Chapter 54 Untitled Chapter

Chapter 54 Untitled Chapter


LILY'S POV

The air had changed. Winter was coming , its chill on the wind and the tongue. The trees were shedding their leaves and their bare branches reached for a sky that had gone grey and heavy.

I remembered when I first entered the palace as a newly wedded wife, and it was closing on summer back then, the air thick and warm and the flowers blooming in the royal gardens. I had stood at my window and watched the sunset paint everything gold and I thought that maybe, just maybe, things would be okay.

That felt like a lifetime ago and so much had changed. The seasons were turning and the leaves were dying and I was still stuck here, still running and still fighting for a place that didn't want me. The thought sat heavy in my chest and I couldn't shake it no matter how hard I tried.

I looked around at the trees passing by and at the road stretching ahead and at the men riding beside me. These past days away from the palace, running through the woods with them and hiding in that cabin and fighting and surviving, it had been freeing. I could breathe out here and the air was cleaner and the rules were simpler. Stay alive and keep moving and trust the people beside you.

But now we were going back.

The palace waited with its walls and its whispers and its games, with Elliott and Kathy and the Queen and everyone who wanted a piece of me. I wanted to turn my horse around and ride in the opposite direction until I couldn't ride anymore.

But I kept moving forward because there was no other choice.



We rode for another hour and maybe longer because time had started to blur together. Then I heard it, it was faint at first and then growing louder with every step of the horses. Voices and shouts and the clatter of carts and the low hum of people living their lives.

We were close to the market.

Boar pulled his horse up and dismounted in one smooth motion and he came to my horse first, reaching up to help me down. His hands were rough and warm and he set me on the ground gently despite his size. Then he went to Anya and did the same but not without reluctance from her side.

I looked around at the trees still standing and the road ahead and beyond that, the sounds of the market waiting for us.

We were to go ahead with the plan Raven had told us on the journey.

Lily and Anya would walk into the market alone and we would look tired and dirty and bloody, like women who had escaped death by the skin of their teeth. The king had already commanded watchers to search for me and my father too probably, deploying every guard he had. If we walked into that market, it wouldn't be long before someone spotted us.

The story was simple. We were kidnapped and we escaped and we walked through the woods for days until we found our way back.

No Atlas and no Boar and no Raven and no Black. No one could know they were involved.

Boar reached for my arm and the bandages wrapped around it were white against my dirty skin. Raven had cut me himself, quick and precise, and his eyes were empty of anything while he did it. I could feel his excitement underneath the surface when the blade bit into my flesh and I knew then that he really hated me.

Anya got the same treatment, two cuts on her arm deep enough to bleed but shallow enough to heal.

I took it as punishment for trying to deceive them and for getting them involved in my mess and for existing, maybe.

Boar unwrapped the bandages slowly and the air hit the wounds and I sucked in a breath. Then he pressed down hard on one of them, his thumb digging in, and fresh blood welled up hot and red. I whimpered and bit into my lip so hard I tasted copper.

Boar gave me a soft smile but went ahead to rub some paste into the wound, something thick and grey that burned like fire. Poison, he had said, not enough to kill, just enough to make us look sick and sell the story.

I wanted to tell him there was no need because my ribs were already bruised and battered from the kidnapping and my body was a map of hurts they didn't even know about. But I kept my mouth shut and took it.

He did the same to Anya and she made a small sound but didn't cry. She just gripped her own arm and breathed through it.

Boar stepped back and nodded. It was time.

I looked around at Boar watching me and Raven with his eyebrow raised and Black in the shadows of his hood. But Atlas wasn't looking at me. He stood apart from them with his back to me, staring down the road toward the market. His shoulders were tight and his hands hung loose at his sides but he didn't turn and he didn't glance and he didn't give me anything.

I waited for a heartbeat and then another.

Nothing.

My chest felt tight and nervous because I needed him to look at me just once, to know that this was okay and that I was okay and that I could do this. But he didn't.

I walked past Boar and past Raven and past Black and I stopped when I was even with Atlas, close enough to touch. But I didn't look at him because if he thought I was going to beg for his attention, he was wrong.

"Thank you." I said it, taking in a breath for a pause. "For saving my life."

I was really grateful however I didn't wait for a response. I just kept walking and Anya fell into step beside me.

Behind us, the horses shifted and someone murmured something low. I didn't look back.

The market hit me like a wall with its noise and its chaos, vendors shouting about their wares and buyers haggling and children running and laughing and animals bleating in their pens. It was like any other market day, like the princess of the kingdom hadn't disappeared into thin air.

There were guards everywhere, more guards than usual, standing at every corner and every entrance with their eyes scanning the crowd and watching and waiting. The people moved around them carefully, like they knew something was off but couldn't name it.

No one was talking about me and that meant the palace had managed to keep it quiet. No leaks and no rumors, just silence wrapped around my disappearance like a shroud.

We walked through the crowd, Anya and I, and people moved away from us. I didn't blame them because we smelled terrible. Boar had rubbed dried mud on our faces and clothes and something foul too, something that made people wrinkle their noses and step aside. Our arms were bleeding fresh through the paste and our faces were pale and sick.

A woman pulled her child closer as we passed and a man covered his nose with his sleeve and a vendor stopped mid-shout to stare at us with wide eyes.

We were ghosts walking among the living.

I spotted a guard near a fruit stall, one of the king's men by the look of his uniform, and his back was to us while he watched the crowd on the other side. I moved toward him fast and desperate and my hand touched his arm.

He spun around with his spear coming up and the point stopping a breath from my throat. His face was hard and ready to strike, ready to run me through right there in the market.

"Please......" I started.

But Anya rushed forward and threw herself between me and that spear, her voice rang out loud and clear for everyone to hear.

"This is the princess!”