Chapter Fifteen

Escape

By the crackling fire, Alodie kept still. Let the demons underestimate her.

She’d spent two days in prayer asking for guidance about what course of action she should take. Accept her fate and stay with them to be the princess for whatever prize she was supposed to represent? Or take her chances and flee?

The storm might have taken four heathens who might or might not have had souls, but it had also brought her back to land. She’d asked for deliverance. If the hand of God was at work, what sort of culpability did she bear for the loss of those…did she dare call them men? It was hard not to think of them as such, now that they were dead. In life, however, they’d been nothing like what a man was supposed to be. They would have willingly slaughtered the village and taken what they pleased before the bodies they’d slain were cool.

Those were questions she’d wrestle with another day. If she stayed, she could discuss the matter with a priest. Carefully, though—as in everything she sought to discuss with the priest, lest she accidentally let a heretical thought slip or make him believe she’d been thinking too much.

She let her eyes fall shut, straightened her spine, and took a deep breath. Her thoughts were wandering again. This was neither the time nor the place. She’d been granted deliverance. She could not beg for the hand of God only to slap it away when He extended it.

As the stars emerged, the men bedded down upon the beach. Alodie took her place upon the demon’s cloak, nesting adjacent the length of his sword. He wasn’t long in coming to lie beside her.

She closed her eyes and turned her head, listening. The nighttime sea breeze perfumed the night and the gentle roll and swish of the tide all but lulled her to oblivion. More than once, she jerked herself out of a near collision with sleep. She’d wait and wait and then wait some more. The demon leader had sharp reflexes. And he watched her like a predator. Like a wolf biding his time.

The moon would tell her. She’d go when it was high overhead.

Slowly, the pale orb climbed the sky. And when, after a near eternity, it reached its apex, Alodie was ready. The demon’s breathing was shallow and even. The last time he’d moved, the moon had been in the transitional phase between appearing bigger and golden against the horizon, then shrinking smaller and whiter as it crept up into the sky.

The men keeping watch over the encampment had wandered to the far end of the beach some time ago and hadn’t walked back. The murmurs of their conversation drifted toward her, but no words were discernible.

Alodie took in a breath and let the air out again in a controlled exhalation. When she pushed up onto her elbows in careful movements, a rush of power swept all residual sleepiness away. She didn’t look toward the men on watch, lest they sense her eyes upon them and catch her trying to flee. With slow deliberation, she crept over the uneven surface of the cold sand toward the rocks.

Safe by a boulder, she crouched in the darkness, hugging her knees close. Her pulse pounded and she breathed heavily.

The night was alive with sounds. Rustling breezes through leaves and grass. The tide. An owl calling.

None of it seemed as loud as her.

But the beach remained quiet. The demon leader kept to his bed. The guards’ conversation had not paused.

Alodie crept farther away. Once she reached the trees, if enough moonlight spilled through the leafed-out branches to illuminate a path, she would run. If not, well, she could go slowly too. Leaving was leaving. No matter how painful it was to not be able to sprint away into the night, staying with the demons would be worse.

She sped as fast as she dared toward a tree and flung herself against the trunk.

It was working. She was going to escape. They’d wake in the morning and—oh, who cared what those godless heathens did, so long as they did not come back for her.

Alodie went still. Come back for her. Their ships were ready to sail. It would cost them nothing but a few extra days to turn back. In an onslaught of weakness, her neck went slack, knocking the back of her head against the tree trunk.

Two days in prayer. All that time envisioning her escape and not once had she stopped to consider what she would do once free. In the back of her mind, all she could think about was returning to the way things were before.

Curse her rashness. The real princess would have been able to think past the mere act of escaping. She’d have had her next five decisions mapped out in her mind—maybe more, for she also saw where things might go wrong, requiring alternative plans.

Alodie’s lungs tightened. She wanted to curl into a ball and let loose all the stinging tears she’d held back.

That would have been of little use. She could cry enough to flood the world and afterward she would still be faced with having to figure out what to do with herself. But she wasn’t strong enough for this. All she’d ever wanted to do was serve the princess.

Now she’d never see her again.

There was no going back. No erasing the fact that the demons had landed upon their shores. No waking up from this nightmare. The only thing remaining was the looming question of what the demons would do once they found her gone. What if she returned home only to find them waiting for her?

No, they wouldn’t be waiting for her. It would be worse. The first thing they would do was uncover her deception and take the real princess. Would they then stay for her, to slaughter her for humiliating them by making them believe she was the person they wanted? Or would they not care when they had their real prize?

Either way, what was done was done. The home that Alodie had known was gone. She was a person without a place in the world. And there was nothing for her to return to.

An unmarried woman without money or property had no hope of starting new anyplace else.

Never had Alodie been so acutely alone.

What would the real princess do? First, she’d never have debased herself with unfavorable thoughts about their demon leader, naturally.

That aside, the real princess would always have put her people before herself. Always. Alodie was selfish to consider aught else. A yoke of shame fell upon her shoulders.

Alodie bent at the waist just enough to peer around the trunk of the tree and stare back at the beach. But that was no place for her. All those men were vessels for souls of the damned.

Before she could draw another breath, a shadow grew out of the darkness and grabbed her.