The Heir of Rinuvera

      “Please, don’t do it. Don’t take him!”

           The young woman’s desperate pleas were ignored as she struggled to fight back. She knew from the beginning that she was no match for them. They were bigger and stronger than she.

           She knew, without a doubt, they were going to take what mattered most to her.

           And the worst part was that she had no strength to fight back.

Eight years later…

           Run!

That’s the one word my mind clung to as I raced through the forest that lined the castle’s walls, trying to ignore the stings as the branches whacked me on my face. I could hear my heart thumping louder as I gained more momentum and felt the weight of my thread-bare cloak flapping behind me in the wind. I risked a quick look behind me. I saw him gaining on me. Closer.

Thud

           My pursuer pushed me to the ground, and I landed hard on my stomach as I got the wind knocked out of me. I turned over and sat up, my cough turning into a laugh when I saw the sticks and leaves clinging all over my friend’s messy brown hair.

           I’d been friends with Silas for almost half of my life. It helped that we were so close in age. I was only two days older, a fact I reminded him of constantly.

“Arya,” he said, breathing hard as he struggled to regain his breath. “You’re going to be in big trouble.”

           He said it with a huge grin across his face, but his words still sent a jolt through me. His father would kill me if he knew we still played together.

           Silas was the only son of King Anakin, which meant he would take the throne when his father died since the throne goes to the firstborn child. When the king discovered our friendship, saying he was a little mad would have been a major understatement. I was, after all, the daughter of a prisoner.

           When I was only 6 years old, my father was caught stealing from a shop near our home. A boy walking through the streets saw him and turned him in to the guards. My father was immediately thrown into jail the same night because our family did not have enough money to pay for a trial. That was the way the law worked in our country, Rinuvera. If you didn’t have money for a trial, you were automatically guilty.

I shook those memories away as I made my mind focus on the present. I realized I had been silent too long when I saw the worried frown on Silas’ face. He took my hand and gave it a little squeeze. He knew what today was, just like he knew how hard it was for me every year.

Each year on my birthday, I was allowed to go down into the dungeons below the castle and visit my father. That day was today.

“I should probably go.” I didn’t want to. Each year when I went to see my father I had to fight back tears of anger and hurt. Despite his pleas that he didn’t do it, I knew he did. Someone saw him do it. But even still, some little part of me wanted my father back home.

The walk back to the castle seemed to take no time at all, and yet it felt like forever since I had left Silas. Once I reached the dungeon, a guard walked the rest of the way with me.

As we walked down the long halls in the dungeon, I frowned. Usually, there were at least twenty guards down here. But today, there were none. That was when I saw them. Not the guards, the prisoners.

Over thirty men, women, and some children were running down the hallway towards us. It was a jailbreak. About halfway through the hallway, I sensed people behind me. When I turned around, I saw a hundred guards occupying every square inch of the stairway. I sighed with relief. At least the guards were here to stop them.

Then the sides merged. And I was in the middle.

Someone bumped my right shoulder, pushing me off balance. I would have been fine if another person hadn’t run straight into me, knocking me onto the floor. As I struggled to get back on my feet again because of the chaos, I felt strong arms wrap around my waist before I was thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

It was a guard. And he thought I was a prisoner.

I screamed and started kicking and punching him. “No! You’ve made a mistake. I’m just here to visit my father. I’m not a prisoner.”

The guard gave no response but instead continued to silently walk away from the chaos and down another hallway. Then, without saying anything, he took out a key, opened a cell door, and threw me inside.

When he slammed the door closed, I thought the cell might be pitch black. But slowly, my eyes started adjusting to the dim lighting the torches in the hallway gave off through the cracks around the door.

I looked around the small, quiet cell. A single chair and a tiny bed so thin I wasn’t sure anyone could actually lay down on it without falling off were the only pieces of furniture.

That’s when I saw her.

I squinted into the darkest corner, wondering if my eyes were playing tricks on me. But, no. There was a lady in the cell with me.

“Who are you?” I didn’t even realize I was going to say anything until the words flew out of my lips.

“My name is Bryna.” Her voice held almost a musical sound to it. She looked about my mother’s age. “How old are you, child?”

“I’m 15 today.”

“My son is around your age.”

