the cover had slipped from his face. Even as Owen let loose a punch, and felt the man’s nose give under the force of it, he was trying to memorize the hawkish features. He now knew there was no possibility of winning this fight, let alone escaping. Still, some base instinct roared within him, demanded he do as much damage as possible before the inevitable loss.
Owen used the man’s own shock against him. He shoved him to the floor, leapt on top of him, his knees bracketing the man’s chest. He pulled his arm back, seeing red now, his fury unleashed. But before he could complete his swing, his arm was caught fast and painfully. The air went out of him as someone leapt on his back, shoving him down hard on top of his opponent.
The young prince fought with everything he had left, but there were too many, now, holding him down. One sat on his back, a hard hand on his neck. Both his arms were being held behind him, and hands held his legs. He was lifted enough for the man underneath him to slither out, and then he was slammed back into the cold rock floor.
“Okay,” he said, and heard the calm contempt in his own voice, “uncle.”
That earned him a hard swat on the back of his head, and he tasted his own blood on his lip. He heard the subtle rattle of metal before he realized what they were doing, and felt his first moment of panic. He fought desperately with his remaining strength, managed to send a man flying and to get his arm free temporarily. But they came back harder than before, and his head was slammed again into the rock floor, and his arm twisted up painfully behind his back. He felt the shackle close and then click shut with cold metallic finality, first around his right wrist and then, despite the wild fury of his struggle, the left one.
More weight settled on him as he tried to writhe away from the leg irons. Cruel hands held him as the iron bands were clamped, too tightly, around his ankles.
He registered, with impotent fury, his own helplessness, and then was jerked roughly to his feet.
He stood, swaying, captured but unsubdued, and then marshaling his remaining strength, he lunged forward. He allowed himself to feel brief satisfaction in the wary respect he saw as men leapt back from him. He noted, too, that for a single, solitary man, he had managed to cause an inordinate amount of damage. The men who faced him were bloody and bruised, their clothing torn and disheveled. His captors’ chests were heaving from exertion.
Owen reminded himself he did not have the luxury to gloat. He had only one thing left and he needed to use it. His mind.
Carefully, he looked at the men, taking swift mental notes. They were dressed the same as they had been the night of his kidnapping, in identical black sweatpants, black turtlenecks, now pulled up over the lower part of their faces and black woolen caps. The effect was dramatic and sinister. He tried to get a sense of nationality from the eyes of the men, from their skin color, but he could not. He did get a sense of organization. This was not a motley crew who had decided to capture a prince for ransom.
This was a highly organized group, quasi-military.
He took his eyes from the men. He had been blindfolded when he arrived, and now he looked carefully at the passageway. It looked remarkably like a medieval dungeon, dark and dank. Still, the stones that formed the formidable walls caught his attention. They had a faint pink tinge. His gaze traveled up them. High up the wall was one small opening, barred, no glass. Owen was certain he could smell the sea.
That color of rock was famous on the island of Majorco, an island about to sign a groundbreaking military alliance with Penwyck.
Owen was careful not to let it show in his face that he had a pretty good idea where he was. And maybe even an inkling of why he was being held. There were those who were opposed to this kind of alliance between the two islands.
Maybe more opposed than anyone had ever guessed.
His chance to observe ended abruptly. A boot in his back indicated it was time for him to move back in the direction of his cell. Despite the chains he refused to shuffle, making his stride as long as the chain would allow. He tilted his chin up at a haughty angle.
“Your Royal Highness,” one of the men said sarcastically, bowing as he held open the cell door.
Owen slammed his whole body into the man who had been foolish enough to not only mock him, but to take his eyes off of him for a second.
He went down in a hard scrabble of bodies, took another hard punch to his head, and three or four to his rib cage. Then he was picked up and thrown unceremoniously on his cell floor. He watched, panting, his cheek resting on cold stone, as half a dozen of his captors entered the cell, and carried the dismantled bed out, and then the mattress.
The man who had bowed, gave him a kick as he walked by. “You’re more like a bloody street fighter than the pampered pouf I was expecting a prince to be,” he spat out.
Owen, flattered, managed to laugh through swelling lips, and then became aware of a man standing over him. It was the one whose turtleneck had slipped off his face. He had not bothered to replace it.
He was dabbing at his bloody nose with a handkerchief. Expensive, Owen noted. The eyes that watched him were liquid and black, his lips thin and cruel. Owen memorized the white ridge of the scar that ran from his ear to his jawline.
“A foolish move, Your Highness,” the man said mildly. “Your stay here could have been quite comfortable. Pleasant, even.”
From his position on the floor, Owen watched him narrowly. The leader? He listened for an accent. Did he hear a faint Majorcon lilt? Did it mean something that the man was making no attempt to conceal his identity? If it did, what it meant was not good.
“I expect that will be the end of such foolishness,” the man said silkily.
Owen said nothing.
The man crouched beside him, balancing on his toes. He rested his arms on his knees and when he did so the right sleeve of his dark tunic pushed up minutely, showing a square of his forearm. Owen tried to look at the unusual tattoo, without appearing to be the least bit interested. Only partially showing, it looked like the tip of a black dagger.
“Is that the end of your foolishness?” the man pressed.
Owen looked deliberately away from the tattoo, met the flat black eyes and said nothing.
The man laughed, a soft, chilling sound. “You are not my prince,” he said, “you are my prisoner. When I ask a question of you, I expect an answer.”
Educated, Owen decided of his tone, his inflection, his use of words. He answered him by spitting.
He waited for the blow that didn’t come.
“The man who guarded you last night said you called out in your sleep.” This was said softly, almost kindly.
Owen felt himself go very still. He felt a new wariness. This man was far more dangerous than those who thought they could beat him into submission. He sensed the cutting intelligence, and the ruthlessness of the man.
“You called a name. A name I have not heard before in connection with your family, not even as a minor player.”
He knows a great deal about my family, Owen noted uneasily. He did not let his unease show.
“Who are you?” Owen asked, every bit of twenty-three years of royal breeding and training going into the cold authority
