Chapter Text
Someone in the palace was screaming. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was a serving girl, whose visiting lord-master had had a bit too much sunflower wine. Maybe it was a delighted young lady who'd been spun around a bit too fast on the dance floor in the ballroom and was about to dissolve into giggles, only on the other side of a thin frosted glass wall. Who could tell the difference?
Except for me. I could tell the difference because I was the one screaming, and maybe if I had said something like "Help!" or "I'm being kidnapped!" someone inside the palace would have set off the alarms, maybe sent out a fleet of guards, maybe saved us. Instead the only people who heard me were my brother, my sister, her fiance, and the black-clad figure who had me draped over his shoulder unceremoniously. My gown, a beautiful pale green thing with pure gold lace strung across it, was greatly hindering my attempts to kick my assailant where it hurt; five damned layers of silk and gauze and crinoline stood between my feet and his body. It was dark outside, and we were outside now, racing through the gardens. I tried to snatch at every tree and topiary that we passed. They only tore my gloves off and scratched up my hands. Furious and desperate, I squeezed my hands into fists and let blood drip everywhere, decorating a carved bench and blooming out into a small pond, the few drops that touched the water infecting the rest of it with red. I had to leave a trail. They would find me then. I used this logic to tell myself that everything would be okay, even as I tore at my throat with screams.
Of course this would happen tonight. We were separated perfectly. Nadia and Charles had retired early from the party. Jude and I were pacing the palace's corridors playing hide and seek with the handmaidens, which perhaps was a little immature for eighteen and sixteen, but we had had quite enough of dancing. Anyway, we wanted to humor some of the younger girls, who took the job out of necessity to support their families. I lamented the fact that we hadn't found one of them before this stealthy group of shadows stole in and snatched us. They were brought up working in fields and running outside, and they had the strength in them, perhaps, to fight off the strong arms and whispered threats. But no use dwelling on the past. Instead, I used what little strength I had to wriggle against my attacker's grasp.
It wasn't long before I gave up the screaming- by then, the palace was a glittering star in the distance, pulsing with faraway music and laughter. Instead I devoted myself to staying strong. You're a princess, Ruby, I told myself. Princesses get kidnapped, and they survive it. Nadia had been kidnapped when she was seven by a cult who thought her father, a man I never knew, was a sorcerer and her blood would grant them magical powers. She came back with a smile on her face. I always thought my sister survived it through silence, doing what they wanted and showing her spite through her burnt-brown eyes. Now, though, she was kicking and screaming, and I wondered if her resolve has softened now that she'd been safe for so long. I couldn't see what she was hitting with and who she was hitting, but I could hear two sets of quiet "ow"s and a string of curses in our kingdom's oldest language, the one only the best-educated knew. I found it slightly odd that she never shut up, but at the same time comforting, because that meant she was okay, that our attackers wouldn't punish us for futilely fighting.
But there was silence from my brother, which dropped a pit in my stomach. "Jude?" I called out into the night, hearing the echo off the wide cobbled bridge we were now crossing. The gates to the palace had been torn off their hinges and dumped in the river, left to rust. "Jude! It's me, are you okay?" My voice was slipping into a panic, and I forced myself to stay calm. The kidnapper's arms were tight around my legs and shoulders, and I was rendered completely unable to escape, so I was left to just make sure my siblings hadn't been hurt, or worse. "Jude!"
"Answer her, for fuck's sake!" Nadia snapped. Her voice was frantic too, though she maintained her regal tone in an attempt to intimidate the attackers. To her credit, they all tensed, but I could see her silhouette against the tightly clustered stars in the sky; she wasn't going anywhere.
"Ruby? Nadia?" Jude's voice was timid and barely audible as we flew threw the forest, branches crunching under the kidnappers' feet. It sounded hoarse and unsteady, and my heart leapt into my throat. Scared. He sounded scared. "I'm okay, I'm...I think I'm okay? Are you okay?"
"We're okay, we're all going to be okay," Nadia shot back fiercely. Our kidnappers just kept on running, ignoring us, feet pounding on the ground in a sickening rhythm. "Hey, don't you dare cry! We're okay!" I couldn't see him, but apparently she could. "What about Charles? Charles?"
