Elsewhere [boyxboy]

*Chapter Nine*

'Release him,' I said calmly, layering my voice with unarguable authority, but the figure who had somehow disencumbered Loki of his sword and twisted one of his arms painfully behind his back just looked at me with dark eyes, paying no heed to my words.

'He's a traitor,' he hissed.

'He was a royal spy,' I countered, lying.

'He's a turncoat who cannot be trusted,' he hissed again.

'That decision doesn't lay with you.' The bow creaked as I fingered the arrow, the threat implicit. Let him go or I kill you.

'Nota?'

I felt my eyes narrow but didn't lower the weapon, taking my gaze for the first time away from the blade pressed against Loki's throat, a few droplets of blood running across his pale skin, to examine our hijacker more closely. He was wearing a dark cloak and hood and I could barely see his eyes through the gloom.

'Reveal yourself,' I ordered. My face and arms were still covered with a dry coating of mud; only somebody who knew me should have been able to identify me.

Seeming reluctant, the figure finally moved away from Loki, who brought one hand to his throat to assess the damage at the same time as his other reunited with his sword. I kept my eyes on his captor and he re-sheathed his knife and lifted both hands to remove his hood.

Her hood.

'Aryn?' I asked, unsure, as brown eyes I recognised blinked at me.

'Nota,' she breathed, her voice coated in relief. 'It is you.'

I dropped Loki's bow and arrow and jumped to my feet, rushing towards my sister and pulling her into an embrace.

'You're alive,' I whispered into her hair as she held me tightly.

'No thanks to him,' she spat, pushing me away and glaring past me darkly at Loki. 'If you knew what he's done you'd take my knife and cut his throat yourself.'

'I know what he's done,' I said quietly, glancing behind me worriedly as I sensed some movement in the tents; my friends were waking up with the noise. 'Now he's doing this.'

'What are those ridiculous things?' Aryn asked, looking past me at the tents. 'Are there people in those?'

Dom was the first to unzip his tent and poke his sleepy head out, squinting at us past the dying embers of the fire. 'Who's that?' he yawned.

'This is my sister, Aryn,' I told him, as Adrian and Ana both emerged from their tents as well. 'Aryn, this is-'

'Humans,' she breathed, her ire at Loki momentarily forgotten as she stepped around me to move towards to them and examine them closely. She walked directly up to Dom and took his head in her hands, moving it this way and that as she scrutinised him. 'This one is a male?' she asked, looking back at me, and I nodded, trying not to laugh despite the dangerous situation we'd just avoided. 'And a female,' she added, doing similarly to Ana.

'Don't even think about it,' Adrian snapped at her as she turned her gaze to him, and she laughed.

'They are spirited,' she commented. 'Why have you brought them? We have neither the energy nor the facility for entertainment, brother. Are they a gift?'

'Not quite,' I told her. 'Why are you here? Skulking around in the forest in the night. I thought if you were not dead you would certainly be in the Fortress?'

'I?' she asked, laughing again. Aryn, less than a year younger than me and my closest sibling in confidence as well as age, had never been the type of princess to sit quietly sewing while the boys played at sword-fighting. Rather, she beat us at it. 'Have you been away so long as to forget me, Nota? Kinsley's men stormed the castle in darkness less than a week ago, but the guards held them at bay long enough for I - and Elay and Mara - to escape. We fled through the kitchens to the dock beneath the castle and bundled into a raft; Trorent's men were waiting for us downriver and took us to safety. We have a camp a dozen miles that way,' she went on, gesturing towards the west. 'I knew you were coming. I could feel it. I awoke and Elay and Mara knew too. I told them to instruct the guards that I was unwell and not to be awoken and came to find you. I refused to believe it until I saw your face.'

'What about the others?' I asked desperately. 'Mother and Father?'

Aryn looked down at the ground before returning her gaze to me, refusing to be compromised by her emotions. 'They are dead, Nota. Kinsley burned their bodies in the Citadel Square days ago. I don't know about Yuli and Irda. But the baby is dead as well.'

'Who are all these people?' Dom asked, looking at me.

'My brothers and sisters,' I said quietly.

'Fucking hell, Nota,' Adrian muttered. 'How many siblings do you have?'

'I don't know,' I said, looking up at Loki coldly. 'How many do I have left, Loki?' He flinched, but didn't respond.

'You should kill him,' Aryn said, her voice emotionless. 'You don't need him anymore and he'll be executed once we've quashed this rebellion anyway.'

'Then he can have a trial like all the others,' I said dismissively. 'Take us to Lord Trorent's camp. I expect he will be eager to sit with me.'