Rya heard nothing from above. No footsteps. Just the wind moving through the leaves like a slow breath.
"It seems they're gone," she told herself. "They'll come back. I can't stay in this hole forever. I'll have to leave before sunrise tomorrow."
Her mind slipped to two mornings ago.
"Go! Run! I'll hold the guards—and your mother. Don't look back, Rya. I'm the strongest blade Runevale ever had. Even Nyxelene won't get past me without bleeding. I'll find you, and catch up. I swear it!"
Michael had roared it over the clash of steel with blood already on his sword from the first guard he'd killed.
He had shoved her toward the gate with one hand while his sword took another man's arm off at the shoulder.
That was two nights ago.
"Michael…" The name came out in cracked whisper. "You said you'd catch up. I'm... I'm tired."
She never heard the soft, careful steps above her.
The search-party commander moved like a wolf that had scented wounded prey.
No hurried steps. No noise. Just one quiet boot after another, drawn by nothing but the feeling in his gut. The eleven men behind him watched in silence, wondering what their captain had seen that they hadn't.
Rya decided she had to risk it. She reached up with trembling fingers and started easing the first thorny branch aside to peek out. To see if the orange torch-glow was still out there.
The commander reached down at the exact same moment and dragged the second branch away.
Their eyes met.
He smiled. A wide grin, one black-rotten tooth shining in the torchlight.
"Well, well. What do we have hiding down there?"
Rya froze. Her face twisted as though ice had been poured into her veins. She couldn't tell if she was more terrified of that smile or of what came next.
He flung his torch down like a spear. The burning end smashed into her neck and shoulder. The fire bit into her skin a bit too long.
Rya opened her mouth to scream, but her throat was dry and nothing came out.
Only a broken rasps. She then slapped the torch away. It rolled across the dirt, still burning.
The commander stepped back with lazy steps.
"Men. We found her. She's in the hole. Drag her out."
Two of the twelve stepped forward without a word as they peered down.
"Captain was right," one muttered. "It really is her."
The first soldier reached down, grabbed a fistful of Rya's hair, and started pulling—slow, enjoying it.
"St—stop… it hurts…" Her voice was barely air. Every tug felt like he was ripping her scalp off and dragging her brain out with it.
When her head and shoulders cleared the edge, he yanked hard. She flew out of the hole like a sack of grain, her body scraping over sharp stone and roots.
She landed hard between the circle of boots, twelve soldiers staring down like wolves who'd finally cornered the deer.
The commander looked down at her and smiled again, a satisfied grin.
One young soldier—barely more than a boy—drew his sword and rushed forward in a sudden frenzy with his blade raised to end it quick.
The commander's arm shot out quickly.
He caught the boy by the throat and slammed his face into the nearest tree trunk.
The sword dropped from the boy's hand as he groaned.
"Are you brain-dead?" the captain snarled.
"That's Nyxelene's own blood lying there. Look at her properly. Rushing in like that to waste all that?" His eyes greedily crawled over Rya's chest.
Letting go of the boy's head, he stepped closer, crouched, and tilted his head.
"She really is Lady Nyxelene's daughter, isn't she?" he said in an almost soft tone.
"Hard to be born from the most gorgeous woman in the world and not carry some of that beauty with you."
"Same blood," he murmured, almost soft, almost reverent. "Same face. Gods must love us, giving all that beauty to one woman… and then letting her daughter fall right into our hands like a ripe peach."
Even through the blood and the bruises, even through the dirt caked on her skin, the burn on her neck, the daughter of Nyxelene was still astonishingly beautiful. Breathtakingly so. Cruelty and exhaustion couldn't steal that from her.
Rya dragged herself up to a sitting position.
There was no running left. There was no fighting left. Only one final, desperate attempt to stay alive a little longer.
She lifted her chin, looked the commander dead in the eye, and spoke with whatever voice she had left.
