Defy (19 page)

order, and we recognized it.

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“Of course, Your Highness,” I said. “We will do as you wish.”

He lifted an eyebrow at the use of his title again but didn’t tell

me to call him Damian this time. Instead, he stood up and strode

out of the tent without another word.

“Didn’t that woman tell us to all stay here if we didn’t want to

be knocked out again?” Rylan asked.

“Apparently, he didn’t think that threat applied to him.”

There was no sound of fighting, no impact from his body hit-

ting the ground unconscious, so he’d obviously assumed correctly.

“Do you get the feeling that something strange is going on

here?” I asked Rylan.

“Yes. I just have no clue what it could be.”

I sighed. “Neither do I.”

147

 twenty-one 

T
hat night, I lay on my back, staring up at the canvas

above me, willing myself to fall asleep in the muggy humid-

ity, which lingered even though the sun had gone down hours ago,

when the entrance to our tent rustled. Alarmed and instantly alert,

I sat straight up on the hard ground, straining to see in the dark.

Beside me, Rylan’s breathing was steady and deep.

It wasn’t Eljin, or even Lisbet. Instead, I stared up at the tall,

shadowed form of Prince Damian in the darkness. A wave of heat

cascaded over my body when he met my startled gaze and silently

motioned for me to follow him out of the tent. Before, when he’d

come to speak to me at night, I’d believed that he thought I was a

boy. He was right — having the truth out in the open changed

everything. My blood pulsed through my body as I rose and crept

out after him.

The camp appeared to be asleep, except for two men who

stood watch by a campfire across from us. The f lames undulating

in the black shadows of the jungle reminded me of the jaguar

attack and I shuddered. Damian passed one finger across his lips

and silently walked between a few tents and then out toward the

line of trees beyond the small clearing in which our captors had

made camp.

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Had he changed his mind? We couldn’t leave Rylan. I refused

to. And there was no way I was heading into the dark jungle com-

pletely unarmed.

Finally, Damian stopped and glanced back at the camp. No

one was coming after us; we’d managed to slip away unnoticed.

Above us in the trees, a bird screeched, making me jump.

The scent of plants and earth and even a hint of something

f loral surrounded us. My skin was sticky from the humidity and I

reached up to push my damp hair off my forehead.

“What is it — what do you want?” I asked, at last, when

Damian didn’t speak. I never would have dared be so bold before,

but I was exhausted, embarrassed, and frustrated. With him in

particular. He hadn’t returned the rest of the night, leaving me to

vacillate between being worried about him and angry with him for

not getting sent back to our tent with his tail between his legs. So

much for Lisbet’s threat.

“I needed to talk to you,” he said, his voice low. “To apolo-

gize, first of all. I
am
sorry if I made you upset. But how was I supposed to tell you that I knew my best guard — the undefeated

Alex — was a
girl
?” He looked down at me with those piercing eyes of his, and an unfamiliar heat blossomed deep in my belly.

“How long have you known?” My body thrummed with

tension.

He lifted one hand slowly and I froze. He took a lock of my short

hair and rubbed it gently between his fingers. “I’ve always known.”

“Always?” I repeated dumbly. His gaze was so intense, I was

having a hard time concentrating.

“I know you believed me to be spoiled. Arrogant. But that

didn’t mean I wasn’t observant — more so than most. I watched

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all of you. I had to. As I told you before, I’ve been trained not to

trust anyone.” He paused, searching my face. My mind f lew back

to the night when he told me how he’d been raised, when he said he

wanted to trust me. When he asked me if I had any friends to con-

fide in. “From the moment you joined my guard, I knew something

was different about you. Just because I seemed oblivious didn’t mean

that I actually was that callous and uncaring. That I didn’t see
you
.”

I stared at Damian, my mouth suddenly dry. “I . . . I don’t . . .”

“Tell me about the jaguar attack,” he said abruptly, dropping

his hand and taking a step back. “What happened — why were you

gone for almost two days?”

Relieved to be on safer footing, I quickly told him everything

that had happened, including Borracio’s cryptic message for him.

He listened intently, his expression pensive. When I was done, he

sighed.

“If they hadn’t found you in time . . .” A shadow crossed his

face, and he continued, his voice lower, “I’m so relieved they were

able to heal you. I . . . I need you, Alex —
Alexa
.”

Hearing him speak my true name sent another jolt through

me. My heart thudded in my chest at his words. The prince —

Damian
— needed me? I felt my mouth part, but no words would come. Finally, I managed to force out just one. “Why?”

He hesitantly stepped closer to me. His fingers brushed mine

in the darkness, sending a bolt of heat up my arm. I couldn’t have

moved if I wanted to. “Because you understand. More than any-

one. Because you know what it’s like never to trust anyone — to be

completely alone, lost in a disguise of your own making. Because . . .

because for quite some time I’ve —”

“Don’t move!” a woman shouted suddenly.

150

We jumped apart and I spun around to see someone aiming an

arrow directly at my chest. At first, I couldn’t quite believe it, but as the figure walked closer, there was no denying who it was. What

was she doing? My heart raced, and I wished there were some way

to go back in time, to stop her from interrupting us. Damian had

been so close to admitting something —

“I found them,” Tanoori shouted over her shoulder, then she

met my disbelieving gaze directly. “Hello again,
Alex
.”

“Tanoori?”

“You know her?” Damian looked at me in shock.

“We grew up in the same village,” I admitted.

“Funny how quickly the tables can turn, isn’t it? One minute,

you’re threatening me and waiting for me to hang. The next, I’m

the one who might shoot you.” Tanoori glared at me in the dark-

ness. Gone was the trembling girl tied to a chair.
This
Tanoori seemed very capable of murder.

