On The Edge of a Blade

Chapter 17

"You have a right to be mad at me, but work with me for a minute, please." Rose could be as contrite as she pleased about this whole situation, but she didn't have any time available for accepting such useless scorn.

"Do I sound mad?" He did, but Rose allowed the question to retain its rhetoric nature by keeping her mouth shut. "We both messed up, so all we can do is suck it up. I don't need you to start apologizing again." There was some rustling from James's cell as he shifted positions, simultaneously shifting mindsets as well. "I can tell you that you've been pacing for about an hour, considering the fact that it's hard to block out echoing footsteps and not be hyper aware of how long they're making noise. But other than that I lost track of time."

At the mention of her pacing, Rose stopped abruptly. Had it really been so long? And had she really been making that much of a clamor? Her feet had been moving on their own accord, really, so she'd given her actions no thought.

As soon as she halted, James let out a small sigh. "For an assassin you walk pretty loud," he informed. He didn't speak his mind in simple words, but it was clear that he thought very little of her abilities based upon her thoughtless walking.

"Yeah? Well, for a prince you're pretty weak," Rose shot back wryly.

They lapsed back into silence. Finding it weird to continue standing without a purpose, Rose sat with her legs crossed in the middle of her cell. James coughed, the proceeded to throw caution to the wind.

"I either walk out a prince or a dead man."

Not expecting their tense conversation to take such a sudden and dark turn, Rose blinked. "Don't be too melodramatic," she sighed. "I believe that they'll kill me, but I can't see them putting a blade to your neck as readily as my own. Whether or not your father leads you to think in these terms, you're the future of the kingdom. Even if it means tearing apart this dungeon, you're going to get out of here alive and unscathed."

James merely grumbled in response. He was really in a bad mood by this point; a mixture of his lack of sleep and precarious situation had plenty of time to mature and ripen in the undisturbed darkness of his cell. "You have clearly never seen my family history," he scoffed. "Maybe I'm overreacting. I always overreact. But I can't shake the feeling that something bad is going to happen." He let that foreboding statement hang in the air for a second before continuing. "And besides, if I manage to get out of here without the explicit consent of the king, I'll be on the run. And some might argue that being a treasonous fugitive is worse than dying to unfair charges."

"You really don't think that your father will let you out by the end of all this?"

James' silence constituted an answer, though a very enigmatic one at that. "None of this is exactly going to work out," he finally muttered. He didn't have much faith for the future, but who could blame him? Since King Vincent was in charge of his future, there wasn't exactly a precedent of family faith in which to rely on.

The end of that particular thread of topic was chopped off neatly by the sound of a door slamming, followed by slow, heavy footsteps. Like a jolt of electricity, the sound effectively silenced both prisoners completely. Neither of them knew what was coming, so they could only wait for either the best of news or the worst of possibilities.

Whoever was coming down to the dungeon took their sweet time doing so. Each step was a gap between separate eternities, pulling Rose deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of anxiety. When at last they reached the dungeon's floor they progressed a little quicker, speed no longer hindered by the treacherously steep staircase. As the footsteps got closer, her heart rate increased, a pounding sensation which resonated in her chest.