Page 69 of Kingdom Of Veil And Vow

Alden tilts his head, his other hand loose at his side. Next to a dagger strapped to his thigh the same as Xander has. “You’ve got everyone else fooled, Xander, but I see through you,” he says, looking at how Xander stands in front of me. “Weeks and weeks passing with nothing from the shifter to show for it? No new word on the princess? No explanation on her magic or why she went to the Mage Kingdom or what she might be hiding? It seemed impossible. Improbable.” He clicks his tongue, righting his head. “I take no pleasure in being right.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Xander mutters.

Alden hears and sighs, reaching up to unclasp his cloak. It falls away, revealing a muscular body clad in the same armor as Xander.

“All I care about is taking the king down. It’s why I joined the resistance. Why I looked past your failed promises time and time again. Why I looked past your relation to the king. Because I thought you were leading us towards a better future.”

Relation?

“Overthrowing a king takes time, especially when that king is a paranoid man like Dolian. He will spot carelessness from a mile away. You may not like my methods or my timeline, but everything I have done has been in order to keep everyone safe. Progress is slow sometimes, but it doesn’t mean it has all been for naught.”

Alden growls and takes a step closer, prompting Xander’s heart to beat faster. “I might have believed you a few months ago, but not now. Not when you’re helping our only source of information flee.” Again his eyes move to me, and Xander adjusts his body to try to hide as much of me as he can. But Alden is undeterred, and his dark eyes scour over what he can see of my face. “I can’t let her leave, not when I know she has information on Princess Rhea.”

“The princess is not the threat I feared she would be.”

My throat grows dry as the pieces of everything I’ve learned about Xander and what I’m finding out now slide into place, giving me the full picture I didn’t have before. Xander isn’t just part of an uprising against the king. He is leading one. His questions about Rhea? His insistence that he be the one to interrogate me, that I answer everything I could before it was too late? It wasn’t so that he could give the information to King Dolian to use against her. It was so that he could ensure Rhea wasn’t a threat to this. To this movement against the king. And Xander, he had let me think the worst of him. Let me believe, for a time anyway, that he was loyal to the king.

Alden slides the dagger from its sheath, holding it parallel to his forearm as he lifts it up in front of him. “It didn’t have to be like this. But where you have failed this resistance, I will lead it to greatness. Under me, we will finally make our move against the king, and all will know freedom and peace.”

“Alde—” But Xander doesn’t even get the man’s name fully out before he lunges.

Chapter Forty-Two: Xander

Shit. Spinning out of the way of Alden’s blade, I pull my own free and block his next swing as the clash of metal pierces my ears. “Siyala, run,” I grit out, kicking into Alden’s shin and causing him to retreat a step. I risk a glance her way, frustrated to find her still standing there. “Siyala—”

Pain explodes at my temple, Alden suddenly right in front of me, arm already cocked back in preparation for a second blow. Blinking the stars out of my vision, I duck low, swiping at his legs with my dagger but moving just a second too slow. He leaps back, our heavy breathing filling the space as I finally hear Siyala’s steps retreating. Good.

“Was it worth risking everything?” Alden sneers as he lunges for me again, swinging up with the dagger while feinting to the right.

I counter, my left fist clipping the edge of his jaw before I leap back at the air that stirs in front of my face from his passing blade. The hair on the back of my neck rises as I move to stand straight up, lifting my arms to defend my blindspots when the top of my head smacks into the ceiling of the tunnel. Stumbling backwards, I curse, dodging left a fraction too late. The sting of his blade slicing across my arm makes a breath hiss from between my clenched teeth.

“Alden, this is madness. We fight for the same cause!” I catch his wrist mid air and march him backwards until he slams into the tunnel wall, a warning in my grasp as his dagger hovers above us. “My loyalty is to the resistance—”

“It is to her!” he bellows. His hand opens, and the dagger falls, silver flashing in the light of our torches on the ground as I watch it land in his opposite hand.

Footsteps whisper from behind me, a shadow moving across the tunnel. Someone else is here. Are they going after Siyala? Metal scrapes against my armor, the drag of his blade just missing my side as I pivot my hips. Air rushes into my chest in heaving gasps then is lost completely when the heel of his boot connects with my knee and I go crashing to the ground with a grunt. My blade flies from my hand, heart pounding in my chest as I scramble to get to my feet. But Alden is there, knee driving into the underside of my jaw, sending me sprawling back towards the ground as my ears ring and my vision blurs.

I brace my arms out above me on instinct as I blink through the stars in my eyes, Alden’s weight slamming into me, the glint of his dagger mere inches from my neck.

“Any last words, Xander Maxwell?”

I try to thrust him off, my heels slipping against the rough stone beneath me as I search for any kind of leverage. But my attempts are stopped, countered by Alden easily and terror plunges into my stomach as his knees dig into my sides.

“Maxwell isn’t my fucking last name,” I growl, but Alden’s focus is now entirely on how close the tip of his dagger is to my skin.

He presses down with a guttural sound, and the blade moves lower, the muscles of my forearm burning with the strain of holding him back. Stars above, what if I die? What will he do with her? Sweat gathers at my palms, and my vision flashes, my quick breaths making my heart skip a beat. Glaring from above me, Alden looks animalistic in his own right, and a victorious smile curves his lips as he watches me struggle.

He sucks in a breath, mouth parting to no doubt deliver his final words to me when his eyes abruptly grow wide. They meet mine as he wheezes a single breath, but when his lips peel back again, blood is seeping between them and a gurgled noise rises from his throat. The dagger falls and hits my cuirass with a clang loud enough to make me wince. Shoving him to the side, I scoot back, watching as he falls like dead weight, a familiar-looking hilt sticking out of the back of his neck.

Siyala stands with her hands held out in front of her, those amber eyes encircled by a hue of bright gold. Her arms shake, and her teeth flash stark white against the dark of the tunnel. She looks ravenous. Rage-filled. Like her wild fox is pressing at the edges of its mortal confinement and begging to be released. Alden makes another noise, and Siyala’s eyes narrow in his direction.

Leaping to my feet, I intercept her before she’s on him again, her teeth snapping in his direction as a low growl rumbles in her chest. “Siyala—”

Fighting against my hold, she tries to get at him again, those eyes glowing—actually glowing—a brighter shade of gold.

“Siyala, look at me.”

“He tried to hurt you!” she rasps.