Daughters of the King |✓|

Chapter Seventeen

We made it back to town the following morning without incident. The place was full of rubble and ghosts. If there was anyone left alive, we never saw them. We waited at the station until a train came, which only took two days, and rode for another night.

We arrived at a station appropriately called The King's Station. The whole place was enormous and lavish. It felt like I'd stepped off the platform into an entirely new world.

From there, Gunnar got us a car to drive the remaining distance to the city. City of Roses, they called it. Our capitol and home of the king.

I'd been in a car before, even though they were rare, but this was the longest drive I'd ever been on. Six hours of fields. I wished I could have slept through it, but I was too nervous to be reunited with my mother and to find answers for all the questions I was dreading having to ask.

Despite my worries, I couldn't help feeling a small thrill when I saw the city rising on the horizon.

The City of Roses was a jungle of concrete and glass. Cubes and spheres, all piled high like in a game of Jenga, ready to topple over at any moment. Roses seemed to be growing from everywhere. In the spaces between concrete slabs, through the roof shingles, in the cracks in the walls.

The city looked nothing like all the rest of the country. It was almost like a country of its own. An island surrounded by a sea of harsh living conditions and violations of basic human rights.

Some say freedom has been stolen from us, but others say freedom always came at too high of a price. That freedom was never free. We paid, and we paid, and we paid. And the most that humans have ever accomplished is the illusion of freedom. A hazy mirage on a horizon that doesn't exist. A destination never reached.

And now, that time has passed, and all the evidence we have left are in story books and old movies, giving off an echo of a civilization long forgotten.

Gunnar sighed, and when I looked over at him, I could see that he was deep in thoughts of his own, eyes focused on the road ahead, hands tight on the steering wheel.

"What's the matter?" I asked, disrupting the silence that had filled the car since two hours ago. It seemed we were growing quieter as the journey drew close to its end.

"We have to be careful from here on out," he said, reminding me that we were no longer on my territory, but on his. "We have to act like servants of the law."

"Of course," I said, because we had already been doing that.

Once we'd left the wilderness and stepped foot on that first train, we'd felt the shift. The caution had settled in, warning us to be aware of our new surroundings and of our own undeniable vulnerability

But I understood what he was saying. That it was going to be even worse now. We had to be more than just careful. We had to play a part and always, always be on our guard.

It wasn't going to be easy after spending so much time in nowhere land, but I was well accustomed to running a good con. The only thing I was truly afraid of was this growing reliance I had in Gunnar. It felt risky, trusting another person so much, most of all an enemy soldier. But we'd endured together, and because of it, I'd done what I swore I would never do.

I'd started to trust.

The truth of this disturbed me deeply, and the only thing that consoled me was the fact that I was aware of my defenselessness. That had to be helpful in some way.

"When we arrive at the king's house, you can't look at any soldiers," he instructed, and I nodded along to everything he said. "You can't speak to them. If you're asked, you'll say what happened on the night I found you. You can tell them about the bomb in Market Town, and what happened with the savages. If necessary, you can tell them everything, except the part where we pretended to be married."