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One journey, countless dangers.
Mara is a prisoner in the slave yard digging ditches by day and sleeping with the rats in the dungeon at night. Nothing scares her anymore. Nothing but the death penalty she’d earned by committing treason against her sworn enemy, the King. Her future looks bleak until one day the Prince visits the slave yard and offers Mara a full pardon for her crimes on one condition- she disavows the rebel cause and joins him on a journey to the palace. Not believing her good fortune, Mara readily accepts the Prince’s offer, believing all her problems are over forever. But Mara soon realizes that life outside the slave yard has trouble of its own, and the treacherous journey will stretch her to her limits before she gets a glimpse of her new royal home.
Keep scrolling to read the first chapter of this book.
ONE
THE GIRL continued to dig.
Mud and water lathered her hair. Scraps of cloth clung to her bones. The ache in her muscles burned as the steady rhythm of her shoveling rose above the sound of falling rain.
Down. Push. Up. Again.
Down. Push. Up. Again.
Staying silent to avoid further injury, she put words to the rhythm.
I. Hate. The. King.
I. Hate. The. Prince.
She clenched her teeth together to stop the chattering. Anger warmed her cheeks. The guards whistled for work to cease, and she wiped the sweat from her forehead. As the sun hung low in the sky, the silhouettes of hundreds of slaves turned away from the large ditch and toward their ride back to the dungeon.
The girl ran toward the cart and horses, ignoring her limp. Elbowing her way through the crowd of shuffling bodies, she arrived at the wooden platform and flung herself onto the rotting boards so she’d have room to sit instead of stand.
Her weary body groaned as another workday came to an end without calamity, and she allowed herself to breathe a little easier.
A guard tripped a prisoner who had inched too close to him, and the slave landed face-first in the mud. Not flinching at the scene, the girl averted her eyes and scanned the massive slave yard.
The iron gates loomed ahead, but they were barred tight as always. Locked and sealed until the day the King arrived. Chipped fences bordered the fields for miles. A scraggly garden grew their meager vegetables. The guards’ barracks stood as far away from the underground dungeon as it could as if keeping a safe distance would shield the guards from the constant reminder of death.
When she’d first arrived at the slave yard, the violent tempers of the guards forced her and the other prisoners to skitter about doing their duties, learning to mend fences, paint them, dig the ditch, and peel the vegetables. They obeyed for no other reason than to avoid punishment.
But the longer she lived here, the more she discovered obedience meant self-destruction. They mended the fences to keep themselves in. They dug the deep ditch for their own bodies to be laid to eternal rest. And they prepared food to stay alive until the day of doom arrived.
There was no escape. Not from this place, nor from her impending punishment.
She’d handled the cold fact over and over again in her mind, smoothing it over, examining every lump and notch, but the process failed to soften the truth. In fact, it sharpened the blade. She would die here after digging her own grave. And there was nothing she could do about it.
The girl closed her eyes against her harsh reality, leaned on her shovel, and tried not to fall asleep.
♦
“Mara! Mara, wake up! Wake up! You’re going to get us beaten! Mara!”
At the last hiss of her name, Mara lifted her head off the shovel, just in time to jump to the ground and lay her spade on the pile of tools.
She shifted to the middle of the single-file line and let her eyes wander beyond the dungeon, beyond the guards’ barracks, beyond the crooked fence, forcing herself not to recall her life before the rebellion.
Something howled in the distance, causing goosebumps to prick her skin.
The line quickened its pace.
Passing the star-lit dining hall, Mara flicked her gaze to the kitchen. Hunger clawed at her stomach. Evening meal ended hours ago, and morning meal couldn’t come fast enough. Perhaps Blithe had stolen some stale bread during kitchen duty. She hurriedly descended the moldy steps at the mouth of the underground cavern to find her friend.
Mara squinted at the plump girl across the dark room and called to her.
“Anything?”
Blithe shook her head, her front tooth flashing in the trickle of torchlight shining from the stairway.
“Nothing tonight. Watched too closely after that cheese disappeared.” She chuckled.
Mara’s cheeks burned. Her hunger was nothing to joke about. More and more slaves filtered into the damp cell, and she needed to find a cot before she slept on the floor with the rats again.
Finding a worn cot in the corner of the room, she collapsed onto it, careful not to aggravate the fresh cuts and bruises from the day’s work. After closing her eyes, she wished for sleep to mute her empty stomach’s cry for food.
She cursed King Aldus and Prince Justinius aloud and heard several grunts of approval from the bodies sprawled out around her.
“Long live Lord Druett!”
“Down with the Prince!”
“The true king will arise!”
“Rebel victory!”
Mara smiled for the first time in weeks. Those two monsters should be the ones digging ditches and sleeping in dungeons. I deserve to be the one living in a palace and eating rich pastries.
At the thought of food, Mara’s stomach lashed out again. She opened her eyes and bit the rough callous on her pinky until she forgot about the pain in her belly.
As she turned to lie on her side, she noticed a pair of thickly padded shoes on the floor. The girl next to her had been foolish enough to remove them before crawling into bed. Mara swiped them and put her tattered pair in their place. She winced as she slid the new shoes over the sores on her swollen, cracked feet. A whisper of guilt tickled her heart.
What? She’s a stupid girl to leave something so precious out in the open like that. Serves her right. Maybe this will teach her a lesson. Besides, I’ve done far worse.
Mara shoved the nagging heaviness away and wiggled her toes, satisfied that no flesh peeked out to greet her. She closed her eyes to once again search for sleep.
When that rotten king comes for me, I’ll spit in his face before he has a chance to dodge.
An unexpected jolt froze her blood. The seventy lashes coming her way would end her, no question. Forty could kill a horse. She’d be dead before King Aldus reached fifteen. Mara growled and cursed his Royal Majesty again, louder this time, wishing the rebellion had been successful for the millionth time since arriving in this wretched place.
She would spit in his face when she met him, yes. But he would get the last laugh.