“You bitch,” I said as I dunked her. “How dare you?” I watched her face turn red, then blue as I let her back up for air before submerging her again.
The guards continued to egg me on, catcalling and whistling. But Maria knew me well enough to know that I didn’t pick fights for fun. I was mad as hell and angry enough to be dangerous.
“Stop it!” She seized me from behind and tried to drag me away. “Anika! Stop it!”
I spun around to face her with a splash, seething with anger at her for stopping me.
“It doesn’t matter what I do now!” I screamed. “It’s all over for me anyway isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
Tears sprang into Maria’s eyes, and it stopped me cold. She was looking at me like she didn’t know me at all. And I couldn’t bear it.
“Please,” she said, through a sob, taking me by the hand. “Enough, Anika. Enough. Let her get some air.”
Later that night, I was still hot with anger as I lay alone in my bed. My blood was up and my fury was high and there was no way in the world I’d be able to sleep. I flung the covers back and went to stand before the fire, fuming as I watched the flames dance and sputter.
Though that horrible Vanya had no right to speak out of turn as she did, it was becoming clearer and clearer to me that every horrible thing anyone had ever said about Maksim was more than likely true. He had abandoned me when I needed him most. He had taken advantage of me and humiliated me—his own sister. And so why was it such a stretch that he was involved in any manner of other loathsome things?
I hated myself for even allowing him to touch me. I wanted to claw myself to pieces knowing that he had come inside me. From the hook above the mantel, I took the crossbow that he had left me. I hadn’t touched it, hadn’t even looked at it, since this nightmare began. I turned it over in my hands, considered its weight and beauty. Its perfection and balance.
When I threw it into the fire, the flames turned blue as they ate through the linseed varnish, bright orange as they consumed the catgut string. For so long, it had seemed to me the most perfect thing in the world. But now I knew it wasn’t. It was nothing more than blood money, paid in advance.
And oh, how I loved watching it burn.
Chapter 14
Anika
The next morning, I woke up scheming.
Drizzle pattered on my window and I lay in bed for a long time, thinking things through. I had new clarity on everything that had happened. I had to get away from the castle, from everyone. I could not, would not, would never marry Prince Galen.
That life, being a wife to him, would be a fate worse than death for me. It was not just that I found him repellent and rude. He was violent and unkind even to women—girls—he barely knew. Poor Nicolette was living proof of that. Maria had been able to confirm all the gossip through her firsthand. He was brutal, ruthless and dangerous.
And I would not spend my life by his side.
My only option was to make a break for it and to take my chances on making a life for myself. What that would look like, I had no idea. But I was more capable than many court women. I could hunt, I could ride, I could even disappear in a crowd. Perhaps I could make a living as a thief? There was a world out there and it was wide open. I just had to find my way out of this one and into that.
But this time, I would be strategic. I would be careful. I would not go in haste, like I did when Maksim found me in the cave. I would not bolt for safety like a scared rabbit, like I did two days before.
If I couldn’t lose my guards, which I suspected I absolutely could not, then I had to find a different way to freedom. Sweet talking them wouldn’t work; I had no gift for it, and besides Maksim had obviously made it quite clear to them that I wasn’t to be allowed to leave. Kind words would get me nowhere.
But I had to find a way. Now.
Slipping my legs out from under the covers, I grabbed my robe from the hook on the wall and padded to the door. I peeked through the peep hole and saw the back of one of Maksim’s guards. His armored helmet almost completely obstructed my view.
Pacing a small circle around my room, I considered my best course of action. I knew the guards on my door changed three times each day, at the same time which I knew by the position of the sun, moon and stars. That last shift, I guessed, was the most vulnerable. It was the longest and most inconvenient. Both things that I could use to my advantage.