After that, we both sat in silence, listening to the sound of water dripping from the roof of the cell. I let my thoughts drift back to Silas. I wondered if he knew I was down here in a cell and if he could help me get out. I could at least hope. I closed my eyes and laid my head against the wall.

The door banging open startled me awake. Two guards entered, put chains around my arms and legs, and led me out of the cell. They led me up the dungeon stairs and through many more hallways. But unlike the dungeon, these hallways were filled with bright, expensive-looking paintings. We walked so long that I began to wonder if they were actually taking me somewhere and not just walking me in a circle through the hallways.

My head was still reeling in my head when we came to a door and stopped. After one of the guards knocked, we waited in silence. I studied the door in front of me, but nothing seemed special about it. It was a brown, wooden door outlined in gold, but almost all the doors in the castle that we’d passed were like that.

The door opened.

The servant moved to the side of the doorway to let us pass. When we walked past him, that’s when I saw him, King Avalon. The blood in my veins seemed to freeze as I met his hard eyes. But then confusion set in as he waved everyone else in the room to leave.

I’d met him once before. I was ten years old when Silas and I were first caught playing together on the huge fields inside the castle walls. We were immediately brought before the king. I remember the conversation perfectly because, throughout the whole thing, I remember everything feeling odd. When King Avalon asked who my parents were, his eyes darted around the room and his face flushed red as I told him. He ordered Silas to be taken to his room for the rest of the night, and I was marched home with two guards who ordered my mother not to let me leave the house for the rest of the month. But that wasn’t the strangest part. Right before we left the room, I heard the king mutter “What have I done?”

As my mind jumped back to the present, I found King Avalon still staring at me. But every few minutes or so, he opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but then closed it.

“How old are you?”

The question surprised me. That’s definitely not what I thought he was going to ask.

“I’m 15 today, Your Majesty.” Or maybe it was yesterday. I had lost all sense of time in the dungeon.

The king nodded and rested his head on his hand.

“Do you know who Silas is?”

My brow creased in confusion. I wanted to say ‘Your son,’ but the way he asked the question was weird. Like he didn’t think I knew the answer but was also scared that I did.

I settled with “No, Sir.”

The King smirked.

“I’m going to tell you a story. Once upon a time, there lived a king and queen. They loved each other very much. But sadly, two years into their marriage, the queen died during childbirth, but the child, a baby girl, lived. The king, of course, was devastated about his wife. But he was also angry. He wanted to pass the throne to a son, but the only child he would ever have was the baby girl. But then, two nights later, the queen’s highest servant gave birth to a son. The king saw his chance to save the throne and claimed the baby boy as his own, and he threw the servant girl into the dungeon to protect the secret. The servant’s husband had died just a few months before, so the king thought the secret would be safe. Then, the king ordered one of his most trusted servants to throw the baby girl into the river. It was easy to say the queen had died in childbirth but the baby, their ‘son’ had lived.”

I gasped. The lady in the dungeon was the servant. And Silas was her son.

“Now you might be wondering why I’m telling you this story” the king continued. “I kept the secret safe, and I thought everything would be fine. Until I met you. You see, my servant didn’t throw the child into the river. Instead, he brought her home to his wife to raise themselves.”

The blood rushed from my face as I realized what he was saying. I was his daughter. I was the one that he wanted to kill all those years ago. Which meant he probably still wanted to do that today.

Just then, at the worst possible time, Silas rushed into the room. He stopped short when he saw me. He looked from his father to me, then back to his father.

“Does he know?” I asked.

The king turned to Silas with a grin. “Silas?”

From that answer, I knew he did.

“Silas has known since the day he was born as a reminder that he must work for the crown he was not born into.” A little part of me suddenly felt bad for Silas. It was clear that Silas had not been given very much love growing up. But then anger rose above the pity.

“How could you?” The words flew out of my mouth in anger with Silas. “How could you not tell me? I thought you were my friend.”

Silas’ head snapped up, his eyes pleading. “I’m sorry, Anya. You have to believe that I had no choice.”

“Be quiet Silas.” the king turned back to me and continued, “Now, I did have a reason for telling you this story. You see, yesterday, as you know, we had a jailbreak. All of the prisoners were caught and executed. You are the only one that is still alive.”

“But…I wasn’t one of the prisoners.”

