The Runaway King (The Ascendance Series, Book 2)

As soon as the pirates left, Fink started toward me but Erick grabbed his shoulder and held him back.

“He’s not a friend,” Erick said coldly. “Not mine or yours.”

Fink looked at me, and I very slightly shook my head. I’d told him that he had to convince Roden of his dislike for me. His eyes darkened as he realized he had to convince everyone else of that too.

“I just wanted to hurt him myself,” Fink said. It wouldn’t have mattered if he did, because I doubted Fink could hit hard enough to compare with anything else I’d faced today, but I was glad to see him back off anyway.

“For what it’s worth, Erick, I’m sorry.” I said the words slowly, because my stomach still ached.

“It’s worth nothing!” Erick shouted. “You lied about who you are and lied about the treasure! Anything that happens now is better than you deserve. I put my own life on the line to bring you here. When they’re done with you they’ll kill me, probably Fink too.”

“Things didn’t go the way I’d planned.” Not that it would make any difference to him, or to me, but it needed to be said.

Erick stepped forward. I hoped he didn’t intend to hit me too. Or that if he did, he would choose one of the few spots on my body not already bruised. “There’s one thing that’s been bothering me,” he said. “When we went to that noble’s house in Libeth and you chased after that man, did you really kill him?”

“I never claimed to have,” I said. “That was your assumption. And no, I never touched him. He was my friend.”

“You say that as if he no longer is.”

“He’ll serve me for as long as I’m king.” I paused, thinking of how much frustration I must have caused Mott over the past several days. “But I doubt that I have any friends left.”

“Not here you don’t.” With that, Erick sat heavily on the chair in the room and folded his arms.

Fink climbed onto the table beside him, sat cross-legged, and rested his head in his hands. Neither of them looked at me.

I shifted my weight so that I could lean into the corner of the room and then closed my eyes. If nothing else, at least I could get a little sleep.

Whether I slept for two minutes or two hours, I couldn’t be sure. But I awoke to loud voices, and the sound of a key turning in the locked door. My eyes opened slowly, reluctantly. I glanced at Erick and Fink, who were still sitting in their same places as before.

Erick cocked his head, hearing the key as well. “Are you ready for whoever’s on the other side?” he asked.

“No,” I muttered. And I wasn’t.

When the door opened, Erick and Fink jumped to their feet and backed against the far wall. I still felt groggy and was slower to straighten up. In fact, it was difficult to summon any energy whatsoever. The strain of the last several days had finally caught up to me.

This time it was Roden who entered. The same two pirates who had chained me up came with him, and as before, several others waited in the doorway.

Roden folded his arms and stared icily at me. It was nothing new to have someone look at me with expressions of anger or dislike. But I didn’t like it coming from Roden. Back at Farthenwood, we had formed what I thought was a decent friendship. Then he became manipulated by Conner’s servant Cregan, to fulfill Cregan’s dark ambitions. Perhaps it was my own arrogance at work, but I found it hard to believe that Roden could hate me so much, just because I had the crown and he didn’t. In light of this, I thought it best to let him speak first, so I waited, eyes lowered.

He spoke first to Fink. “Erick claims he didn’t know who Sage was before. Did you?”

Fink shook his head, then said, “But I didn’t think he was a regular thief either. He was just different from the rest.”

Moving his attention to Erick, Roden narrowed his eyes. “Even the boy knew something was wrong. Neither of you leaves this room alive.”

The obvious exception to his words was me, which I found less than comforting. Whatever Roden wanted me left alive for, it wasn’t going to be good.

“Please,” Fink said, sniffing. I looked over and the kid was actually crying. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m only a child.”

“Stop that.”

“Please, sir.” Large tears rolled down Fink’s face. It was impressive, really.

Roden rolled his eyes, but the tears did their job and he softened. “I’ll think about it, all right? Just stop!”

“If you keep us alive, we can still prove ourselves.”

Roden cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah? How?”

“We’ll take care of Jaron for you.” Recovering a bit too quickly, Fink wiped his eyes and said, “Erick and I have a score to settle with him now.”

I nearly laughed. It was a good attempt by Fink to sound hateful toward me, but he didn’t pull it off well. Roden only shook his head at him. “Thanks, but I have my own plans for him.”

Which, unfortunately, I had already suspected.

Now Roden turned to me. “You ignored my threat last week.”

“Looks that way.”

“Did you think I wasn’t serious? That I couldn’t do everything I told you I would?”

“I knew you were serious,” I replied. “That’s why I had to come.”

