The Rebel Prince (The Season Series #3)

Chapter 22

"...wasting our time bothering with some idiot prince."

"He is a potential ally and he is no idiot."

"He is a fierce negotiator, that much he has already made clear. What will he do now that we are no longer the ones in power? He is cut from the same cloth as everyone else who wears a crown. I don't trust him as far as I can throw him."

"You just saved his life. At the very least, he owes us the chance to explain our cause."

"He is slowing us down, Frederico. We cannot afford that."

"He stumbled, poisoned, all the way to my rooms. We are the only allies he has left in the entire country..."

Stars twinkled overhead, the tranquil sound of a fire crackling somewhere nearby. Crickets chirped, undisturbed by the voices that had roused me from my sleep.

Sleep. Was it really sleep?

My throat burned as I swallowed, a foul, tinny aftertaste lingering on my tongue. My mind wouldn't orient itself, skidding from one thought to the next, unable to string them together. As I stared up at the stars, I kept remembering an opulent dining room. A free fall into the darkness. Screams and chaos as the king splayed out on the table. The clop of horse hooves and quiet Ardal voices...

"How do we know he wasn't coming to finish you off?"

"You're being ridiculous."

"No, you're the one being ridiculous, forcing me to help some pathetic, hapless Pretanian when I should have been saving the little ones. Now they're stuck with that tyrannous wench for a queen and-"

"That's enough. I made my decision and you will respect it. Dulciana will not hurt the little ones, but she would have killed him."

"She certainly tried her hardest. On multiple occasions, too," I said in perfect Ardal.

The conversation went quiet as I struggled to push myself up. Clearly Frederico was the one making the decisions, since I wasn't tied to the tree behind me as if I were an untrustworthy prisoner. Instead, they'd laid me out in the hollow between the roots, a blanket spread over me and a rolled cloak tucked under my head.

Nice enough, especially for people who considered me a dead weight that was slowing them down.

"He can speak Ardal?" demanded the woman with the scarred face from Frederico's chambers, appropriately shocked. I only wished my vision would focus properly so I could've appreciated the expression on her face.

Her face...

My thoughts skidded and spun as I attempted to focus on her, on what I knew about her. I knew her voice. The penchant for cursing. Her familiarity with the crown prince...

She was Beatriz.

"I told you he wasn't an idiot, sister."

I was still staring at the unveiled princess when Prince Frederico came into focus as he knelt before me, inspecting me as he offered me a waterskin. My hands were clumsy as I took it from him, spilling water all over myself in my haste to drink. Behind him, Beatriz had risen, unfurling herself from where she'd been seated beside a modest campfire.

"At least he isn't a dead idiot," she muttered. Silhouetted as she was against the fire, I couldn't make out her face, but visions of scar tissue danced across my addled mind.

Beatriz was scarred. That was why she'd worn the veil. But before my mind could seize on that thought, it skipped away to other memories, memories of bitter vials and hushed hiding places and shouting guards.