“Yes, but if I try to tell the guards that you were there to visit your father, it will cause questions about who your father is. And then, at least one of the guards is bound to remember him as one of the servants that used to work here. He was fired the night I sent Silas to accuse him of stealing.”

Shame and regret clouded my mind. All that time, my father had begged me to believe that he didn’t do it. That shame was quickly replaced by anger towards Silas and the king.

“How could you?” I screamed.

“It was very easy actually.” The king said with a mocking grin. “When you were 6 years old, I saw you during a parade through the streets with the person you call ‘father.’ I immediately knew what he had done because you looked just like my wife. So, I sent Silas that same night to draw your father out of the house with a loud noise. When your father went looking around the town to make sure everything was okay, Silas told the guards he saw the man stealing. The disloyal man was thrown into the dungeon to pay for his disobedience to his king. What I didn’t know until a few years later was that Silas didn’t immediately return home. Instead, he took you home and then eventually became your friend. You can imagine my anger when you two were caught playing together.”

The king stood up and called for the guards.

“Take this girl to the dungeons where she will stay until she is hanged tomorrow. She is one of the prisoners who tried to escape yesterday.”

Just like when I was brought here, two guards grabbed an arm and led me away. This time, however, I was led away kicking and screaming.

When we reached the dungeon, I was thrown into the same cell as before. After they took the chains off my legs and arms, I turned to the woman.

“Do you know who your son is?”

The woman smiled sadly.

“Yes, I do. He comes to visit me sometimes.”

I was shocked.

“And you haven’t tried to escape?”

“I have nowhere to go.” Despite the matter-of-fact way she gave me the answer, I still heard the sadness in her voice. Her only child was taken from her unwillingly, and she was then thrown into the dungeon to die.

I lay down on the cold, stone floor of the cell and closed my eyes.

I didn’t know how much time had passed when I felt someone shaking me awake. I opened my eyes.

Silas.

“What are you doing here? Coming to watch my execution?” I asked the question in a mocking tone, but both of us could hear the fear in my voice.

He gave me a hard look but then sighed. “I guess I kinda deserve that, don’t I?”

We sat in silence for a few minutes, each wrapped in our own thoughts. I didn’t know why Silas was down here.  

“Come, I have to get you out of here,” Silas said urgently. “My dad is sending guards down to get you any second now.”

“Actually, they are here.”

Those words seemed to make my heart stop as I recognized the voice of King Avalon. Time stood still. Then it seemed like everything was happening at once.

Guards swarmed into the room to grab me, Bryna, and, to my surprise, Silas. It was complete chaos. Swords were drawn, and threats flew around the room. It all stopped when a scream echoed through the cell.

Everyone froze.

We all looked around to see who had been hurt. It was Bryna. She was hunched over, but it did not hide the knife in her stomach. Somehow, in all the confusion, a knife had found a target.

Then she collapsed.

That’s when the king strolled into the cell. His sharp gaze went from me to Silas, and finally to Bryna. He walked over to the corner where Bryna lay and turned around to face us. He ordered all the guards to leave, but to stand outside the cell in case someone tried to escape.

The king looked at Silas. “Why? I clothed you, I made you a prince. You were going to be king one day. She,” he looked at me, “is a threat to your throne as long as she is alive. Why are you giving up everything to try and help her?”

He was facing Silas and me, his back to Bryna. That was why he did not see when she slowly got up from the floor, limped silently over to him, and drove the knife that used to be in her stomach into his back.

The king’s eyes grew wide, and then he collapsed on the floor, dead.

The three of us looked at each other in shock.

“What did you do?” Silas whispered to Bryna. “The guards will kill you when they find out what you did.”

Bryna looked at her son, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I knew I was going to die anyway. I wanted revenge for taking you away from me. Use my sacrifice to free yourselves. Tell the guards that I killed him. That will make the crown pass to you, and you will be the king.” Bryna paused, drawing in a shaky breath. “I am so proud of you.”

Tears spilled down Silas’ cheeks as he knelt next to his mother, who was crumpled on the cold floor.

Just then, guards ran into the room. They stopped short when they saw the dead body of their king.

“What is going on in here?” They yelled.

I stood up. “King Avalon is dead. Bow to Silas. He is your new king.”

Silas looked at me in surprise. Then he walked over and took my hand.

“No,” he said. “This is your new Queen.”