“But you were looking for me before that. You sent Mott and Tobias all over Carthya to find me. Why?”

“I didn’t like the way things ended in that tunnel.” Roden and I had fought in a narrow passage beneath the castle on the night I returned there. If he had defeated me, he would have entered the castle and tried to claim the throne as Jaron. But it wouldn’t have worked. Roden never would’ve gotten far with Kerwyn and the fraud would have been exposed. At one point during our fight I had backed off when I could have killed Roden. There was a moment when I thought he had also backed off, though I had never been sure of that.

Roden chuckled. “You didn’t like how things ended? And how is that, with me alive?” His tone darkened. “I suppose you think you were merciful that night, allowing me to run. But you weren’t. You cursed me. Where else was I supposed to go to get away from you?”

“It would’ve been nice if you had chosen somewhere less dangerous,” I said. “You’re an even worse pirate than I am.”

In an instant, Roden’s face hardened and he backhanded me across the face. “We’re equals now, so you can’t talk to me like that. I’m as much of a king as you are.”

“Hardly,” I scoffed. “There’s no honor in being the king of the pirates. No glory, and no reward other than an eventual death at the hands of your own men.”

“Then I wonder why you’d take the trouble to come all this way and join us,” he said.

“You didn’t leave me much of a choice.”

“Or maybe you want to finish what we started in your gardens.” When I held my gaze on him he added, “I was there because you cheated before, that night you were crowned. You cheated to win that duel and cheated me out of the throne!”

When Roden and I fought that night, I had pretended to fall and lose my sword. But what I’d done wasn’t a cheat. It was a trick, yes, but Roden had no one to blame for falling for it except himself. Especially because I had warned him earlier it’s what I would do.

“Everything about you is a lie,” Roden said. “It always was. Do you know what it was like the next morning in Drylliad? Everywhere I turned, it was celebration and talk of a new day for Carthya, and all for who? You?”

“Yeah, it was for me. I am Jaron. Maybe you don’t like that fact, but nothing you can do will change it.”

“Whatever your name is, you don’t deserve the throne.” Roden’s voice grew louder, sharper. “It was supposed to be given to whoever won in that tunnel. It was supposed to be me!”

“Then give me a sword and we’ll fight again,” I suggested. “If you win, you have me for whatever revenge you want. And if I win, I get what I want.”

“Another sword fight is pointless because I already have you.” Roden’s eyes narrowed. “And I know what you want: You thought by coming here you could somehow stop the pirates from invading Carthya.”

I nodded. “That’s still my intention, by the way.”

“Well, I’m their king now. And you’re out of time to stop me from doing anything. Tonight I’ve ordered a feast in celebration of my becoming king. Afterward, in front of everyone, I’m going to be the one to end your life, to show what happens to anyone who crosses me. I’ll use your death to solidify my reign.”

He hadn’t intended to be funny, but I laughed at him anyway. “I’m very glad you said that. Because until hearing you speak just now, I had thought I was the most ridiculous ruler in these lands.”

Roden raised his hand to strike me again, but this time I would not flinch and he slowly lowered it.

“Let’s go,” he told the pirates with him. “There’s a lot to do before tonight.”

“You can’t leave him like this,” the larger of the pirates said. “You were the one who told us the stories about him.”

“He got out of rope before,” Roden said. “Not chains. He won’t get through these.”

Actually, I would. The pin Imogen had snuck to me was still in my boot. It’d easily pick the lock on these chains.

“But if he did get free, he could climb out that window.”

Roden faced me. “I can’t deny that possibility.”

Neither could I. In fact, that was my plan.

Roden grabbed a club from a pirate in the doorway and walked closer to me. He swung it once in the air, testing its weight. Something turned in my gut, a warning perhaps. But Roden wanted me alive for tonight, so I hoped he only meant to threaten me with it.

“Sorry about this,” Roden said. And as he swung the club back over his shoulder, I saw what he intended.

“Don’t!” I yelled. “Roden, don’t!”

But he did. The club crashed into my lower right leg like I’d been hit with a cannonball. Lightning ripped through every nerve of my body and escaped through my screams. I knew immediately that the bone was broken, though with so much pain, I couldn’t tell how badly.

Held upright only by the manacles, I collapsed to one side and vomited, my head swimming in a dense fog.

“He won’t escape those chains now,” Roden said. “But if he does, he’s not going anywhere.”

I wished I could’ve had some clever response to that, but my world was quickly fading. Reeling from a toxic combination of pain, hunger, and exhaustion, I slumped forward and let the darkness take over.