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When Donella woke, she was alone in a low room with shelves of books, a glass door, and oddly mismatched furniture. She started hyperventilating, and it took her a minute to calm herself down. She had been captured, yet again, and this time there was no way they would let her go. She was trapped.
There was no pain in her head where the Sahasran woman had touched the ring to her, but she was groggy, all the same, as if she had slept in far too late. Mostly that was the wine, she supposed.
Through a long set of tall glass doors, she could see a garden, a gravel drive, and a fountain. With a nauseating sense of dread, she realized where she was. This was the main house at the Pradivani Palace—she recognized it from the Solstice party. She didn’t know this particular room, but there was a big mahogany desk nearby, and that suggested an office or a study.
Someone had tied her hands, but not so tightly she couldn’t move them. Vikker’s magysk ring was gone, and although that was probably for the best, she missed the feel of it. Right now she especially missed the confidence it had given her. But look how that had ended.
A little experimentation, moving from side to side, proved she was seated in a low wicker chair, and her bonds were fastened to the leg of it. If she wanted, she could stand up and walk off. But then she would have to escape with a wicker chair under her arm. In spite of herself, the image made her grin, and she felt a little better, if only for a few seconds.
Then a door opened behind her, and all the terror came back for an instant, before the Earl of Hyrne came around the side and sat in front of her.
“Well, Donella,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here, of all places. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“It has, my lord,” she said.
He was wider and redder in the face than he had been; she had noticed that at the party. But his gentle smile was the same as always, and it was hard to feel scared, even if he was on the other side of the war. She had never known him well, but her brother had always said very nice things about him.
“It’s been...oh, Finster. It’s been ten years now, hasn’t it? I remember you were at court for a little while right before you went up to Atherton. So you’d be...what? 21 now?”
“I turned 20 this past January, sir,” she said.
He shook his head and laughed. “Goodness, but time flies, doesn’t it? You’re the very image of your mother, you know.”
“Yes, sir.” Donella picked at the ropes around her wrists.
“It’s a very high compliment. Your mother was always one of the loveliest women at court.” He sighed. “But anyhow, here you are.” He reached into the pocket of his tunic and pulled out the ring Vikker had given her. “And you’ve made interesting friends, apparently. May I ask what this does, exactly?”
“It...er...,” her face burned. “It changes the appearance a bit.”
She was terrified he would ask more specific questions, but he smiled and put it away. It occurred to her that the Sahasran woman, Rada, might have already explained its use to him, and that thought made it almost impossible for Donella to meet the earl’s eyes again.
“Perhaps you might like some tea,” he said. “Or wine?”
“I’m...I’m fine,” she said. The mere thought of more wine made her stomach roil like she was about to vomit.
But the earl insisted on the niceties, and he called in two servant girls, who set out the tea things and even poured a cup of it for Donella. It sat there in front of her bound hands. The steam coming off it put her in mind of the hot spring, and she shuddered as she thought of what she’d done there. Not just what Andras had done for her, but, even worse, what she had then done for him.
In her mind, for a few moments, it was as vivid as if it were still happening right at that moment. The feel of him in her mouth, the hardness sliding over her lips. Oh, Earstien, it had been so, so wrong. But it had felt so good at the time. She could still taste it. Maybe it was her imagination. Even so, she started to gag, and she quickly picked up the teacup in her bound hands and took a few scalding sips, hoping to rid her mouth of it. She coughed, and the earl handed her a handkerchief, for which she thanked him.
“Now, I’ve heard about what you’re doing here second-hand,” he said. “But I’d like to hear it from you. Why did you come to Briddobad, exactly?”
“I...,” she wiped her lips again. “I wanted to help Andras.”
“Naturally. Did your mother send you?”
She looked up, catching his eye for the briefest moment, and she knew there was no point in lying. “No. I’m here on my own.”
“I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had made you do this. She’s the most ruthless woman in Myrcia.”
Donella wished she could have contradicted him, but she couldn’t.
“And yet,” the earl continued, “I’m sorry to tell you Andras is going to marry my niece. There’s really nothing you or your mother can possibly do about it.”
