The Princess's Servant

111. The Bound Princess

Morrigan faced the shut wooden door. She could hear the footsteps of Holden and Sebs as they raced down the stairwell for the Maddening room. Morrigan smiled.

"That should buy us some time," she said, and pushed on a section of the wall paneling to reveal another exit.

Slipping through that, she took a ladder down, down the length of the tower and past the surface of the earth. Two or three stories deeper than that was the bottom of the ladder and a grate. She moved that aside and entered into a wide tunnel.

She did not need to light a lamp here. She did not need to see. This is where she had lived most of her life and Morrigan knew these pathways better than she knew Holden's eating patterns, which at this point she knew quite well. She ran along the tunnels for what felt like a few minutes, but was really half an hour. Eventually, she hit the rope she'd been navigating towards and shimmied up it.

Morrigan emerged in a mid-sized guesthouse just outside the walls of Ward. She'd been here a few times to watch its occupant sleep, or to steal her personal items, but she'd only ever been sneaking around then. Now, the place was hers, since its previous owner was presently bound to a chair.

Sybil was roped at her ankles, wrists and waist to her own wooden dining chair. Having been stripped of her gown for Morrigan's little prank, she wore only her cotton slip and her binds.

Behind her stood Warrick, though Sybil shouted down Morrigan before she could get a word in with him.

"You monster! Why'd you have to kill Beryl!" Behind the three of them, the servant's body was lumped in the corner like a sack of flour, her starch white apron soaked with blood. "What the hell did she ever do to deserve that?!"

Morrigan cocked an eyebrow at the princess. "It was nothing personal. I just couldn't have her telling Thomas where you were."

"You should have bound her! Or— Or at least knocked her out! He's going to figure out where I went anyways when she doesn't make it home tonight. Servants talk."

Morrigan let out a huff of air at that. "Not that one."

Sybil lit up with fury at that. "You mother—"

A cloth gag came over her mouth and wrapped around her head before she could finish that thought.

"That's enough of that." Warrick stepped out from behind her to meet his daughter. "I take it our suspicions were correct. That Sebastian has betrayed us in favor of my son?"

Morrigan nodded. "They came to the tower. I threw them off the trail, but it won't hold them long. We need to come up with a plan."

"The plan is to wait," he replied. "Holden won't be able to find her and eventually, he'll give up. Once he does, he will marry his new bride and I will show him how to run an empire."

Morrigan stared at the king with dead eyes.

His enthusiasm waned someone as she did. "Something the matter?"

"Your plan is to wait until Holden gives up?"

"That's correct."

"When has anyone in our family ever 'given up?'"

He took in breath to answer her, dropped it, and then thought. He spared a glance at Sybil, who, fair-haired and dressed in white did not look unlike his children's mother.

"Right..." Morrigan said after a minute. "Well, our plan could be to just kill her. That would force him to move on. I could even make it quick, since I know he's sensitive about that kind of thing. Or... I could do it my way and say I did it quick..."