Rogue, Prisoner, Princess

“You’re lying,” Ceres insisted, but somewhere inside she knew that Stephania wouldn’t be. She would only say something like this if it was a truth Ceres could check, something that would hurt and go on hurting as she found out the reality of it.

“I don’t need to lie. Not when the truth is so much better,” Stephania said. “Thanos is dead too. He died in the fighting for Haylon, right there on the beaches.”

A fresh wave of grief hit Ceres, sweeping over her and threatening to wash away all sense of herself. She’d fought with Thanos before he’d left, about the death of her brother, and about what he was planning to do, fighting the rebellion. She had never thought they could be the last words she would say to him. She’d left a message with Cosmas specifically so that they wouldn’t be.

“There’s one more,” Stephania said. “Your younger brother? Sartes? He has been taken for the army. I made sure that the draft takers didn’t overlook him just because he was the brother of Thanos’s weapon keeper.”

Ceres did try to lunge at her this time, the anger that filled her fueling her leap for the noble girl. As weak as she was, though, there was no chance of success. She felt her legs tangling in the bed sheets, sending her tumbling to the floor, looking up at Stephania.

“How long do you think your brother will last in the army?” Stephania asked. Ceres saw her expression turn into something like a mockery of pity. “The poor boy. They are so cruel to the conscripts. They’re all practically traitors, after all.”

“Why?” Ceres managed.

Stephania spread her hands. “You took Thanos from me, and that was everything I had planned for my future. Now, I’m going to take everything from you.”

“I’ll kill you,” Ceres promised.

Stephania laughed. “You won’t have a chance. This” – she reached down to touch Ceres’s back, and Ceres had to bite her lip to keep from screaming – “is nothing. That little fight in the Stade was nothing. The worst fights imaginable will be there waiting for you, again and again, until you die.”

“You think people won’t notice?” Ceres said. “You think they won’t guess what you’re doing? You threw me in there because you thought they’d rise up. What will they do if they think you’re cheating them?”

She saw Stephania shake her head.

“People see what they want to see. With you, it seems as though they want to see their princess combatlord, the girl who can fight as well as any man. They’ll believe it, and they’ll love you, right up to the point where you’re turned into a laughing stock out on the sands. They’ll watch you torn to shreds, but before that, they’ll cheer for it to happen.”

Ceres could only watch as Stephania started for the door. The noble girl stopped, turning back toward her, and for a moment, she looked as sweet and innocent as ever.

“Oh, I almost forgot. I tried to give you your medicine, but I didn’t think you’d knock it from my hand before I could give you enough.”

She took out the vial she’d had before, and Ceres watched it tumble to the ground as she dropped it. It shattered, the pieces spinning across the floor of Ceres’s room in splinters that would make it both painful and dangerous for her to try to find her way back into her bed. Ceres had no doubt that Stephania intended it that way.

She saw the noble girl reach out for the candle that lit the room, and briefly, in the instant before she snuffed it out, Stephania’s sweet smile faded again, to be replaced by something cruel.

“I will be there to dance at your funeral, Ceres. I promise you that.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I still say that we should gut him and throw his body out for the other Empire soldiers to find.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot, Nico. Even if they noticed one more body among the rest, who’s to say they’d care? And then we’d have the trouble of bringing him down somewhere they’d see him. No. We should ransom him.”

Thanos sat in the cave where the rebels had holed up for the moment, listening to them argue about his fate. His hands were tied in front of him, but at least they’d done their best to patch and bandage his wounds, leaving him in front of a small fire so he wouldn’t freeze while they decided whether to kill him in cold blood or not.

The rebels sat at other fires, huddling around them, discussing what they could do to keep the island from falling to the Empire. They spoke quietly, so that Thanos couldn’t overhear the details, but he already knew the gist of it: they were losing, and losing badly. They were in the caves because there was nowhere else for them to go.

After a while, the one who was obviously their leader came and sat down opposite Thanos, crossing his legs on the hard stone of the cave floor. He pushed across a hunk of bread that Thanos devoured hungrily. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d last eaten.

“I am Akila,” the other man said. “I command this rebellion.”

“Thanos.”

“Just Thanos?”

Thanos could hear the curiosity there, and the impatience. He wondered if the other man had guessed who he was. Either way, the truth seemed like the best option right then.

“Prince Thanos,” he admitted.

Akila sat there opposite him for several seconds, and Thanos found himself wondering if he was going to die then. It had been close enough when the rebels had thought he was just some noble without a name. Now that they knew he was one of the royal family, close to the king who had oppressed them so much, it seemed impossible that they would do anything else.

“A prince,” Akila said. He looked around at the others, and Thanos saw the flash of a smile there. “Hey, lads, we’ve got ourselves a prince here.”

“We should definitely ransom him then!” one of the rebels called out. “He’d be worth a fortune!”

“We should definitely kill him,” another snapped back. “Think about all his kind have done to us!”

“All right, that’s enough,” Akila said. “Concentrate on the fight ahead. It’s going to be a long night.”

Thanos heard a faint sigh from the other man as the men went back to their fires.

“It’s not going well, then?” Thanos said. “You said before that your side was losing.”

Akila gave him a sharp look. “I should know when to keep my mouth shut. Maybe so should you.”

“You’re wondering whether to kill me anyway,” Thanos pointed out. “I figure that I don’t have a lot to lose.”

Thanos waited. This wasn’t the kind of man he could push into giving him answers. There was something tough about Akila. Unyielding and straightforward. Thanos guessed that he would have liked him if they’d met under better circumstances.

“All right,” Akila said. “Yes, we’re losing. You Imperials have more men than we do, and you don’t care about the damage you do. The city is under siege from land and from water, so that no one can get away. We’ll fight from the hills, but when you can just resupply by water, there’s not a lot we can do. Draco may be a butcher, but he’s a clever one.”

Thanos nodded. “He is.”

“And of course, you were probably there when he planned all of it,” Akila said.

Now Thanos understood. “Is that what you’re hoping? That I know all of their plans?” He shook his head. “I wasn’t there when they made them. I didn’t want to be here, and I only came because they escorted me onto the ship under guard. Maybe if I had been there, I would have heard the part where they planned to stab me in the back.”

He thought of Ceres then, about the way he’d been forced to leave her behind. That hurt more than the rest of it put together. If someone in a position of power was going to try to have him killed, he wondered, what would they do to her?

“You have enemies,” Akila agreed. Thanos saw him clench and unclench one hand, as if the long battle for the city had started to make it cramp. “They’re even the same as my enemies. I don’t know if that makes you my friend, though.”

Thanos looked around pointedly at the rest of the cave. At the shockingly low numbers of soldiers left there. “Right now, it looks as though you could do with all the friends you can get.”

“You’re still a noble. You still have your position because of the blood of ordinary folk,” Akila said. He sighed again. “It looks as though if I kill you, I’m doing what Draco and his masters want, but you’ve as good as told me that if I ransom you, I get nothing for you. I have a fight to win, and no time to keep prisoners around if they don’t know anything. So, what am I supposed to do with you, Prince Thanos?”

Thanos got the impression that he was serious. That he actually wanted a better solution. Thanos thought quickly.

“I think your best choice is to let me go,” he said.

Akila laughed at that. “Nice try. If that’s the best you have, hold still. I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.”