“But he’s in danger!”
“As you’ve discovered, we are more than adequately protected here.”
She looked down into her teacup. “They’ll never be happy. They’re not right for each other.”
The earl chuckled. “Perhaps, but my nephew, King Edwin, doesn’t need them to be happy. He only needs them to be married.”
She had come all this way; she had done all those dreadful things under the influence of wine. She had lost her self-respect and, most likely, she had enraged her parents. And it had all been for nothing. She might as well have stayed back in Formacaster, for all the good it had done her.
“Can you please let me go home?” she begged.
“I could, I suppose. But magnanimous gestures are lost on your dear parents. If I let you go, they would think I was weak, wouldn’t they?”
Again, she longed to be able to tell him that he was wrong, but he wasn’t.
“See? You know I’m right,” he went on. “No, I’m afraid you’ll be staying here until your father and I can come to some sort of mutually-beneficial arrangement.”
“What sort of...arrangement?”
“Possibly ransom. Possibly a marriage. It could end the war, you know. Maybe you and my nephew, the king. Maybe you and me. Who knows? We’ll wait and see what your parents propose.” He reached over and patted her hand. “Don’t worry. I’m not entirely heartless. You’ll have a comfortable room and excellent food. But you’re not leaving here until I say so.”
He called out, and four soldiers came in—three Sahasrans and a Myrcian knight. They bowed, untied her, and helped her gently to her feet, but they might have saved themselves the pretense. Donella knew she was a prisoner now, and it didn’t matter whether they called her a “guest” or whatever. She was stuck here like poor old Queen Merewyn, who had been locked up in a tower and had died there, completely mad.
The soldiers took her downstairs to the cellars, where they ushered her into a small, dark chamber. The servants had done their best to make it look like a real bedroom, with a thick quilt and lots of pillows and a cheerful yellow curtain over the tiny slit of a window near the ceiling. There was a writing desk, too, and a bookshelf with half a dozen little novels on it. But nothing could hide the fact that this was a jail cell.
With all of her self-control, she managed to hold in the tears until the guards had shut and locked her door. She tried to act like her mother would have, keeping her chin high and her back straight. But her mother would never have gotten herself caught. Or if she had, she would have had a secret dagger on herself somewhere, and would have assassinated the earl in his study.
Donella knew she would never be like her mother, though. But everyone would think she was. The earl was probably sitting upstairs right now, congratulating himself on capturing one of the “Gramiren usurpers,” as if he’d managed to nab her father or her mother, or even her brother. But he hadn’t. He’d gotten the Gramiren who hated politics and wrote stories of gallant knights and beautiful ladies to entertain her friends.
“I’ll never be like my parents,” she thought. It was something of a relief, actually.
As the evening wore on, though, she realized that wasn’t quite true. If this trip had taught her one thing, it was that she was far more like her parents than she had ever dreamed she could be. For years and years, for almost as long as she could remember, she had told herself she would never indulge in the kind of immorality that seemed to come so easily to them. She had promised herself she would never go hopping from bed to bed, all through the palace. She would keep herself pure, like a good Ivich girl, and would dedicate herself wholly to her husband.
But it turned out she couldn’t keep the promise. Her resolve to stay chaste had lasted...what? An hour? That was how long it had taken her to give in when faced with real temptation.
“Oh, Earstien,” she prayed, squeezing her hands together as her tears fell. “Please don’t let me turn into my mother.” And yet, she knew it was pointless. It was already too late.
She lay awake all night in the damp and darkness, and in her mind, she kept going back to her childhood. She vividly remembered another evening, fourteen years earlier, when she had looked through a bedroom keyhole and seen what it was that her mother did with all those gorgeous young men she always had around her. And she remembered the dismay with which she had realized that her parents did not really have a marriage, so much as a business arrangement. She had resolved to never fall into that trap herself. But there didn’t seem to be any choice about the matter.
“That will be me,” she thought sadly. “I’ll have some random husband I don’t even love.” Maybe young Edwin. Maybe the fat old earl. But never Andras, which was probably for the best.