Chapter Three: Trapped
775 Words
“You shouldn’t have lowered the dagger, Your Highness.”
The voice was different.
Younger.
Closer.
Lucas’s hand drifted toward the knife at his belt, but he didn’t draw it.
“You’re inside my doorway,” Lucas said evenly. “That suggests you were never afraid of the blade.”
A soft step across the threshold.
“No,” the voice agreed. “It suggests I knew you wouldn’t use it.”
Lucas rose slowly.
Still didn’t turn.
“If you came to kill me,” he said, “you would have done it while I was kneeling.”
A pause.
“True.”
That answer sharpened the air.
Lucas turned then.
The man standing in the doorway was not dressed like a soldier. No crest. No armor. Plain travel clothes. Clean hands.
Observant eyes.
Not the same man from the river.
Younger. Sharper.
“Who are you?” Lucas asked.
“A correction,” the man replied. “I am what happens when men like him”—a slight nod toward the mist outside—“start making decisions alone.”
So the first stranger wasn’t acting under orders.
Interesting.
Lucas studied him.
“You took the ring.”
The man’s gaze flicked briefly toward the open chest.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it proves you’re real.”
Lucas’s voice did not change. “You needed proof?”
“I needed leverage.”
There it was.
Leverage.
The man stepped fully inside the hut and closed the door behind him.
“I’m not here to kill you,” he said. “If I were, you’d already be ash in the river.”
“Comforting,” Lucas replied.
The man ignored that.
“The king is dying.”
Lucas did not react.
“But that isn’t why you’re in danger.”
Lucas waited.
“The danger isn’t from the throne,” the man continued. “It’s from the men preparing for what comes after.”
“Preparing how?”
“By removing uncertainties.”
Lucas held his gaze. “I was removed.”
The man gave a thin smile.
“You were supposed to be.”
Silence.
Then—
“They never found a body.”
The words landed heavier than accusation.
Lucas’s fall into the river had been reported.
But not confirmed.
“They’ve been searching,” Lucas said quietly.
“Yes.”
“For years?”
“For certainty.”
The man reached into his coat.
Lucas’s hand moved instantly to his blade.
The man withdrew something, not a weapon—
But the ring.
He held it between two fingers.
“In the capital,” he said, “rumors are surfacing.”
Lucas said nothing.
“Someone has begun asking whether the river truly swallowed the prince.”
The word prince was deliberate this time.
“Who?” Lucas asked.
The man met his eyes.
“Not the king.”
If not the king…then who,
Lucas stepped closer.
“You’re not here to kill me,” he said. “You’re here to measure me.”
“Yes.”
“For whom?”
A slight pause.
“For the future.”
The man extended the ring toward him.
Lucas didn’t take it immediately.
“If I return,” Lucas said, “I don’t return as myself.”
The man’s eyes sharpened with approval.
“Good.”
“I return under another name.”
“Yes.”
“And no one knows.”
The man tilted his head slightly.
“That depends.”
Lucas’s gaze hardened.
“On what?”
“On whether you want to live long enough to find out who truly wanted you dead.”
There it was.
Someone ordered his murder.
And it may not have been who he thinks.
The man placed the ring on the table instead of handing it to him.
“Leave before dawn,” he said. “If you stay, the next men won’t knock.”
He turned for the door.
Lucas spoke before he reached it.
“If you’re not with the throne,” Lucas said quietly, “and you’re not with the council…”
The man paused.
“Then who are you with?”
A faint smile.
“I’m with whoever survives.”
And he stepped into the mist.
Lucas stood alone.
The ring lay on the table between light and shadow.
He picked it up slowly.
Cold metal.
Old crest.
His mother’s last touch.
If the capital was searching for certainty—
He would give them something else instead.
Doubt.
By dawn, the river would no longer hide him.
And this time—
He would enter the capital unseen.
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