Page 18 of The Lionheart’s Bond (Bonds of Dusk and Dawn #1)

ISIDORE

W as it his third, or fourth day locked up? It should have been easy to keep track of time, but boredom and loneliness led him to doze off here and there, only to be startled awake by every distant sound of a step, his heart thumping with the hope of Judel finally showing up.

Night had fallen some time ago and his heart was racing for no apparent reason.

Maybe that wasn’t true; maybe the reason was quite apparent.

Surely Judel would come tonight. Nel might have thought his demands impertinent, cold-blooded even, but he still hoped they would be desperate enough for information to comply. He had expected Judel to come the same night, but that had probably been unrealistic.

His heart didn’t care how unrealistic his hopes were, though. It kept beating for every noisy boot against stone and kept him awake for as long as the sun hid over the horizon, until the moment it began to shine through the bars of his window. That the transformation was a matter of minutes didn’t matter, nor did it matter that the voice in his head told him he should give up by eleventh bell. He had all day to sleep.

Tenth bell was about to ring, and it had been dark since before eighth bell. If he was going to come, it’d be tonight. They wouldn’t risk ignoring whatever information he could give them any longer and he would absolutely not talk to anyone other than Prince Judel.

But he wasn’t delusional. There would be no emotional reunion. Judel wouldn’t wrap him in his arms or kiss him passionately, no matter how much he liked to imagine it. He didn’t even dare hope for forgiveness. All he wanted was a chance to explain himself. Maybe, if Judel knew where he came from, what the stories about Ilystra were truly like, he would at least understand Isidore’s behaviour.

But what came after that? He’d talk to the prince, tell him what he had to tell him, but after… Isidore had no options, nor was there any help coming his way. Only one certainty remained: no matter what, he would not return to Stonehollow, and that would have to be enough for him.

Fretting about the way in which that would happen was pointless, too. Much as he feared all he would find after any revelation he made would be one definitive answer to all his problems, served by the sharp edge of a blade, there was nothing more he could do.

Steps echoed outside his cell for the tenth time that night, throwing his heart into a race with itself, his back rod-straight, voices coming closer.

‘Stand for the Queen of Ilystra,’ the guard announced from the door.

The disappointment tasted bitter in his mouth and a sad smile stretched his lips, a gesture of self-deprecation. His excitement was pathetic even to himself.

He stood all the same and bowed to her just as he always had. Her hair braided, a bright green tunic instead of her usual blue. She wore black trousers too. Her clothing style hadn’t changed, but today she looked more elegant, more royal.

‘Your Majesty,’ Isidore said, his head still low.

‘You can sit, Isidore. I’m sure you’re tired of this discomfort.’

He scoffed. He should be used to it really.

‘You find it funny.’

‘It’s amusing that I feel uncomfortable here. Lord Torell had me sleeping in places far worse than this.’

Her eyes were loaded with judgement as she followed his movements, making him anxious. Was it too much to ask to be believed once in a while?

‘What did he do so bad that you ran away?’

‘I don’t see how that matters,’ he half-mumbled.

‘Let me be the judge of that. You’re in my house, and I am the queen, and shall do as ordered or suffer the consequences.’

He was too tired to care. He was too sad to care. That’s what he wanted to say.

‘Lord Torell had an old mountain lioness called Bellarose. I had taken care of her all these years, and she liked me. The last day I was there, he wanted to make her fight again. She was old, she had had a lot of fights when she was younger, and the last one almost killed her. I thought Lord Torell had forgotten she existed, but we went on the road, and he took her with us, and I feared the worst.’

Isidore finished the story the best he could, a knot lodging in his throat. He had to pause several times, look away, his eyes prickling with tears, hoping the queen would not witness his emotional state.

‘Did she die?’

He shrugged, he couldn’t be sure, but she must have.

‘Is that why you protected the lion, when you saw him?’

He nodded, rubbing his eyes.

‘The men following me thought he’d make a nice addition to Lord Torell’s collection. I couldn’t take it. I wasn’t in my right mind, really.’ He smiled sadly.

‘It was a risky move.’ She nodded.

Isidore stole a glance at her through the corner of his eye, trying to gauge whether he could ask the one question he was dying to have an answer for or not.

‘Is something the matter?’ she asked.

He swallowed hard, trying to muster the courage to ask. He cleared his throat.

‘Is… is Prince Judel well?’ His voice came out so small he wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t heard.

