Read Chapter 21: The Prince's Price

The gatehouse yard smelled of blood and wet straw. The crowd that had gathered to gape at Corin’s fate had been driven back by the palace guard, but their murmurs hung in the air like flies over a carcass. Elara pushed through the press of soldiers, her skirts snagging on a splintered barrel, until she saw what lay at the foot of the western gate.

It wasn’t Corin’s body. It was his cloak—his Valdris-blue riding cloak, torn at the shoulder and stained dark along the hem. Pinned to it with a long iron nail was a scrap of parchment, curled and damp from the night air.

Alaric reached it before she did. He tore the cloak from the nail, his knuckles white around the fabric, and read the words aloud with a voice like cracked ice.

“The Prince of Aurenne and his pretty Valdris bride. Come to the Whispering Pines before the next dawn, and the boy lives. Bring an army, and you’ll find him in pieces at your feet. Come alone, Princess—and he walks free. The choice is yours.”

There was no signature. But at the bottom, pressed into the wax seal, was the unmistakable imprint of a hunting falcon—the crest of House Ashford.

---

“It’s a trap,” Alaric said for the fourth time.

They stood in the war room, the maps of the borderlands spread across the table between them like a wounded animal. Elara had not sat down. She couldn’t. If she sat, she would think about Corin’s hands—how small they had looked when he’d waved to her from the gatehouse tower that morning.

“Of course it’s a trap,” she said, sharper than she meant. “They want me in the forest, alone, surrounded by men who have already proven they’ll kill a servant to make a point. The question isn’t whether it’s a trap. It’s how we spring it without losing him.”

Alaric looked at her across the table. His jaw was set, but his eyes—those grey, winter eyes—were softer than she’d ever seen them. “I’ll go.”

“No.”

“Elara, listen. They asked for you. If I ride in wearing your cloak, if they think I’m coming as your champion again, they’ll hesitate long enough—”

“Hesitate?” She laughed, but it was hollow. “The Butcher of Halemoor didn’t hesitate. You think Ashford’s men will, when they see a man in your armor riding into their camp? They’ll kill Corin the moment they realize the ruse.” She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “And if they kill him because you tried to be noble, I will never forgive you. Never.”

Alaric held her gaze. Something passed between them—not the careful diplomacy of the past weeks, but something raw and unguarded. He was terrified. Not of the forest, not of the fight. Of failing her.

“Then we go together,” he said quietly.

---

The plan was madness. Elara knew it the moment she agreed to it.

They would not ride in force. They would not ride small and quiet. They would ride *visible*—Alaric at the head of a dozen picked men, banners flying, horns sounding, an embassy demanding parley under a flag of truce. Any force that attacked an embassage under banner would be marked as outlaws in every court in the realm, even the corrupt ones.

And in the baggage train, disguised as a serving girl, Elara would slip away.

“It’s too risky,” Seraphine had said, when Elara told her. The lady-in-waiting had gone pale as milk, her hands twisting in her apron. “If they recognize you, if even one of them has seen your face at court—”

“They’ve seen me at court,” Elara said, pulling the rough woolen dress over her head. “Seen me gowned in silk and wearing the Valdris blue. They won’t see the queen’s daughter in an apron and a mop cap with flour smeared on her cheek.”

Seraphine bit her lip. “And the King?”

Elara paused. She hadn’t told Alaric’s father. The old King had gone to ground after the trial, shut in his chambers with his grief and his wine. She suspected he wouldn’t notice a war breaking out in his own courtyard until someone set fire to his tapestries.

“The King will be informed when it’s done,” she said. “When it’s too late for him to forbid it.”

---

The Whispering Pines lived up to their name.

The forest rose south of the border road, a tangle of old growth where the wind moved through the needles with a sound like low voices—like whispers of things best left unsaid. The embassy party made camp at its edge as dusk bled into evening, and Elara slipped away from the cook’s tent with a basket of bread on her arm and a knife hidden in her sleeve.

