Bound To The King She Hates

The Wooden Bird

# The Masked Princess: Bound to the King She Hates

## Chapter 4 — The Wooden Bird

"Have you ever heard of Arrendale?"

The words hung in the cold night air between them.

Ella looked at Augustine without blinking. Without moving. Her whole body had gone completely still the way it did when she was in danger. Like an animal that knew a predator was close and understood that the wrong move would be the last one.

She had prepared for this moment.

She had rehearsed it a hundred times in her head over the last four years. Someone asking. Someone suspecting. Someone getting too close. Fortunately she was ready for all of it.

"Arrendale," she repeated slowly. Like she was tasting the word. Like it meant absolutely nothing to her. "I have heard of it, yes. Everyone has. It was the kingdom that fell a few years ago."

Augustine did not look away from her. Not even for a second.

"That is all?" he asked.

"That is all," she replied. "Should there be more?"

A long silence passed between them. The stars above were bright and cold. Somewhere below a guard was doing his rounds, his boots echoing against the stone path.

Augustine looked at her for ten more seconds that felt like ten years.

Then he straightened up and stepped back.

"No," he said quietly. "I suppose not."

He walked back inside without another word.

Ella stood on the balcony alone and did not move until she was completely sure he was gone. Then she gripped the stone railing with both hands and squeezed until her knuckles turned white and her palms ached.

Her legs were shaking.

She had answered perfectly. She knew she had. Her voice had not cracked. Her eyes had not moved the wrong way. She had given him absolutely nothing.

But as she stood there in the cold night air she felt something she had not felt in a very long time.

Real fear.

Not the manageable kind she carried around every day like a stone in her pocket. This was bigger. Heavier. The kind that reminded her she was one wrong word away from losing everything she had spent four years building.

"Get yourself together," she told herself firmly. "You are still safe. He does not know. Not yet."

She pressed her hand against her mask. Then against her sleeve where the blade sat waiting.

Still there. Both still there.

She went back inside.

---

Her chambers were quiet and dark when she returned.

Flora had left one candle burning on the table by the window. The rest of the room was deep shadow. Ella sat on the edge of the bed and took off her shoes slowly. Her feet ached from standing for hours during the gathering.

She thought about Augustine's face on the balcony. The way he had looked at her. The way he had said Arrendale like it was a test and he was waiting to see her score.

She thought about Lord Harmon. The look in his pale blue eyes when he first saw her.

"He recognized me," she thought. "I am almost sure of it."

The question was what he was going to do with that.

She lay back on the bed without changing her clothes. She stared up at the dark ceiling. Sleep would not come. She knew that already. Sleep had become something that happened to other people. People who did not have this weight sitting on their chest every single hour of every single day.

She closed her eyes anyway.

She was almost drifting when she heard it.

A soft sound. So quiet she almost missed it. Like something sliding slowly across the stone floor.

Her eyes snapped open.

She sat up fast and looked toward the bottom of the door.

In the thin strip of space between the door and the floor she could see a small piece of folded paper. Someone had slipped it into her room. She had not heard a single footstep coming or going. Whoever it was had been very careful.

Too careful.

Ella was off the bed in one second.

She crossed the room and snatched up the paper. Unfolded it fast. The handwriting inside was small and neat. Old fashioned. The kind of handwriting that belonged to someone who had learned to write a very long time ago.

She read it once.

Then she read it again.

*I know who you are, Princess Ella of Arrendale. I know what you are doing here and I know what you are hiding under that mask. Come to the east corridor on the ground floor at midnight. Come alone. If you do not come I will go to the King first thing in the morning and tell him everything I know. You have until midnight to decide.*

The room felt like it was shrinking around her.

Ella stared at those words until they blurred. Then she walked to the candle and held the corner of the paper to the flame without hesitation. She watched it catch and curl and blacken. She held it until the fire reached her fingers and dropped the last burning piece into the bowl beside the candle.

She watched it turn to ash.

Her jaw was tight. Her eyes were completely dry. She was not afraid anymore.

She was furious.

Lord Harmon. Kind old Lord Harmon who used to bring her father gifts from faraway kingdoms. Who once gave a little girl a carved wooden bird and smiled like the gentlest man in the world.

He was blackmailing her.

He was going to sell her to Augustine for what? Money? Favor? A better seat at court? She did not know yet. She did not care. What she knew was that she could not let him talk. She could not let him anywhere near Augustine with this information.

She looked at the window. The sky outside was still dark blue. Not midnight yet.

She had maybe two hours.

She sat back down on the bed and forced herself to think clearly. She could not panic. Panic made people sloppy and sloppy people got caught. She needed a plan. A clear calm smart plan.

Option one. She stayed in her room and let him go to Augustine in the morning. That would be the end of everything before it even properly began.

Not an option.

Option two. She went to meet him and found out exactly what he wanted. Dangerous. But since when had she chosen the safe path?

Option three. She went to Augustine first and controlled the story herself before Harmon could. Too risky. Too many ways it could collapse.

No.

She would go to the east corridor at midnight.

She would face Lord Harmon herself.

She stood up and walked to the mirror. Checked her mask. Firm and in place. Pulled her hair back tightly and tied it. Then she reached into her sleeve and pressed her fingers against the blade.

She would bring it with her.

She was not planning to use it.

