The afternoon sun was a relentless, molten weight as Marianne and Gerald descended from the newly reinforced roof. Her hands were stained with the green of crushed reeds and the gray of old dust, a far cry from the blood-slicked gauntlets she had worn in her previous life.
As they stepped into the narrow alleyway behind her shack to wash their hands in a bucket of cold water, the air suddenly shifted. It wasn't the smell of the slums anymore—it was the sharp, metallic tang of oiled steel and the scent of expensive mountain horses.
Marianne's instincts, honed by a decade of warfare, screamed before her eyes saw a thing. She caught the flash of a polished silver breastplate through the gaps in the neighbor's rotting fence.
"Get down," she hissed, her hand snapping out to catch the front of Gerald's tunic. She didn't wait for him to protest; she shoved him back into the shadows of a stack of drying peat.
"What—?" Gerald began, but she pressed a mud-stained palm over his mouth.
Through the slats of the fence, three riders sat atop powerful, coal-black stallions. They didn't wear the red and gold of Aethelgard. They wore the deep, midnight blue of the Dwelfinth Empire. These were the "Shadow-Strider" scouts—the elite trackers of Gerald's father.
"He was seen near the river," one scout muttered, his voice low and gravelly. "The Prince is injured. He can't have gone far. Check the hovels. If the Aethelgard guards find him before we do, there will be a war before the week is out."
Marianne felt Gerald stiffen beneath her hand. His gray eyes went wide, not with the fear of an enemy, but with the frantic realization of a boy who had run away from her luxurious home and wasn't ready to go back. He shrank into the peat, his breath hitching against her palm.
"Please," he mouthed against her skin. "Don't let them."
Marianne watched the scouts. In her old life, she would have signaled the Aethelgard garrison immediately, capturing the enemy prince and earning a medal. Now, she felt a fierce, protective fire. She waited until the horses' hooves faded into the distance toward the northern woods before she let go.
"Those weren't 'kids' from the neighboring village, Gerald," she said, her voice a low, dangerous vibration.
Gerald leaned his head back against the dirt wall, sliding down until he sat on the ground. He looked exhausted, the weight of his secret finally bowing his shoulders. "I know. They're my father's men. If they find me, they'll take me back to a life of stone walls and arranged... I just... I wanted to see the world before it was decided for me."
Marianne looked at him—the boy who would one day die trying to save her. "Then stay in the shadows. We're going to the market for supplies, but you keep that hood up. If they don't find you, the Aethelgard patrols might."
The village market was a cacophony of shouting merchants, bleating goats, and the smell of roasting meat that made Marianne's stomach ache with hunger. Gerald walked close to her, his head ducked low, his tall frame trying to look insignificant beside her.
Suddenly, the crowd parted like a sea before a storm. The rhythmic clack-clack of iron-shod boots echoed against the cobblestones.
"Make way! Make way for His Imperial Highness, Prince Alaric!"
Marianne felt the world tilt.
Walking at the head of a dozen heavily armed Imperial Guards was a young man clad in shimmering white silk and gold-etched leather. Alaric. He looked exactly as he had in her memories—beautiful, radiant, and utterly hollow. He was currently overseeing the "cleansing" of the market; guards were dragging away three haggard-looking men in chains, accusing them of stealing grain that they had likely grown themselves.
Marianne's blood turned to ice. Her hand instinctively twitched toward her hip, searching for a sword that wasn't there. She wanted to scream, to tear the throat out of the boy who would one day slide a blade into her heart while whispering lies of love.
But she didn't move. She forced her face into a mask of dull, peasant neutrality.
Alaric's bored, wandering gaze swept over the crowd of "filth," as he often called them. But then, his eyes snagged on Marianne. He stopped in his tracks, his golden brow arching in surprise.
In a sea of gray, malnourished faces, Marianne stood differently. Even in her rags, she held her head with the unconscious dignity of a commander.
"You there," Alaric said, his voice smooth and terrifyingly familiar. He stepped forward, ignoring the beggars at his feet. He reached out with a gloved hand, tilting Marianne's chin upward.
Beside her, she felt Gerald's body go rigid with a protective fury that mirrored her own, but he kept his face hidden in his hood.
"What is your name, girl?" Alaric asked, his eyes roaming her face with a predatory appreciation.
"Marianne, Your Highness," she replied, her voice steady and perfectly polite, though inside she was imagining a dozen ways to end his life. She curtsied low, the movement practiced and humble. "Just a commoner of the slums."
"Marianne," he repeated, the name sounding like a curse on his tongue. "You have a... striking clarity in your eyes. It is wasted here in the mud. The palace is currently short of capable maids—those who know how to follow orders without the stench of the gutter clinging to them."
He leaned closer, his smile not reaching his eyes. "You would do well in the Citadel. It is a much warmer place than this shack you likely inhabit. What say you? Would you like to serve your Prince?"
Marianne looked into the eyes of her murderer. The "script" was trying to pull her back in—trying to put her back by his side where he could use her and destroy her.
"It would be the greatest honor of my life, Your Highness," she said, her voice dripping with a forced, sweet poison. "But I have a mother and a sister who rely on me. I fear I am tethered to this mud for now."
Alaric chuckled, a cold, dry sound. He didn't seem used to being told 'no,' even politely. "Tethers can be cut, Marianne. Remember that. I shall be keeping an eye on this district."
As he walked away, his cape swirling like a blood-red mist, Marianne felt a hand grip hers under the cover of her shawl. It was Gerald. His hand was shaking, not with fear, but with a raw, burning hatred for the man who had just looked at her as if she were a piece of furniture.
"We need to leave," Gerald whispered, his voice jagged. "Now."