‘He is very well indeed.’ Queen Nahel watched him with an unsettling intensity. ‘I know you asked my brother Nel to let you talk to him, that you would speak to him alone, but I’m not sure that will be possible. He has reunited with his fiancée. She had broken up their engagement because of the curse, but they have met, and she didn’t seem as averse to him as we first thought. Judel has never stopped loving her. It didn’t take long.’

The word ‘reunited’ triggered his heart to race into his chest, beating painfully against his insides. That Judel wouldn’t reunite with him was already painful enough. But that he would return to his fiancée? What hope could he have now? Even if the one he harboured before was only the unrealistic, thoroughly delusional type, it was still hope and he had been holding onto it for dear life.

His chest emptied of air, and he didn’t remember how to fill it back again.

He had never stopped loving her.

What had happened between them was meaningless. It shouldn’t come as a surprise. Isidore had nothing to offer to even the lowliest of servants, let alone a prince. It shouldn’t hurt this much.

He shouldn’t let it hurt this much, but he was powerless against the crushing wave of emotions.

A hole opened in his chest and swallowed his soul, nothing there to replace it, to fill that space, that void that was threatening to make him disappear. Was it even possible to survive as an empty shell?

Lost in the labyrinth of his pitiful thoughts, he barely heard the voice speaking to him.

‘There are lives at stake,’ she said. ‘If what you say is true, if Lord Torell is not your father, you have no reason to keep his secrets.’

Hollow, he turned his head towards the voice. It was like moving through sludge.

‘His secrets?’

‘You wanted to tell Judel—’

‘You think I was keeping his secrets? For his sake?’ He scoffed. ‘I just used the only card I had to my advantage. But I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore.’

He closed his eyes tight, trying to force the tears back inside him.

‘When I escaped, we were on our way back from picking up prisoners. I’m not sure where they came from or who they were, but we had to cross into Valecrest to get them. We were on our way to the Lodge when I left. That’s where they’ll be.’

Queen Nahel leaned forward.

‘The Lodge? Is that Stonehollow?’

Isidore turned his head back, as if attracted by the darkness out of the window, involuntarily trying to see the stars through the small opening.

‘Lord Torell has long had the King’s trust when it comes to keeping high value prisoners. The Duke’s seat is The Quarry, farther East, but Lord Torell likes to spend the season in his Winter Lodge. Their convoy is usually slow, but they’ll have made it there a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Are you sure about this?’

Isidore nodded. Of course, he was sure. They made the journey every year. He hadn’t gone with them every time, but often enough to know the way, the routines, and enough times to know he didn’t want to go.

‘Why wouldn’t you tell us before?’ For the first time, there was a hint of emotion in her voice, anger in this case. It was a welcome change, just for a but of variety, and for the sake of knowing she was human.

‘At first, I was scared, and I didn’t know who the prisoners were, anyway. Even now, I can’t guarantee they’re the people you’re looking for.’ He shrugged.

‘Scared?’

‘I’m sure Prince Nel reported our full conversation.’

‘You mean the stories about Ilystra?’

He nodded. Even if he knew the names of the prisoner, no one had ever asked him about them. How was he to know he had information that could be useful to them? The men they had captured had no identifying marks that made them out to be Ilish, not that he had seen. It was probably by design.

‘I meant to tell Judel about it, later, when I heard about your missing people, but somehow I kept getting distracted.’ He allowed himself one brief smile. ‘Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that it escaped my mind. Maybe I knew that once I told you, everything would change, and I just wanted to live in this precarious happiness a little bit longer. Here, with people who took care of me and didn’t look at me like I was dirt stuck to the bottom of their boots.’

The queen remained silent, but Isidore didn’t bother looking her way, terrified of what he might find.

‘And now?’

Now, nothing. Not anymore.

‘I didn’t want you to kill me as soon as I told you what I knew, like you did with that man.’

‘I haven’t killed you yet,’ she said, leaning back on her chair.

‘I’m sure you have more questions to ask. Specifics about the location, the layout… Your Majesty need not worry, I’ll answer.’

She raised her eyebrows, maybe surprised, maybe incredulous.

‘What if I kill you after you tell me all that?’

He shrugged. Looking outside again, he searched for a light that he could follow out of here, in spirit if not in body.

‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’ he mumbled, almost to himself.

He didn’t hear her leave. He couldn’t say if she had spoken again or not. It was done. He’d tell them everything he knew. Guide them there, help them with everything he had, and then, if they killed him, well, that wouldn’t be so bad. Everything was preferable to returning to his previous life, when surviving was all he had aspired to. Now, with a taste of something better, the thought of losing it so completely was unbearable. Judel would marry his fiancée, and he would be where nothing would hurt him anymore.