The Duke’s men had made their camp deeper in, in a clearing ringed by the great pines. She smelled it before she saw it—woodsmoke and horses and unwashed men, the sour stink of fear layering over the sweat of labor. They weren’t confident. They were scared men holding a valuable hostage, waiting for orders that might never come.

She moved between the tents, keeping her head down, offering bread to any man who looked at her twice. They took it greedily, barely glancing at her face. In the low light, in her rough clothes, she was invisible. A serving girl. A nothing.

Then she saw the tent at the center of the clearing, heavier canvas than the others, guarded by two men with swords drawn. Through the gap at the tent flap, she caught a glimpse of a huddled shape—small, still, blond hair matted to a pale forehead.

Corin.

Elara’s heart seized. She forced herself to keep moving, to not run, to not scream. She circled the clearing twice, memorizing the guard rotations, the positions of the sentries, the way the wind carried the smoke from their fires toward the north.

Then she slipped back toward the tree line and gave the signal—a single flash of silver in the moonlight.

---

Alaric moved like he was made of shadow.

She watched from the edge of the clearing as he and his men came through the pines, not with banners and horns now, but silent, black-garbed, swords drawn. The Duke’s men had been watching the road, waiting for an army, waiting for trickery. They hadn’t thought to watch the dark.

The first sentry fell without a sound. The second turned, opened his mouth to shout, and Alaric’s blade was already at his throat.

Elara counted heartbeats. The guard rotation changed in twelve. She had fewer than that.

She burst into the clearing, not toward the tent, but toward the cook’s fire at the far edge. She screamed—not for help, but *with* terror, a convincingly shrill cry—and threw herself at the pot of boiling water, sending it crashing into the flames. Steam and ash exploded upward, a blinding white cloud that filled the clearing.

Men shouted. Men cursed. Men ran toward the commotion, away from the tent, away from their posts.

And in the chaos, Alaric cut through the canvas with a single stroke.

Elara was on her feet and running before the steam began to clear. She reached the tent in time to see Alaric lift Corin from the ground—the boy was alive, blinking, crying, his wrists bound but his eyes clear. Alaric pressed him into Elara’s arms, and for a moment, she felt the warmth of his chest against her back, the solid weight of him shielding them both.

“Go,” he said. “Take him. I’ll hold them.”

She didn’t argue. She ran, Corin’s small body pressed tight against her, his hands clutching her neck, his breath hot against her shoulder. Behind her, she heard steel on steel, the grunt of men fighting, the wet sound of a blow landing.

And then she heard Alaric’s voice, raised not in battle but in command: “Roland.”

She stopped. She turned.

The clearing had gone quiet. The Duke’s men had thrown down their weapons—all of them, every one, at a gesture from the man who stood at the center of it all. He was tall, fair-haired, with the easy smile of a man who has never known consequence.

Sir Roland. The Duke’s son. The loyal knight. The one man no one had ever suspected.

“Well done,” Roland said, clapping slowly, his eyes on Alaric. “The prince who plays at being a soldier. The princess who plays at being a servant. You’re both very good at pretending to be what you’re not.” His smile widened. “I should know. I’ve been pretending for years.”

Alaric’s sword was still in his hand, but it hung loose at his side. “You took your own brother.”

“Half-brother,” Roland corrected, as if it mattered. “And I didn’t take him. I saved him. From a kingdom that would have bled him dry in a war your father and hers couldn’t stop.” He spread his arms. “I’m the only one who ever had the courage to finish it.”

Elara felt Corin shudder against her. She held him tighter, his small heart beating against hers like a trapped bird.

“The ransom note was addressed to you,” she said, her voice steady despite the rage rising in her chest. “To the Princess of Valdris. Not to Alaric. Not to the King. You wanted me here.”

Roland inclined his head. “I wanted both of you here, actually. I simply knew your stubbornness would bring him.” He looked at Alaric, and there was something almost like affection in his eyes—the affection of a man who has studied his enemy well. “You love her, don’t you? The enemy princess you were bred to hate. You’d walk into a trap for her.”

Alaric said nothing.

Roland laughed. “All the better.” He gestured, and his men closed in. “It means you’ll both stay.”