The Orphan Queen (The Orphan Queen #1)(90)

“If you say so.” The boy glanced at my empty hands. “Didn’t find anything to cut the rope with?”

“No, but it’s not a problem. This counts as an emergency.” I touched the rope. “Wake up. Straighten out. Carefully.” If the prickly bits hurt my fingers, they must have chafed his skin fiercely.

At my command, the ropes shivered to life and slithered so the knots loosened around not-Tobiah’s wrists and ankles. He gasped and shoved the ropes off him as the lengths moved on their own. “Was that magic? You can’t use that. It’s illegal.”

I frowned at the bruises around his wrists and the raw skin where the rope had cut. “Magic isn’t illegal. You just have to be careful to use it for emergencies only. Don’t you think getting the ropes off you was an emergency?” Whoever tied him up was going to be in big trouble. There were a few boys who might have thought binding a visitor was funny, but I didn’t like bullies. This—this awfulness would be punished.

The boy jumped off the chair and over the ropes as the loops and knots vanished. It was doing as I’d instructed: straightening out.

I knelt and touched the rope. “Go back to sleep.” And then it was dead again, just a scratchy length of fibers.

“You’re an animator?” he breathed. “That’s incredible.”

Not really. My mom was an animator, too. Anyway, I hardly ever got to use my power. Not that I’d tell him that.

“Who are you really? I guess I’ve got to take you somewhere.” No need to get a soldier. If we involved grown-ups, the teasing and pranks would just get worse for him; I’d seen that much when Patrick Lien tried to tell his father about the tricks. General Lien’s response had been cruel, and the other boys getting back at him . . .

I’d have to deal with this myself. And fast, before the general returned.

“I’m Tobiah Pierce, and your father’s men really did kidnap me. My father’s men won’t be far behind.” Thunder shook again, and he glanced at the chair and gag and ropes. “The Indigo Army was following your people. They might be here already, coming to get me.”

“Right.” He needed to stop blaming my father or I’d tie him up.

He glanced at the door I’d entered by. “Didn’t you see the guards? There were two earlier.”

I shook my head. If there ever were guards, which I doubted, they’d taken a break. Tobiah—or whoever he was—had been all tied up, unlikely to escape on his own. “Well, come on. We can’t stay here. This is General Lien’s study and he doesn’t like people poking around.”

The boy’s voice went low. “I know all about General Lien.”

Voices in the hall startled us, making me jump and press my palms to my mouth. The boy’s eyes grew wide.

“We can use him to stop the fighting,” a man said.

“Not yet.” General Lien’s harsh voice stilled me. He’d never hit me—I was the princess—but I’d seen enough of Patrick’s bruises to know I needed to protect this boy. “His Majesty wants the Wraith Alliance pressure stopped, and this will ensure we are taken seriously in the future.”

“His Majesty never approved this—”

“Stuff it.” General Lien made a noise like a growl. “Move the boy to a more secure location.”

I gasped and glanced at maybe-Tobiah. General Lien wanted to move him? Where? And why? I couldn’t believe this was really the Crown Prince of the Indigo Kingdom—my father would never have an eight-year-old boy kidnapped—but neither could I deny that something bad was about to happen.

Unless I took action.

I raced for the window and fumbled with the latch. “If you really are Tobiah, I shouldn’t help you.” I swung the windows wide open. “But I don’t want General Lien to find you, no matter who you are. If you are Tobiah, then I’ll figure out what to do when he’s gone.”

“What are you doing?”

“There’s a ledge. We’ll hide outside.”

Tobiah offered a hand to boost me up just as the study door creaked open.

Behind the heavy curtain, we scrambled onto the ledge, me first, then Tobiah, and he shut the window behind him.

Cold air whipped around us, stinging my hands and face as I sidled along the ledge, Tobiah next to me. The air smelled sharp, acrid. We were high up, high enough to make the city look like a toy. But tonight, everything was different.

Everything was chaos.

Fires burned in every district of Aecor City. People fought in the streets. Screams floated upward. Huge wood-and-metal machines trundled up the main road to Sandcliff Castle, bearing torch-carrying men. They were going to get into the castle. They were going to set fire here, too.

Horror tangled up inside me, pulled tight into a knot. “No. This isn’t real.”

Arrows rained from slits in the castle walls, falling on the tower men. Bodies fell, torches dropping with them, and then there was nothing left of them but their mangled corpses far below.

My stomach flipped. I was going to be sick. I’d give anything to be in my room, sleeping. My parents and their guards would come looking for me soon. What would they think when they found my bed empty?

“Are these people here for you?” I said, but wind snatched away my words. My eyes watered with the reek of smoke and disgust at what my father had done. “You really are Crown Prince Tobiah.”