Page 140 of A Promise so Bold and Broken

“You won’t actually be prisoners. Once we’re at the castle, you’ll be free to roam it as you see fit, as I have only the most loyal guards there. On the way there, however, we’ll encounter a lot of people who doubt me, including some of those rebels you spoke of. I don’t expect them to understand the decision I made… and you’re still considered traitors to Ellow. I can’t exactly host a welcome ball in your honor.”

The castle…

Lessia shivered as she remembered the long white hallways.

The loneliness she’d felt living there.

The fear as the pressure of the king’s commands built upon her chest.

But it was where they needed to go.

And it was where she’d left that stone…

She inclined her head. “What do you need us to do?”

As Loche told them what to expect once the guards came in, including that he’d made sure one he trusted had taken Soria and Pellie to the cave, she turned back toward Merrick.

His face slackened with each moment she stared into his eyes, and when the door finally opened behind them and the guards stormed in, putting them back into chains and tying them down onto horses, Merrick didn’t say a word.

Still, she refused to let her eyes leave his the entire way back to the capital, even as thoughts other than what she’d found out about him fought for dominance in her mind.

No one could miss how he stared at you when you weren’t looking.

ChapterThirty-Five

Rubbing her frozen arms and holding back a whimper when the movement sent a jab of pain through the one Loche’s guards had branded, Lessia stared at the room she’d spent months in during the election.

It looked exactly like she’d left it.

Well, apart from her clothing not hanging in the closet anymore.

She tried to shake the eerie feeling of being here again, the one that had clouded her mind as soon as they’d ridden in through the metal gates of the castle courtyard.

But to no avail.

It had remained the entire time they dismounted the horses, when Loche sent the majority of the guards away, when the few who remained released them from their restraints, when Loche informed her she could take her old room while the others stayed in the same hallway, and when she walked through the large sitting room and up the familiar spiral stairs.

“Are you all right?” Merrick poked his head through the door connecting her room with his, and she jolted when the memory of him refusing to let her change rooms that first day struck her.

Back then, she’d thought he’d kill her the second Rioner gave the order.

But if what Loche said was true…

Her brows knitted as she nodded, and Merrick must have sensed the confusion because he didn’t return to his room to get in the bath he’d muttered about when they mounted the stairs.

Instead, he walked into her room, closed the door leading to the hallway, and opened his arms.

Lessia walked right into them.

She might have been annoyed with him for losing his temper with Loche.

Not because Loche didn’t deserve a bit of a telling off—because honestly he did.

But because they needed him.

They needed him on their side. Needed the stone she didn’t see anymore atop the dresser where she’d left it.

Needed his fleet of soldiers, who would not respond to a call other than his.

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