Ragnar watched absently as the guard bowed low before retreating back to his post. He barely registered the man’s movent, barely felt anything aside from the envelope crinkling softly as he crushed it in his clenched fist.
Circe’s eyes darted to his tightly squeezed hand. Her gaze lingered there for several seconds, drawn to the tension in his grip, before slowly lifting back to his face. She noticed the hard set of his jaw, the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, and the way his entire body seed to have gone rigid, as though bracing for an unseen blow.
"Are you alright?" she asked quietly.
With how stiff he had beco, she wasn’t certain he had even heard her. After a mont of hesitation, she reached out and rested her hand gently on his forearm.
"Ragnar?"
That finally cut through whatever storm was raging inside him. His fingers loosened, the crushed envelope slipping slightly in his grasp. He turned to look at her but the blissful expression he had worn only monts earlier was gone. In its place was sothing darker.
It was almost unbelievable that a single invitation could have caused such a drastic shift. But Ragnar knew the queen. He knew her far too well, knew how cruel she could be to those she deed beneath her, how inventive her punishnts were, and just how rciless she could be.
She did not send the invitation rely out of courtesy. When Ragnar stared down at it, he did not see the elegant script or the intricate, glamorous design ant to impress. He saw a summons. A threat. A beckoning of doom that rose and hovered over both their heads.
"Do you think she’s planning sothing nefarious?" Circe asked at last, her voice careful.
Ragnar was still looking at her. He wanted to lie, to tell her everything would be fine, that she had nothing to fear. But the words refused to form. He would not lie to her. Not about this. Not when it involved her safety.
She deserved to know exactly what she might be walking into.
"Without a doubt," he said grimly. "It would be more surprising if she wasn’t."
What unsettled him most was that he had no idea what the queen was planning or where the blow would co from. That ignorance sat like a stone in his chest, feeding his unease and stoking his anger.
There was only a week until the supposed banquet. A week before they would be expected to walk into her domain blind, smiling, and endure whatever cruelty she decided to unleash. Ragnar had endured the queen’s brand of tornt countless tis before but the thought of Circe being subjected to the sa made his stomach churn.
For years, he had played the role expected of him: the dutiful prince, the loyal soldier. He had kept his head down, bitten back his fury, and waited patiently for the right mont. All to avoid drawing more of the queen’s venomous attention.
And yet, it had accomplished nothing.
They still ca for him. Still ca for Circe. And more often than not, he had been powerless to stop it.
For so long, he had been forced to play along, to endure, to survive, to bleed quietly while they played their gas.
No longer.
In that mont, a decision was made.
The cell door was shoved open with such force that it slamd violently against the stone wall. The echo rang through the corridor and Jorrit’s head snapped up instantly, eyes wide with alarm.
Ragnar stepped through the doorway without haste, his movents fluid. An unnatural calm clung to him now, still and lethal, like a predator that had already decided the fate of its prey.
In one hand, he held a wickedly sharp sword. The empty scabbard hung at his waist, swaying faintly with each step.
Without thinking, Jorrit’s gaze dropped to the blade, following its sharp gleam, before slowly lifting back to Ragnar’s face. The prince’s expression was utterly blank, closed off, stripped of all emotion. There was no anger there. Just an empty, chilling resolve.
And in that mont, Jorrit understood with horrifying clarity that he was staring at his own death.
"You must be freezing in here," Ragnar remarked idly.
There was no hearth in the cells, no way to ward off the cold that seeped through the stone walls. Jorrit’s clothes were thin, threadbare in places, offering little protection against the biting chill that had settled deep into his bones.
Ragnar let the tip of his sword trail lazily along the floor as he moved closer, the faint scrape of tal against stone raising gooseflesh along Jorrit’s arms.
Ragnar was still dressed in the clothes he’d worn earlier, though he had taken off his coat before coming.
"Are you here to kill ?" Jorrit croaked, his throat dry and raw.
He had worked alongside killers before. Truly dangerous n. He recognized violence when he felt it and the barely leashed nace radiating off Ragnar ca in heavy, suffocating waves.
The prince was terrifying in his calmness.
"Your next words will determine what I do with this sword," Ragnar said quietly. "So choose them very wisely."
He stopped just short of the cell’s center, lifting his gaze to lock onto Jorrit’s still form.
"What were Narfor’s plans before you were captured?"
Jorrit sucked in a sharp, shaking breath. He had already been broken again and again in this cell. If not by the man standing before him, then by the guards stationed outside the door. His blood had stained the stone floor more tis than he cared to rember.
He didn’t think he had the strength left to resist anymore.
And Ragnar knew it too.
"He and his younger brother are funding the rebellion," Jorrit said, each word landing heavy, like stones dropped into still water. "It’s all a ploy to steal power from the crown. They are raising their own army, n willing to lay down their lives for House Tavish."
Ragnar listened in silence, forcing himself to absorb the revelation as quickly as he could. His mind raced, sorting through every implication, every hidden thread, yet no matter how many tis he turned the words over, so parts of it still refused to make sense.
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