Ah, yes. Charles. Nadia's fiance, a lord from a distant kingdom who had attended Jude's Sixteenth Ball and somehow managed to sweep her off her feet. Graceless, he was, but I liked him well enough. Jude and I were both ready to accept him as our older brother even before a week ago, when he had proposed to our sister and she had accepted graciously. And she seemed to like him well enough. But at this moment, as we were hauled up onto a fleet of mud-flecked horses who began to thunder off down the dirt road, I was a bit displeased with him. After all, as petty as it was, I could reason that this kidnapping had been the fault of the engagement party, and the engagement party had been the fault of himself.
"Fine!" he replied, his voice cracking. "I'm completely fine." I let out a breath I'd been holding. At least we were all together.
That's when the shouting came, and I heard the first of the kidnappers' voices other than my own. First a shriek in a high-pitched voice, paired with the whinnying of a horse. Ours had just lifted its hooves to take off, but it stomped them back down with a huff. Then more of the same voice, and another: "Someone grab her! We can't hold her, she's getting away!" "Bring the kid over here and help us!" Nadia. Pride swelled in my chest, and hope as she called my name, lunging towards Jude, who was sure enough being dragged over to where she was. But the man restraining him was the biggest of all of them, and with his assistance the two women looped a rope around Nadia's ankles, running it under the horse's belly so she couldn't escape. She yelled in frustration, and I choked back a sob. We were never getting free. Stupid, weak, untrained royals we were.
Some long minutes of silent struggling and wearying muscles after that, the horse I was pinned onto pushed forward into a close parallel with Nadia's, and in a moment of impulsiveness, I stretched out my battered fingers to take hold of hers. Her hand felt smaller, but warm.
Then a rough voice came from behind me; I could feel it rumbling in the my first attacker's chest, since he was busy restraining me as another man steered our horse. "How far to the port from here, Miss Expert Navigator?" he shouted indignantly at one of the women next to us, holding Nadia fast whilst the other spurred the beast ahead. "You said it was only twenty minutes from the palace. It ought to be here now, shouldn't it?"
"Would that I knew!" snipped the woman, in a youthful voice. "You're the ones who're riding like nobility out on an evening joyride. Maybe pick it up if you don't want to go to the guillotine!"
The man in control of our horse seemed to take that as a challenge, and pushed harder, until we were going so fast my wavy brown locks were flying back into the face of the man behind me- from what I could tell, the elder of the two, though not much older than Nadia if I had to guess. Tightening one arm around my waist until my breaths were shallow, he used the other hand to tie it up into a poor excuse for a messy bun. Still the horses' noses kept prodding past each other. A sound drifted over the intense hoofbeats from Nadia's horse: was that a giggle? The women were giggling, and it was haunting to hear something so human from someone so cruel. The men on my horse responded with a chuckle. Jude and Charles were becoming lost in the dust, but it hardly mattered, because soon enough the road widened and emptied into one of our kingdom's harbors: Calthys Port Tangerine, named for one of our chief exports from the smaller villages on the outskirts. The sprawling web of docks was mostly empty, as trading between kingdoms had all but paused as the noble heads of companies flocked to our palace for the celebration. But one ship, a dark-hulled mass against a bright black sky, loomed over the deck. True fear rose in my throat. Calthys was an isolated island. If we left these shores, who knew where we'd go, or if we'd ever see them again. So I made a rash decision as I was lifted off the horse.
"No! NO!" I screamed, beating with the last of my energy against my attacker's back. "You can't do this! I'm a princess, goddamn it! You can't take me, don't take me!" This seemed to arouse the same feelings in my family, because Nadia shouted, "You'll pay, you fuckers!" and Charles added, "The king and queen will have your head for this! Three high profile kidnappings warrants the entire kingdom searching and a death penalty! Are you hearing me??" and Jude pleaded, heartbreakingly, "I want to go home!"
Two of them exchanged looks, the two who'd been with Charles and Jude respectively, almost rueful glances despite the fact I couldn't see their faces clearly. Then they both dipped a hand inside their cloaks, bringing it back dripping. One, who had a dark coil of hair spilling out of her hood, approached me and waved her hand delicately under my nose. Then the world faded to black.