But four years of hiding had taught her one thing very clearly.

Always be prepared for what you are not planning.

---

The palace was completely silent at midnight.

The long stone corridors were empty and dark. Most of the candles along the walls had burned down to nothing. Only a few were still flickering throwing long twisted shadows across the stone floors.

Ella moved through the darkness like she had been born in it.

She was almost at the main staircase when she heard it.

Footsteps.

Coming from directly above her.

She flattened herself against the wall instantly and stopped breathing. The footsteps were slow and heavy. A guard doing his rounds. She counted his steps as he moved. Closer. Closer. She pressed herself deeper into the shadow and did not move one single muscle.

The guard turned at the top of the staircase.

His torch swept across the corridor in a wide arc.

The light passed less than two feet from where she was standing.

She did not breathe. Did not blink. Did not move.

He kept walking.

His footsteps faded down the other corridor and disappeared.

Ella let out one slow silent breath and kept moving.

She reached the east corridor and stopped at the entrance.

It was darker here than anywhere else in the palace. The windows at the far end were tall and narrow and let in only thin strips of pale moonlight. The corridor stretched out long and empty in front of her.

Or so it looked.

"You came."

Lord Harmon stepped out of the shadow near the wall. He was still dressed from the gathering. He had his cane in one hand. His pale blue eyes caught the moonlight and glinted softly.

He did not look threatening. He never had. That was the most dangerous thing about him.

Ella's hand was already at her sleeve.

"You did not give me much choice," she said. Her voice was flat and quiet.

He tilted his head slowly. Looking at her the same way he had at the gathering. That look that went straight through the mask to the face underneath.

"You look like your mother," he said softly. "Around the eyes. She had the same shape."

Something sharp moved through Ella's chest. She pushed it down immediately.

"What do you want, Lord Harmon?" she asked. Her fingers still at her sleeve. Still ready.

He was quiet for a moment. Then he sighed and reached into his coat.

Ella's hand closed around the blade instantly.

But what he pulled out was not a weapon.

It was a small carved wooden bird.

Ella's hand fell away from the blade.

She stared.

She knew that bird. She would know it anywhere in the world. She had held it a thousand times as a child. She had kept it on her windowsill for years until the night everything burned.

She had thought it was gone forever.

"Where did you get that?" she whispered.

Lord Harmon looked down at it in his hand. His expression was not cruel. Not threatening. It was something she had absolutely not expected from a man who had blackmailed her an hour ago.

It was sad. Deeply sad.

"Your father gave it to me," he said quietly. "The last time I visited Arrendale. Two weeks before Augustine's army came." He looked up at her. "He told me to keep it safe. He said if anything ever happened to him and I ever came across his daughter I should give it back to her."

The corridor was completely silent.

Ella stared at the little wooden bird and felt something c***k open so deep inside her chest she was afraid it might never close again.

"He knew," she said. Barely above a breath. "He knew something was coming."

"He suspected," Lord Harmon said gently. "Your father was a very wise man, Princess. He loved you more than anything else in this world."

Ella could not speak.

She had not cried in four years. She had made herself a promise after the first night in hiding. No tears until this was over. Tears were for after. Tears were for when Augustine was finished and her father could finally rest.

But standing in this dark corridor holding a piece of her childhood in front of her she felt the back of her eyes burn in a way she had not felt since she was sixteen years old and running for her life through a burning palace.

She pressed her lips together so hard they hurt.

"The note," she said when she trusted her voice again. "You threatened to go to Augustine."

"Yes," Lord Harmon said without looking away. "I needed you to come. I needed to see you face to face. I needed to be absolutely certain it was really you before I said a word to anyone."

"And now?" she asked.

He held the wooden bird out toward her.

"Now I give you this," he said simply. "And I tell you that whatever you came here to do, you are not alone."

Ella looked at the bird in his outstretched hand.

Then she looked at his face.

At the tired sad eyes of an old man who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time.

She reached out and took the wooden bird.

It was exactly as she remembered. Small and smooth and perfectly carved. She closed her fingers around it and held it so tightly the edges pressed into her palm.

"If you are lying to me," she said quietly, "I will not forgive it."

"I know," Lord Harmon said. "I would not expect you to."

A sudden sound echoed somewhere deep in the palace above them.

A door. Closing.

Both of them went completely still.

Ella looked up at the ceiling. Her hand flew back to her sleeve in one second. Her heart slammed hard against her chest.

The sound did not come again.

Silence.

She looked at Lord Harmon. He nodded once. Time was up.

She pressed the wooden bird against her chest and stepped back into the shadow.

"We do not speak again until it is safe," she whispered. "You saw nothing. You know nothing. If Augustine asks you anything about me the answer is always nothing."

Lord Harmon straightened slowly and tapped his cane once against the stone floor.

"I have kept your father's secrets for four years, Princess," he said quietly. "I think I can manage a little longer."

Ella looked at him one last moment.

Then she turned and disappeared back into the dark corridor without a sound.

Above her somewhere in this same palace King Augustine was awake.

She was sure of it now.

Men like him did not sleep soundly. Men like him lay in the dark and thought an

d planned and calculated.

Just like her.

She pressed the wooden bird tighter against her chest and kept moving through the dark.

'I am still here, Father,' she thought. *I am still fighting.'

'And I am not fighting alone anymore.'