Taming The Dragon Lord

CHAPTER 6: The Word Maeve Left Behind

OPHELIA POV

The bread was stale again, and I couldn’t believe just how much it bothered me.

I sat cross-legged on my cot, turning the loaf over in my hands without actually eating it. I’d eaten stale bread before. I’d gone hungry before. Somehow none of that should have mattered right now, but yet here I was, staring at the same miserable loaf and feeling as irritation crawled under my skin. The thoughts of the same shitty word filled my mind for what felt like the hundredth time since Maeve had been taken from the room.

Betrayal.

It struck me just how much that wasn’t a term people used lightly, especially not the guards involved in a siege. When it came to sieges, walls either held strong or came crashing down. You didn’t call it betrayal unless there were secrets involved, and things happening behind those walls that outsiders weren’t supposed to know about.

I needed more than one word. One word wasn’t enough for me, probably because it felt like having a locked door without a way to open it. It left me feeling more helpless than I’d like to admit, and I was getting sick of feeling helpless. Sick of sitting here. Sick of being handed scraps of information and expected to do absolutely nothing with them.

The next guard who came in was older and had broad shoulders. He had a rugged look about him, like he hadn’t really paid attention to his own thoughts for years. So I decided to give conversation a shot.

“Long shift?” I asked, trying to keep my voice lighthearted and bored, like a girl who had nothing better to do than chat with her captor’s guards.

He didn’t respond. What he did was just set the tray down and walked out.

Fine, not him.

The woman who came next had a scar through one of her eyebrows and treated me the exact same way. Giving me the silent, efficient treatment and was out of the room before I could finish speaking. I noted that whoever trained the guards here did a good job due to the realization that they never engaged or let on more than necessary.

After two more days of rotting in this hell hole of a cell, the third guard arrived, and it wasn’t until then that I felt a crack in their solid wall of silence. He was much younger, probably a decade or more younger than the others. His jaw was still soft looking, and he seemed a little shaky as he was setting down the food tray. I could see and feel the nervous energy of someone who hadn’t learned to stop caring about what a prisoner thought.

“You’re new,” I said, studying his posture and testing the waters to see if he’d ignore me just the same way the rest did.

“Uhm yeah. I got transferred in from the border regiment,” he replied, and with how his eyes widened I could tell he didn’t think better of it before speaking to me.

I don’t know, but somehow that made something inside me go completely still.

“The border regiment,” I murmured, keeping my voice casual and curious. “You must’ve seen quite a bit over there. Everhart wasn’t too far.”

His jaw tightened in response. “That wasn’t my post.”

I internally roll my eyes.

“No, but you’d have heard things. Soldiers tend to talk.”

“Not about that.”

“Then about what?”

He looked around, as if wishing he could just vanish through the door. “Nothing. Forget it.”

I didn’t push him because being too aggressive can ruin a conversation before it really began. I knew that much. Instead, I let the silence fill the space, making it comfortable. Letting him stand there without feeling like I was waiting for him to betray himself as I quietly ate my food.

“It wasn’t supposed to move that fast,” he said eventually, his voice low and almost hushed like he was talking to himself. And before I could even think better of what he had just said, his whole face changed. Panic flashed across it, and for the first time since I had been brought here, I felt something sharper than numbness push through me. He knew something. “Forget I said that.”

“Said what?”

“Nothing. I need to go.”

“You haven’t said anything wrong.” I kept my tone light, but inside, my heartbeat had already quickened. “I’m just a prisoner talking to myself. Who would I even tell?”

He hesitated, twisting his hands nervously. I could see the struggle in him, part of him wanting to talk, but the other part knowing better.

“The order came from high enough that nobody asks questions,” he blurted out so quickly that it was almost a jumble of words. Then once again his eyes went twice as wide as they did before, horrified at himself. Then he grabbed the tray still filled with some contents of food I still wanted to eat and bolted out of the room before I could respond. The door slammed shut so hard behind him, causing the bars to rattle loudly.

I sat quietly in my spot for a long moment, absorbing the weight of what I’d heard.

High enough that nobody asks questions.

That phrase wasn’t something people use when a siege went wrong. Instead… that was something you used when something was being covered up. A secret, probably instructions from someone powerful enough to control the narrative of what was happening. This was above the soldiers and the guards. This was someone with enough authority to make an entire fortress ignore why a war had escalated more quickly than anyone expected.

I got up and moved to the wall beside the window, where I dug my thumbnail into the mortar between two stones. I carved a small, deliberate mark into the surface. Not just another day counted down. This one was something real. It’s a fact. It’s my first solid piece of information. Wasn’t supposed to move that fast.

I stepped back and looked at the one tiny scratch against the vast stone wall. My chest tightened, but this time, I didn’t will myself to shrink away from the feeling. For days, I had been sitting here with nothing to hold on to except questions, and waiting for someone else to decide what happened to me.

But I was not going to do that anymore.

It wasn’t hope, it was something colder and more useful than that. It was a sense of direction, a feeling that maybe I was finally moving forward, and gaining clarity in the chaos around me. I had something now. Yes, it was small, but it was mine, and I wasn’t going to let it disappear.

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure things out in every possible way it is that I could think of. I was looking for someone inside Everhart, someone familiar with the layout, the walls, the gates, the guard schedules. I needed someone who had the kind of knowledge that could really speed up a siege, making it move faster than you would typically expect it to. My father kept this kind of information close and trusted very few people with it.

As I sat there, I began to think about names, recalling half-remembered faces from court, men who had shared our meals, swore their loyalty in rooms where I used to sit quietly as a child, pretending not to pay attention. Yet, none of these names felt right. They all seemed to clash just enough to be significant.

—-

Nighttime came unexpectedly, as it usually does here, with the little strip of window transforming from grey to pitch black. I was leaning against the wall, still mulling over the guard’s words and probing at this mystery with only a single piece of information for me to go on.

That’s when I heard voices. They were distant though, reverberating down through the stone from somewhere above. While I couldn’t make out any words, the anger in the voices was clear. One voice pierced through the others, sharply and measured, but you could tell the person was working quite hard to keep it together.

Ronan.

I perked up straighter, trying harder to catch what was being said, but all I could grasp was the tone and the essence of an argument that didn’t make sense from my dark corner. My body had already gone alert before I could stop it, every bit of attention I had narrowing toward the sound.

Then, just like that, it all went silent. It didn’t fade away, it simply just stopped completely, much like the low growl above my cell the first night I was here, just that the resulting quiet was heavier than the shouting had been.

I remained frozen against the wall, straining to catch any sounds. Footsteps, a sudden outburst, anything at all that would at least calm my body. Minutes rolled by, and then, out of nowhere, my cell door clicked open. There were no footsteps leading up to it, no announcements, and certainly no explanations.

Ronan stood there in the doorway.

He didn’t say a word. Instead, he looked at me with what felt like he was struggling internally, as if he was still working through his thoughts about whatever he had to say. His expression was tight, his eyes fixed on mine, and the silence grew between us, to the point where I could hear my own heartbeat echoing in every corner of the cell.