Free Fugitive by Kate Avery Ellison

THE ARREST
     
    THE SOLDIERS BURST into the hall of my family’s estate, clutching guns to their chests as they surrounded me. My stomach dropped as I stared at their faces, lifeless as corpses, their eyes hidden by dark shades. The air around me was silent; the entire party held its breath. At my back, my sister made the faintest noise, a squeak like a mouse caught in a trap. I didn’t look at her. I couldn’t move as they stepped forward to take me.
    “Gabriel,” my mother gasped, but her words could do nothing to stop them, nothing to save me. I was powerless. We all were. And I’d made a fatal mistake.
    I’d trusted the wrong people.
     
     
    THEN
     
     
    “YOU’RE LOSING, little brother.”
    I ignored Korr’s mocking tone and drew back the bow. I inhaled a lungful of the damp autumn air and took aim at the target, a paper pinned to one of the hedges at the end of the jewel-green lawn. The target fluttered limply in the breeze.
    From the house, my sister called for me. “Gabe! Where are you?”
    Startled, I released the arrow, and it went wide.
    Korr laughed.
    I lowered my arm and blew the hair from my eyes, stung by my failure. “Only a cad laughs when his opponent fails.”
    “Then I’m a cad,” Korr said, amusement dancing in his eyes. “Now pay up.”
    I scowled at him, but he was unrelenting. Reluctantly, I removed the ring from my finger, a heavy gold one set with a ruby, and handed it over. Korr snatched it from my palm and held it aloft.
    “A king’s ring,” he said, smirking. “I shall wear it well, brother.”
    “Half-brother,” I grumbled.
    Korr lifted one eyebrow but didn’t comment. He slipped the ring onto his finger and spread his hand, admiring the effect. “I think it suits me.”
    It did suit him. Korr was the more kingly-looking of the two of us. His thick, dark hair and sneering mouth drew admiring stares and smiles at whatever party or gala we attended, never mind that he would never wear the crown. Of course, neither of us would. The rise of the Aeralian Dictator Merris had ensured that. Now we were merely pets, kept in a gilded cage to be paraded out whenever the Dictator needed us.
    I sighed and turned away to find my sister. Korr never hesitated to add insult to injury, but I wouldn’t let him bait me.
     
     
    NOW
     
     
    THE STONES OF the prison were like ice beneath my body. Fever blistered me. I could feel the heat around my neck and across my ears. I lay still, listening as a cough rattled to my left and chains clinked to my right. Somewhere far away, someone screamed, and my chest constricted as panic swallowed me.
    An ache raged in my head. Someone was groaning and they wouldn’t be silent. I just wanted them to be silent. The sound was animalistic, like a dog with its paw caught in a trap.
    “Shut up,” someone snapped from another cell, and I realized with a shock that I was the one groaning.
    My cellmate didn’t move from where he was curled in the corner. His fingers were bound with cloth, and the tips of them were soaked in blood. He’d been taken away to be tortured a few days ago, and he hadn’t spoken since his return.
    It wouldn’t be long before they came for me, too.
    The walls spun, and then I thought I heard music, but it was all in my mind.
    I was losing my mind.
    The bars of my cell rattled as the guard unlocked the gate. He wrenched it open, and the hinges screeched. I wanted to cover my ears, but my hands wouldn’t move.
    The guard hoisted me up with one hand. My legs crumpled beneath me. I moaned. I wanted to demand where he was taking me, where my family was, why I was imprisoned, but I couldn’t find the words. They clung to the walls of my throat like spiders.
    The guard half-dragged me to an adjacent room. A single chair sat in the middle of a dirty floor. A single gas lamp hung naked from the ceiling. The guard flung me into the chair, and I coughed as my shoulders slapped against the wood and the air leaped from my lungs. Slowly, I