Chapter 16 Chapter Sixteen
Eloise pulled Isla through the back halls of the castle, down flights of stairs and through narrow corridors. Every few minutes, Eloise would look behind them, a smile lighting up her face more than the torches illuminating their way. At long last Isla found herself in a long, chilly hallway with wooden doors on either side. Eloise pushed open one of the wooden doors on the left and yanked Isla inside with her.
Once the door was closed behind them, Eloise put a hand to her mouth and started to giggle. She grabbed Isla’s hands and started to spin in the small cramped space.
“You were amazing!” Eloise stopped spinning. “I have never seen anything like that! What on earth came over you!?”
“Uh,” Isla didn’t know, honestly. She witnessed an innocent getting hurt. Wouldn’t anyone step in? “She was only a child.”
Eloise shrugged. “Child or not, we are punished for mistakes. Especially when those mistakes involve a royal guard. Wasn’t it the same in Tridea?”
Isla looked around at her surroundings. The room was cramped with a small bowl set on a stone pillar and two cots pushed against the wall with only enough space in between for the two girls to stand pressed together.
“I suppose I shall be punished then?” Isla asked, skirting around the question. She sat down on one of the cots and grimaced at the stone-like feel of the bed.
Eloise shrugged. “We’ll all vouch for you. No one will rat you out. If the guard got a good look at you though?” She shrugged again.
“Why would everyone vouch for me? No one even knows me.”
“Ah, well, that guard in particular, Norris, I believe is his name. He’s vile. As one of Prince Sylvan’s guards he doesn’t have a lot of work to do so instead he preys on the weak, the women, mostly,” Eloise explained, looking away and picking nervously at her clothes.
“Ah, so he’s one of the ones you warned me about?” Isla asked.
“Yes, he deserved it. I’m just mad it wasn’t me who delivered the blow. Trust me, you just made yourself a lot of friends, and hey! You’re Prince Sylvan’s personal maid! If you are identified, he might come to your aid.”
Isla laughed and sanded her hands over her arm hoping the friction may stir some heat along her skin. “I doubt that. I’m his prisoner. Just another woman he’s plucked from the crowd. He will tire of me as he does every other woman he conquers in war.”
Eloise snorted, the sound so adorable it made Isla look up and smile. “What other girls?” She stood up and went to the bowl. She poured some water in it, grabbed a rag from her apron and set the bowl beside Isla. “Here, get cleaned up a bit. You can borrow my extra maid’s uniform till Missus gets you your own.”
“Thank you. Your kindness is refreshing,” Isla said, dipping her cloth into the water.
“So, you’re from Tridea?” Eloise asked. Isla nodded. “The land surrounded by sea,” she said, looking up blissfully.
“Where are you from?” Isla asked.
She shrugged. “Boregard. The land of forgotten seas.”
Isla had read about the kingdom of Boregard. It was nearly uninhabitable as what once was a vast land of rivers and streams had been exploited and depleted until there was nothing left but loose soil and storms that carried dust and broken dreams.
“This place must seem like paradise to you,” Isla noted.
Eloise snickered. “Yeah, right.” She held her hands out in a grand gesture. “Welcome to the land of opportunity.”
Both girls laughed while Isla continued to bathe herself as best she could with nothing but a rag and a bowl of water that had become brown with filth after the first dip of the cloth.
“What is he like?” Eloise asked, playing with her braid as she released it from her bonnet.
“Who?” Isla asked, trying to pick the leaves, straw and twigs from her own hair.
“Prince Sylvan, of course. If he selected you personally, you must have met him.”
“Oh, the Mate Killer?” Isla asked, stalling. Eloise rolled her eyes but fanned her hand for Isla to keep going. She took a moment to think about it. “Well… he’s very… arrogant. Of course. Strong, intelligent… You’ve never met him?”
“No!” Eloise said, blushing, causing a strange stirring to disrupt Isla’s stomach.
“But, you’re his maid!”
“A maid to a man who has been within these castle walls thrice in five years and only for a single night each time. Come now, quit stalling. Arrogant, strong, intelligent… How did you meet him?”
Isla looked away and smiled. “I tried to kill him.”
Eloise’s mouth dropped open before she crossed her arms. “You have a real penchant for disrespecting authority.”
“It would appear so.”
“And? What happened?”
“Well, I tried to kill him but he caught me. We struggled on his cot and…”
“On his cot!” Eloise looked around herself as if there was room enough for there to be other people in the same space as them. “You were in bed with Prince Sylvan?”
It was now Isla’s turn to blush. “I suppose you could say that. But… he obviously stopped me. I expected him to kill me…”
“Right…”
“But he didn’t. He decided to keep me as prisoner instead,” Isla stated, looking down at the floor and running the rag thoughtfully between her fingers. Then she shook her head and scoffed. “I believe he just wants me to warm his bed. But my denying him has him intrigued. Just another conquest. A kingdom to conquer is all I am.”
Eloise sighed. “I would let him conquer my kingdom.”
Isla gasped and threw the soiled rag at Eloise’s face. Both girls laughed together until the room fell into retrospective silence. Isla stripped out of the dress she had worn for three days still caked in the mud of her homeland and donned the stiff black maid uniform Eloise leant her.
“It’s not so bad here,” Eloise said after a time.
Isla laughed. “We’re prisoners, Eloise.”
“Yes, well, I don’t know about you but being a maid here beats being a maid… there,” Eloise said. “Were you always a maid?”
Isla sat down with a heavy sigh. “No. Before the war I was free. I lived in Mariseth, the capital of Tridea with my mother and father. I was only a kid then though.”
“Cassandra is only a kid,” Eloise reminded her.
A memory surfaced at the way Eloise smiled gently. A long since buried memory of being too young to understand what her father meant when he said the kingdom of Eredhal was coming to request land and resources. She couldn’t fathom why he was so angry. Then the delegation of Eredhal arrived. She remembered the way the king looked at her, questioned her age and her parentage. Her father had denied she was his. Completely dismissed her, told the king she was merely a maid and forced her nanny, Monica, to escort her from the room.
When she’d asked her nanny why he’d said that, Monica had given her that same pitiful smile and whispered, “To protect you, darling. The king only wishes to protect the most precious thing to Tridea. King Kairen can never know your true power. He would only hurt you.”
“But, why?”
“Because that’s what the Eredhal people do to the beauty you carry.”
“Isla?” Eloise called, bringing Isla back from her recollection. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just… I was thinking of how things were… before.”
“Before you were a maid?”
“No… before I had ever heard of the Mate Killer,” she said.
Eloise sighed deeply. “A lot of people call him that… and I get it,” she said, quickly. Then she shook her head. “But to me he wasn’t ‘The Mate Killer.’”
“Who was he?”
Eloise smiled wistfully and met Isla’s eyes. “The Savior.”
Isla wondered about what Eloise might have gone through in her old home to consider such a vicious man to be her savior, but as the petite girl laid her head down and turned away, Isla thought a better time would come on another day.
“Get some rest, Isla, it all starts again tomorrow. Just…” Eloise turned back so Isla could hear her. “From now on, try to keep your head down. Sometimes… sometimes the punishment of helping others is worse than the other’s punishment, you know?”
Isla gave Eloise a gentle smile, grateful to have found a friend so quickly. As Eloise turned back, her braid slipped to the cot and Isla glimpsed a deep scar at the nape of her neck. A deep scar like that of an ax that had tried, yet failed, to separate her head from her neck. Isla took a cue from Eloise and laid her head down, praying she could sleep in this cold, dreary place. In only a matter of minutes, the Goddess granted her wish, but said wish came with stipulations.