4 Princes

XXXIII

Elaina
Days. A week almost, that's how long I had been here, laying on a hot bed. I missed Rook's silk sheets, they were cooler than these fluffy blankets and overbearing bearskins. The Worthwell tent was smaller than the other tents in the camp, surprisingly. Apparently, it said something about how much Hans was willing to sacrifice for his people. Sacrifice. Hans wouldn't know sacrifice if it knocked on his front door. Their camp was smaller, only half the size of Fairisles, but more people were in a condensed area.

I could smell and hear the other men, both senses I almost wish could be taken from me. They smelled like the stables at the castle and sounded like the horses and pigs inside them. The pigs at this point probably had better manners.

I didn't look like a prisoner, nor did I even have the right to feel like one according to Hans. I knew I was. If I was found trying to leave the tent, especially the camp, he'd chain me up and throw me to the starving Danes. The disgusting pigs, who would throw slurs and try touching parts of my body no man should ever touch before marriage.

I moved around the tent. It was black, with a white insignia on the side, supporting the side of the war my fiancé tried so hard to keep me out of.

Rook.

My mind went to him far too often.

Every night he didn't show up at the campsite to meet Hans, was a night I went tortured and screamed at by Hans.

The tent flap was left open just a tad, open enough for me to see charred debris left around newly built tents. Enough for me to see the red sky melting to a dark blue.

And the nights only got colder, only hot darker, only got... more lonely.

The tent flap swished and Hans walked in, his white armor so stark against the black tent surrounding me like an endless pool of nothingness and torment.

He looked at me and then stormed to me. His hand pulled back and then shot forward as he backhanded me.

I dropped to the floor, grabbing my cheek. I had tried to fight back, but it only made everything worse. Everything without Rook was so hard and despairingly unworth it.

"He's probably dead. This is the fourth night in a row he has failed to come to your aid. You should be disappointed, and worried," Hans seethed.

He was going crazy. Rook was driving him mad, without even being here. I guess he just had that effect on some people.

I didn't say anything, I never did. Rook would come. He was planning, he was collecting, he was doing something, but he was coming. He was coming for me, I knew he was.

Nobody could convince me otherwise. He wouldn't let himself die while I was here, with Hans.

When I didn't respond like he wanted me to, Hans began yelling as he got closer to my face. He grabbed my chin and then forced me to look at him. "Say something you bitch!"

I just stared at him.

"I should have you killed for being a lame, a dumb!" He shouted. He pushed my face to the side and still, I did not respond. I was better than him. My silence bought me his anger and resentment more than any words could. That was his power, words. "But Rook would never marry a lame, he's too superficial for that. Have you thought about that? What if you hadn't of been his mystery royal? Had it of been someone more beautiful?"

He'd still have chosen me. For any of his questions to affect me, I'd have to be pretty insecure of my own relationship, and in the name of God himself, I had never been so safe.

Hans stared at me with his awful green eyes, the color of dying snakes and already poisoned apples. "But you were. And he loves you. Loves you so much, he hasn't bothered to come and save you. Seems as though, you need him but he does not need you. What are you really doing for him?"