“Run,” I told him, glaring over Thomas’s shoulder.
He smiled in his dark way and toyed with the chain of the necklace. “You keep assuming that I won’t dare kill you, Marian. You think I am so frightened of my mother’s disapproval and my brother’s wrath that it will stay my hand. But she has changed her mind before, and kings will come and go. You may have noble blood, but you are a common thing. You see the world as fixed and finite, and it is not. It is liquid and ever moving, and one act can change everything.”
My blood rushed to ice in my veins, and I didn’t say anything.
“Your father has been captured, Marian,” he told me, his words slithering out from his evil smile. “Held ransom by the Holy Roman Emperor. He will never set foot in England again—so just imagine what I would do to you now.”
Thomas’s hands squeezed harder.
Prince John chuckled. “Guards, come along. I need to speak with you both about her arrangements.”
Thomas held me until David and the prince were out of the cell, and then he locked the door behind me.
I sat back down on the ground, breathing hard.
It weren’t long when Thomas and David came back, now without the prince. I tucked the rock into my sleeve, standing to meet them.
“Where are we going?” I asked. If they were planning to kill me, it would be best to do it here. Caged and in close quarters, I’d be less likely to get away. And I weren’t big enough that they’d worry about the weight of carrying me out. I glanced at their weapons. They both had their knives drawn, but not their swords.
“We’re just moving you,” David said, nodding to me, trying to calm me like I were an animal. “I believe the prince was only trying to scare you, my lady.”
“Stop calling her ‘my lady,’” Thomas snapped. “She’s a traitor to the Crown.”
David bristled. “She’s a princess,” he returned. “Something you ought to remember, sir.”
“Open the gate,” Thomas ordered. He were shifting his weight, foot to foot. Restless. Ready.
David frowned, noticing it as well. “What did you and the prince discuss, Thomas?”
“When?” he said, but he were a bad liar.
“When I left to call for the prince’s horse,” David said.
“Open the gate,” I told David soft.
“I asked you a question, sir,” David told Thomas, raising his knife and resting his hand on his sword hilt.
Thomas turned to David. “Don’t get in the way,” he warned him, shaking his head slow.
“Of what?” David asked, lowering his stance. He were ready for the fight that were coming, but Thomas were the brute of the two of them. In the narrow space of the hall, I didn’t want to watch David die.
“Open the gate, David, please!” I called, coming closer.
This distracted Thomas for a moment, and David raised his foot and kicked him hard. Thomas reeled back and stopped, charging at David with a roar.
There weren’t nowhere for them to fight. Thomas heaved David up against the stone wall, and when David swiped at him with the knife, Thomas jumped back.
“You know what we have to do!” Thomas shouted, drawing his sword. “We are the prince’s knights; we must obey his orders!”
David shook his head, holding fast to his knife. “Those are not my orders.”
“He knew you wouldn’t agree to kill her!”
“Then why did you?” David demanded. “I will put you down if I must, Thomas. For all the time we have served together, do not make me do it.”
“You think a few months of following this girl around makes us brothers?” he snarled.
“The oath we swore as knights makes us brothers.”
“The oath we swore demands we obey him!” Thomas said, lunging forward.
David jumped into his lunge, grabbing Thomas’s hand and slamming the sword and Thomas’s wrist against the iron door. David tried to stab Thomas, but Thomas grabbed David’s wrist and they held, trembling with the force of fighting against each other’s strength.
“I never swore an oath to the prince,” David growled. “I swore an oath to the queen mother.”
I slammed the rock shard as hard as I could against Thomas’s captive hand, still holding the sword. The rock caught and tore, blood rushing out.
Thomas yelled and dropped the sword. His hold lost strength, and David’s hand pushed forward, stabbing him in the side where his armor didn’t cover.
Thomas tried to reach for his own knife, but David punched him across the face. Thomas hit the stone wall and slid down it. He didn’t get up, though I saw his chest move with breath as the red spread out beneath him.
“Come along, my lady,” David said, fumbling with his keys to get the door open.
“You’re one of my grandmother’s knights?” I asked him.
He looked up at me, nodding. The key clicked and the door opened, but I didn’t move.
“She knew where I were the whole time?” I asked.