Chapter 3
He stepped back, breaking the contact between us as if the touch burned him. He wrapped his arms around his own ribs, hugging himself against the subterranean chill.
"Besides," Julian added, his voice regaining a fraction of its cool, royal detachment, though it was thinner now, paper-thin, "a prince does not run. He plays the pieces he has."
"You don't have pieces, Julian," I said bluntly, rattling my chains as I shifted on the hard wooden bench. "You have a dungeon. You have a prisoner who's about to lose his head. And you have an empty vault, from what the guards outside were muttering."
Julian’s posture went rigid. For a fraction of a second, his eyes flickered toward the heavy iron ring in the floor, away from my face.
"What did the guards say?" he asked quietly.
"Just camp gossip," I replied, watching him closely. There was something odd in the way his shoulders hitched, an unnatural tension even for a man under siege. "They said the tax caravans from the west came in late, and that the imperial treasury is dry as summer bone. They said Alden has been paying his personal guard out of his own pockets because the royal exchequer couldn't even cover the oats for the palace horses."
Julian gave a short, dismissive wave of his hand, though his fingers trembled slightly. "The harvest was poor. The northern campaigns were costly."
"My Vanguard wasn't costly," I countered, narrowing my eyes. "We didn't charge you a copper for guarding the passes these last two years. I held that border because you asked me to, Julian. Not for your father's gold. For *you*."
The silence that followed was suffocating. The brazier sputtered, throwing long, skeletal shadows against the weeping mortar of the wall.
Julian looked at me across the narrow expanse of the cell. The longing in his expression was so naked, so completely unshielded, that it felt like an intrusion to witness it. We had danced around this fire for three years—ever since the winter campaign in the Crags, when we had shared a single sheepskin cloak in the back of a baggage wagon, our bodies pressed together against the freezing wind, breathing each other's air, speaking in whispers about a future that neither of us had the right to dream about.
He was a prince of the ancient blood. I was an orphan from the lower wards who had learned to kill before I learned to read.
Even now, chained in his dungeon, awaiting his executioner, the boundary between us remained uncrossed. A wall built of crowns and corpses.
"You should have demanded gold, Rowan," Julian whispered, his voice trembling with a grief that seemed far larger than my impending execution. "Gold would have been simpler."
"I never gave a damn about gold," I said, leaning forward, holding his gaze with everything I had. "And I don't give a damn about Alden's executioner. Listen to me, Julian. Tomorrow night, the watch rotates at the third bell. The guard outside this door is young; he drinks the spiced wine the kitchen maids bring him. In two days, before they march me to that scaffold, I am getting out of these irons."
Julian’s head snapped up. "What?"
"I have two links in this wall chain already loosened," I lied, keeping my tone steady, convincing, the voice of a seasoned commander giving orders in a siege. In truth, the mortar was solid rock, but I had seen the layout of the lower halls when they dragged me in. If I could break one guard's neck and take his keys, I could fight my way to the sally port. "I'm not waiting for Alden to put an axe to my neck. And when I go, you're coming with me."
"Rowan, no—"
"I am not leaving you in this viper's nest!" I snarled, rising to my feet. The chains clattered loudly, the heavy iron dragging across the stone, but I ignored the pain in my wrists as I closed the distance between us. I stood over him, tall, broad-shouldered, scarred, refusing to let him look away. "Look at you. You're living on borrowed hours. If I die on that scaffold, Alden will have you poisoned by the end of the week, and there won't be a man left in this kingdom with the stomach to avenge you. We break out together. We ride north. We regroup my Vanguard—"
"Your Vanguard is broken, Rowan!" Julian cried, his voice catching on a sob as he stepped forward, grabbing my wrists, his fingers gripping the iron cuffs that bound me. "They scattered! They are gone!"
"They'll gather again if they know their commander is breathing!"
"No! You can't escape!" Julian's voice was desperate, frantic, his hands clutching the cold iron as if he were trying to hold the metal itself together. "You don't understand the wards on this keep. You don't understand the Iron Watch. If you try to break out, they will kill you in the corridors! They won't even wait for Alden's order. They have crossbowmen stationed at every turn of the spiral stair!"
"Then I die with a sword in my hand instead of kneeling on a bloody platform while you watch!"
"I won't let you die!" Julian shouted, and then his voice broke completely.
He slammed his hands against my chest, his forehead pressing against my breastbone, his shoulders heaving with ragged, silent breaths. The crown prince was unraveling in the dust of my cell, his regal composure shattered into jagged pieces.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a battering ram. I lifted my bound hands, working the heavy chain over his head with awkward, careful movements, until my forearms rested against his back, locking him into the circle of my arms. The iron links pressed hard against his spine, but he didn't pull away; he leaned deeper into the embrace, burying his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling the scent of smoke and sweat and damp wool as if it were the only air left in the world.
"Jules," I murmured, my cheek resting against his soft, silver hair. "Why did you come down here tonight? If Alden's spies saw you—"
"I don't care about Alden's spies," he choked out, his fingers digging into the rough fabric of my tunic. "Let them report it. Let them tell him the prince is weeping over his prize captive. I don't care."
He lifted his face. His grey eyes were wet, dark with an agony so profound it took my breath away. In the dim amber glow of the brazier, with the distant rumble of the city mob echoing through the stones above, he looked impossibly young, impossibly fragile, and yet possessed of a terrifying, brittle resolve.
His hand came up, trembling, and touched my lips.
"Don't do anything reckless tomorrow, Rowan," he whispered, his thumb brushing my bottom lip, his breath warm against my mouth. "Promise me. In the council chamber... whatever Alden says, whatever I am forced to say... do not fight it. Let them lead you back to this cell."
"Julian..."
"Promise me," he begged, leaning closer, until his lips were a fraction of an inch from mine, hovering in that agonizing space where breath becomes heat. "Swear it to me on the northern stars. On whatever you still hold sacred. Swear you will stay in this cell until the three days are done."
