Snow White Queen [NaNoWriMo 2018]

Chapter Thrity-Four

"They went through there."

Neva froze. No no no no no. Her mind was racing, trying to think of something, anything, that she could do to get them out of this situation.

"Go. I'll buy you time."

"Neva-"

"I'm not leaving you behind."

"Go. I'll catch up with you later."

Amity opened her mouth to argue again.

"It's either me or all of us. This way, at least some of us can survive. You already know what we found, so use it."

Amity was still for a moment longer. "Make it out, Neva. We need our leader." She turned and led the rest out of the tunnel.

Neva watched them retreat, sending a brief prayer to whatever god would listen that they would make it out alive.

"You there!"

Neva turned to face the guards.

"What are you doing here?"

They must be new, if they didn't recognize their princess on sight.

"Name and business, ma'am."

"I'm the maidservant. I'm just making my rounds."

"No you're not, I just saw Marian upstairs."

It was a good thing her heart didn't beat. If it did, it'd likely be beating loud enough to wake the dead.

"I- I'm new. Hired just this morning." Neva imbued her words with a subtle hint of magic, with the hope that it would make them more likely to believe her.

The two guards shared a look. They still looked a little skeptical, but they were leaning towards acceptance.

"I'll just be on my way, if you don't need anything else." Neva started walking down the hallway, hoping they would just move on.

They gave her one more look. "Get out in the sun more. You look pale."

Neva acted affronted that he would even dare comment on something like that.

"Fine. Go on." They continued on their route.

Neva breathed a sigh of relief as all the tension in her body suddenly melted away. She jumped into the tunnel to make her escape.

~~~

"Okay, we have information. Now what?"

Once they had returned, they had written down everything they remembered, then decided to take some time to recover from their harrowing escape. Whether or not they had been successful was secondary; for now, they just wanted to be grateful that they had escaped in one piece. So, they rested, with no mention of what had transpired and whether or not they learned anything useful.

It had been two days. Finally, the majority of them felt ready to return to the task at hand.

Neva was busy analyzing what they had discovered. She really hoped that their writings were accurate As she read, her mind kept wandering back to her mother's journal. It took a great amount of effort to bring her mind back to where it needed to be.

"We use what we have to create a plan."

"Yeah, I figured. What kind of plan?"

Neva just kept reading. They had no real information on where she was, who she was with, or what she was planning. Made sense. They hadn't really stayed in one place for long and didn't really have a plan, so even if they did have that information, none of it would have been accurate.