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“You weren’t in your quarters,” he says. “You were nowhere to be found. So I sent soldiers into the Wilds.”
Where they found me.
I swallow, and my throat feels like it’s lined in parchment. Maybe it would have been better if Lochlan had killed me.
“I wasn’t working with the rebels,” I say, and my voice is rough and shaking. “Please, Harristan.” I sound like every single prisoner who’s begged at my feet. “I have nothing to do with the attacks on Sallister’s supply runs.”
He says nothing, just regards me silently.
Rocco reappears. “Your Majesty.” He’s holding out a leather satchel and a full water skin. I’m so thirsty I can practically smell it. “This is from the Hold stores. Shall I send for more from the palace?”
“Not yet.”
Harristan takes the water skin and offers it to me.
I drink too fast, sputtering on the water like I’ve never tasted a drop, but I’m too thirsty to care. When I finally lower it from my lips, I hold it out to my brother. I have no idea when I’ll get more, so it takes literally everything I have to say, “Will you please send some to Tessa?”
He studies me for a moment, then nods, handing the skin to Rocco, who leaves the cell.
Harristan looks over his shoulder at the other guard. “Retreat to the hallway. Have the prison guards keep their distance.”
They do. I hold my breath almost involuntarily.
Once they’re gone, Harristan sits down in the straw in front of me, then gestures for me to do the same. I stare at my brother, who’s never set foot in the Hold, who’s now sitting on a cell floor. I don’t think I have ever sat on a cell floor.
Well, until today.
He pulls a small length of bread from the satchel, followed by some overripe pears and a slab of cheese that looks a bit spotty.
He breaks the bread in half and looks at it dubiously, but then extends a piece to me. “Here. Eat, Cory.”
I tear a piece free with my teeth. “You could have had me brought to the palace.”
“I was too mad at you for that.”
“Are you still?”
“Maybe.” He splits the cheese, too. “Do you remember that time those boys from Mosswell dared us to race all the way to the river?”
“I do.” It was years ago. I was twelve or thirteen, so Harristan must have been sixteen or seventeen. There was a large stable on the edge of the Wilds that kept ponies for hire, and the boys would slip a few out of the paddock and take them galloping through the woods at dawn. We’d only ever ridden the sleek and polished horses from the royal stables, well-trained and well-bred animals who never took a step wrong. The ponies were fat and furry and ornery, but Harristan has a competitive streak, and we were riding double with nothing more than a halter and a rope, galloping out of the paddock before the other boys had even climbed over the fence.
I remember clinging to my brother’s back, getting whipped by branches and leaves, laughing every time that pony tried to put its head down to buck, because Harristan would jerk its head up and swear in a very unprincely fashion.
I also remember Harristan aiming for a narrow ditch that any horse in the royal stable would have leapt over without hesitation, because that ridiculous pony skidded to a halt, and Harristan and I did not. We went flying headfirst into the mud. We had to tell our parents that we were climbing trees in the orchard and we fell.
“It’s the last time I’ve seen you so bruised,” Harristan says now.
“Lucky me.”
“Stupid pony,” Harristan says.
“Stupid princes, more likely,” I say. I put the cheese in my mouth, and it’s awful, but I don’t care.
“Did the guards do this to you?” he says quietly.
I tear another piece of bread. “No. Those rebels you thought I was helping.”
He inhales sharply and straightens.