"You're right about one thing. As the daughter of the queen who rules one of the three great kingdoms in an age where men believed they dominated everything… I do have some of her traits."
She let the silence sit for a heartbeat.
Then she spoke the word, tasting every forbidden syllable.
"Šërēĺįťh." (Sheh-reh-lith. Meaning, Cursed tongue.)
The commander stumbled backward like someone had punched him in the chest.
His sword jumped half out of its sheath, and his hand was frozen on the grip.
Behind him every single soldier went stiff as corpses, with their hands snapping to weapons in pure terror of the word.
Because every soul in Runevale knew that name.
Šërēĺįťh.
The language of raw, living power. The magic Nyxelene herself had invented, the magic that had crushed armies and broken kings.
Only the highest-ranking nobles and the strongest, most trusted soldiers were ever allowed to learn even a single phrase of it.
One true Word spoken right could stop a heart, shatter bone, or burn a man to cinders from the inside.
The commander swallowed hard.
"No way… did Lady Nyxelene actually teach her daughter Šërēĺįťh?"
If the princess truly knew the Words, she might be the second most dangerous person in the entire kingdom, second only to the queen herself.
"It can't be," one of the soldiers behind him whispered in trembling voice. "She has to be bluffing. But if she isn't… none of us will leave this forest alive."
"Hey, what do we do? If she really knows it, does that mean she's on the same level as Lord Michael? The one who dared stand against Lady Nyxelene two days ago?"
The commander stared at Rya, searching her face for any flicker of power.
Then his gaze dropped to the raw, weeping burn on her neck, the dried blood from her split lip, the torn and bleeding palms, the way her whole body shook like a leaf in a storm.
And suddenly he threw his head back and laughed aloud.
"For someone who claims to know Šërēĺįťh, you sure can't heal a single one of your own wounds, can you, little princess?" He spoke as if though he just discovered a secret.
The terror drained from the men behind him like water from a cracked bucket.
Nervous chuckles turned into full, mocking laughter.
"Now that he mentioned it, there was no need to run and hide from low-ranking soldiers for two whole days if you actually had the Words." One of them called, leaning against a tree.
"Yeah. You'd have turned us all to smoke by now if you knew even one real phrase." Another jeered.
The commander's laughter died into a sneer.
He strode forward and backhanded Rya across the face so hard her head snapped sideways and the sound echoed through the dark trees like a whip.
Fresh hot blood burst from her lip again.
"To think you nearly tricked grown men with that little show," he said in a venomous voice.
He then grabbed her chin with rough, dirty fingers, forcing her to look up at him. "Do you know what Lady Nyxelene said when Lord Javier asked whether we should bring you back dead or alive?"
He let his other hand hover right over her chest.
Rya couldn't even raise an arm to push him away.
"'I'll leave that up to you,' she told him." His grin turned black and hungry.
"Means we get to decide. Means we can have some fun before we choose what's left of you to carry home. You know, because of you, I've been away from my wife for two whole days now. Someone has to take responsibility for that, wouldn't you agree?"
He squeezed her chest hard, his fingers digging in.
Rya scrunched her face in agony and turned her head as far to the left as she could, trying to escape his stare.
The young soldier from earlier, the one who had tried to end the mission fast, shifted his weight and spoke up.
"Do… do we really have to do this, Captain?"
The commander released Rya's chest, stood up slow, and seized the boy by the throat with one hand.
"Now you listen close, little knight in shining armor who hasn't even lost his virginity yet. One taste of the good stuff and you'll be the one suggesting it next time. Now run back and tell the main camp we found the princess, or when I take my clothes off, it'll be your sorry backside I shove it in and not hers."
The boy's face turned plale as he stumbled backward. Then he scrambled off into the trees as fast as his legs would carry him. The rest of the men burst into crude, barking laughter.
The commander turned back to Rya, wiping his hands on his tunic like he was already imagining what came next.
"Now," he said in an eager voice, staring down at the girl who looked one heartbeat away from passing out cold, "where were we?"