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I roll onto my back, pushing away, but a grip strong enough to break bones pulls me to my feet and forces me up against the wall.
“Let me go,” I cry, bucking against the tight restraint on my arm, but I’m forced back against the wall with a hard shove.
“That’s enough, Idris.” Even if I can’t see him, I recognize the voice of the captain, who was so eager to shoot me.
“Yes, Captain Siro,” answers the guard, holding me down.
I push again, and the soldier lets me go. Stumbling and rubbing my arm where Idris’s fingers made angry marks on my skin, I turn, eager to face the captain.
A flash of metal is all the warning I get before he puts steel manacles coated with silver around my wrists. I might be a Princess of the House of Our Sun and Light, but the bite of metal on my skin is as harsh as if I was nothing more than a criminal on the loose.
“Let’s hope this is enough to keep you in check,” Siro says, showing me two rows of teeth marred with brownish stains. “I wouldn’t want to make you unfit for tomorrow’s ceremony.”
“What ceremony?”
The captain doesn’t answer, but pushes me through the opening and back into the palace.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, which earns me a hard shove from the same guard, who I would have thanked for saving my life, if only I didn’t find him so detestable right now.
“The ceremony that’s been a year in the making. The one that in no way should be hindered by a princess wandering in parts of the palace she’s not allowed to be in,” Siro says. “Now, move.”
With one final shove, the soldiers escort me through the halls bathed by the silver light of the moon, following a fast tempo only they can hear. Their pace doesn’t even falter as we cross another threshold. One with far too many soldiers swarming its entrance. No coin is spared to protect wives and daughters of Our Sun and Light.
Siro pushes me into my room, showing me those rotting teeth again.
“You can’t be here,” I mutter. “If my father finds out—”
“You shouldn’t be out there, either,” the captain interrupts me, his arm waving in the vague direction of the library where his patrol found me sneaking in to read my father’s books. “This night, we are all breaking rules.”
Unceremoniously and methodically, he pats my sides until he finds the parcel I slipped into the waist of my trousers. “This doesn’t belong to you,” he says before removing my manacles.
“Nothing in the Empire of Usmad belongs to anyone else but to my father,” I answer, offering the captain’s retreating back a glare that could kill if he only dared to look.
Siro doesn’t answer, walking out of the room and closing the door behind him. I wait for a second and, sure as the Maker’s will, the lock on it turns from the outside.
I curse and slide down the wall, rubbing my wrists where the manacles left a burning ring. No metal chains my hands, but I’m far from being free.
The guards retreat the way they came, the stomping of their boots fading. I wait until I can’t hear anything, not even the shuffle of servants’ feet. Only when Aunt Jera’s snores break the drowning silence of the palace do I dare to dig out a parchment from a double lining in the waist of my trousers.
Satisfied with his success, the captain abandoned his search as soon as he found the lifted book packed neatly into a parcel. I would have loved to erase that righteous smile from his lips and reveal the fact that his search failed because I still have one of the dozen identical parchments that I found on the desk in the room filled with more books than there are grains of sand in the desert. Yet that would have made him take even this small treasure away from me.
“Now, what ceremony were you talking about?” I whisper, unfolding the ornate parchment.
Written in long oval letters and with my father’s personal stamp of a thorny rose entwined with a circlet at the bottom, the invitation to a betrothal ceremony grows heavier in my hand with each passing moment. A betrothal between Ajaia from the House of The Sour Peaks and Neylan from the House of Our Sun and Light.
My father has traded one of his daughters, his last green-eyed gem, for yet another favor from a noble.
“A ceremony one year in the making,” I echo the captain’s words.
The parchment slips from my fingers, and I let my head fall into my hands. The day I dreaded is finally here.
Because I’m Neylan, and it’s my turn to carry out my duty to ensure the prosperity of the Empire of Usmad.
2
Somewhere in the palace, a door bangs shut with enough force to jolt my sluggish mind awake. I rub the last of the sleep from my eyes and desperately try to figure out where I am and what is going on.
My gaze lands on the parchment on the floor that must have slipped from between my fingers as I fell asleep. New tears rush to my eyes, but I blink them away.
