Page 1 of Crimson Kingdom
PROLOGUE
As it turned out, the journey through the tunnels was markedly faster when one was neither drunk nor dehydrated. Still, even in the flickering light of the lanterns, the blackness here was oppressive and suffocating, a mirror of how I felt on the inside.
By the second day, the relief of Davin and me being alive and safe had worn off long enough for Uncle Oli and Da’ to start in with the questions.
The lectures.
The bone-deep disappointment.
“Did ye not think about a single stars-damned other person when ye decided to traipse down a tunnel that had collapsed once before? Did ye not think the family had been through enough, that the two of ye could risk your lives for something so trivial as vodka?” That from Da’, of course.
“We’ll be lucky if the rebels don’t pull the nobles over to their side,” Uncle Oli took over. “Clamoring for war. And don’t even get me started on your mother. Honestly, Dav. What the hell were you thinking, and taking your cousin?”
“Technically, I took Davin this time,” I said in a deceptively offhand tone.
“Dammit, Rowan,” Da’ growled. “Is everything a joke to you, even now?”
He wasn’t really looking for an answer, so I didn’t bother to respond. Instead, I heard a different voice in my head, words hurled in a smuggler’s cellar.
But life, death, laws, people. All of it is a joke to you. You make it impossible to take you seriously, then complain when no one does.
And then one that hit me like a punch to the gut.
Don’t you think all of our lives would have been a lot easier if you had stayed your reckless arse in Lochlann?
That time, I had yelled back at him, but this time, I gave him a more sincere answer in my head.
Yes, Evander. Yes, I do.
The end of the first week found us in the Dorccha Forest, or as it was better known, the Thieves Forest. At least Da’ and Uncle Oli had forgiven us, now that they had days in the tunnel to express their anger.
Fia took one look at my face, at the scar that laced over my shoulder to grace my collar bone, and shook her head with a rare bit of sincerity.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” she muttered.
I slept in her cabin. Or rather, I didn’t sleep.
Instead, I stayed awake, haunted by images of obsidian hair and storm-cloud eyes and an endlessly arrogant smirk.
I tried to push them away.
And every time, I failed.
It took us three weeks to get home.
When we did, Mamá wrapped me into her arms and collapsed into relieved tears, then she moved onto my father.
And I realized that my little adventure had done more than cause them grief. Da’ and Uncle Oli had been gone for weeks, in danger, in an enemy kingdom.
Avani looked at me with her gaunt face and her hollow eyes, her skin made paler by the fathomless black of her gown.
“I thought I had lost you, too,” she said quietly.
The words were an accusation.
A truth that hit home with all the precision of one of her arrows.
Guilt choked me, thick and cloying, creeping up my throat like bile.