away for an hour. Leena did not
question, she was beyond her area of expertise.

The palace might be her home, but it still
seemed foreign in many ways. And the farther Tam led her down the
open corridors, the more she realized just how small her life truly
was. These were halls she had never walked.

There was an entire world outside the
palace, but aside from a few trips to silver levels or maybe even
to the bronze merchant plateau, she had never seen it. The ocean
lay just outside her balcony, but she had never dipped her toes in
the cold currents. Never stepped foot on the docks at the base of
her city. Never ventured to any of the other islands in their
kingdom, let alone to foreign shores.

But today was a start, and Leena followed
Tam down to a part of the golden palace that the sun did not
illuminate, a place where cages did not pretend to be anything but
prisons, and chains did not masquerade as jewelry.

The place Mikza had been damned to because
of her.

"Tam?" A dry voice whispered. A voice she
remembered as clearly as her own.

"Mikza," Leena sighed, searching for him in
the dark. Tam had come to a stop outside a gate, and inserted a key
into the lock.

"My Leena," his deep voice sighed, pain
etched in the words. "You should not be here."

"I had to see you," she said, reaching for
Tam's torch. But he stopped her and walked deeper into the cell,
leaving Leena at the entrance.

With every step, she waited for Mikza to
come into view, his strong legs, his soft eyes. Tam continued, not
pausing, not searching, until he reached the back wall and placed
the torch in a socket. Then his head shifted, his gaze slid across
the stone to the corner of the room.