“I never wanted you to die,” I said softly.

Tanoori pulled her bowstring back even farther and I tensed,

waiting for the hit.

“You will not shoot her,” Damian commanded.

Tanoori lifted an eyebrow at him. “Should I finish the job I

started last week instead?” She turned her aim on him, making my

heart leap into my throat. “I’m still not convinced that keeping

you alive is the right thing to do.”

“You won’t be shooting anyone tonight.” Another voice came

from behind me, and for the first time since I’d met him, hearing

Eljin was actually a relief. “You may go.”

Tanoori stared at us for a moment longer, hatred clearly visible

on her face.

151

“Now,” Eljin said.

With a sneer, she lowered the bow and walked away.

It seemed that now I had to watch my back to make sure

Tanoori didn’t put an arrow through my heart when I wasn’t

looking.

“I suggest you return to your tents,” Eljin said. “I’d hate to

regret my decision not to keep you tied up at all times.”

“I
am
rather tired,” Prince Damian said. “By the by, Eljin, you may want to keep better control of your little band of rebels

here.” And with that, he sauntered away, without looking back at

Eljin. Or me.

I gaped at Damian for a moment, then snapped my mouth

shut. Eljin stood stiff ly next to me, and rather than waiting for him to remember I was there and decide to punish me, I hurried

back to my own tent. The arrogant, insufferable, maddening . . .

I didn’t care how handsome he was or how he made my heart

race, the next time he came to drag me out of my tent in the

middle of the night, I was rolling over and ignoring him.

Though I was exhausted, it was a long, sleepless night. When I

finally did manage to doze off, I had horrible nightmares. A jaguar

lashed out at me, its eyes glowing in the dark as it swiped at my

head, my throat, my heart, tearing through my f lesh and bones.

And then it wasn’t a jaguar anymore. It was Eljin driving a sword

through my gut, but he had Damian’s crystal clear blue eyes as he

stood over me in triumph. Clutching my belly, I turned and saw

Marcel lying next to me, staring unseeingly. Past him lay Rylan

and Jude, also dead. I tried to scream but the blood filled my

throat, my mouth, my nose —

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I sat up straight on my bedroll in the gray light of dawn, gasp-

ing for air. I couldn’t remember where I was or why. I twisted

around, expecting to see my brother sleeping across from me, but

when I saw Rylan instead, reality came crashing down on me.

Rather than trying to go back to sleep, I stood up and crept

toward the opening to our tent, willing my heart to calm down,

for the vestiges of the nightmare to go away. When I parted the

f laps, I was surprised to see Damian standing by the long since

dead fire. His arms were folded across his chest and he stared out

at the jungle. Mist wound through the camp, silent and eerie,

shrouding the ground. It wrapped around his boots, making him

look almost like a specter. Without his usual pomade, his hair was

thick and wavy in the humidity. Despite myself, my heart picked

up speed again.

I thought about how he’d left me the night before at the mercy

of Eljin and nearly let the f lap fall shut. But the last few years of training were too well ingrained. That’s all that drove me to leave

my tent and wind my way silently across the camp toward him. Or

at least, that’s what I tried to convince myself to believe.

I stopped a few feet away.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he spoke softly, without turning to

face me.

“The jungle?”

“My country —

this nation of Antion. It’s beautiful and

deadly. But the people here are strong.
My
people are strong. They survive — you could even say many of them
thrive
, despite the dangers.”

I studied his profile as he spoke, the strong outline of his jaw

and the curve of his lips. “Yes, the people of Antion are strong. We

153

refuse to give up — even when our own king is causing us as much

suffering as our enemy.” I snapped my mouth shut, horrified I’d

spoken treason to the king’s son.

But rather than reprimanding me, he nodded slightly. “How

long can it last, though? As you say, the king is driving my people

to their deaths with this never-ending war.” He finally looked at

me, and with the gentle light of dawn caressing his face, I couldn’t

help thinking that the most beautiful thing in Antion right now

was him. “If there was a way for me to stop the war, to put an end

to the suffering, would you condone me doing it?”

“Of course,” I replied without hesitation. I’d never heard him

speak like this before; it was thrilling and a bit unnerving to real-

ize how much he really did love his kingdom.

“No matter what it was?”

His eyes searched mine, making me acutely conscious of the

fact that he knew I was a girl, and that only a couple of feet sepa-

rated us.

“Without knowing what the cost was, I couldn’t say,” I finally

replied, falling back into my habit of making my voice gruff to

cover how f lustered I was. My heart beat fast and unsteadily. Why

did he make me feel this way? This was the
prince
.

“Have you ever heard the theory that it is better for one man

to die than an entire nation to suffer? Do you believe that to be

true? Is it ever okay to take a life in hopes of saving others?” He

took a step closer to me, so that I had to tip my head back farther

to keep looking up into his eyes. I’d never felt so aware of just how tall he was before.

“I think so.” I didn’t know what to do with him standing so

close — close enough that I could feel the heat from his body. My

154

heart beat erratically and my fingers tingled for some reason. I

forced my face to remain impassive. I drew on all of my training,

all of the practice I’d had over the years pretending to be a boy to

maintain my composure. With a much steadier, lower voice, I said,

“Whose life are you thinking of taking?”

“Don’t do that with me,” he replied, staring down at me with

a look of almost hunger on his face. “We’re too much alike to pre-

tend with each other. At least when we’re alone, let’s be who we

truly are.” The intensity of his gaze nearly made me tremble.

No one knew me as I truly was, except for Marcel, and he

was gone.

But here was Damian, the strikingly handsome, sometimes

capricious, sometimes gentle prince of Antion, asking me to allow