Free A Royal Rebellion by Revella Hawthorne Page A

would have a last line of defense. One long-ago queen had even placed a small crossbow equipped with poisoned bolts in the throne. The line of Airric lay unbroken due to that precaution.
    It was no crossbow he was after. He found the latch, small and hidden inside a burl near the base. Pressing it, the base of the throne gave a small sigh of sound, and slid to the side.
    “What is that?” Arianna hissed in a bad approximation of a whisper. She really was bad at subterfuge.
    “A secret. No peeking,” Mason said, and she kicked at his ass with a dainty slipper. “Dammit, woman! I’ve been tortured for days, and your first impulse is to kick me?”
    “I’ll do more than that if you don’t start telling me what you’re doing! We’re going to be caught!”
    Mason ignored her, which earned him another tap on the ass, but he reached down and into the small void at the throne’s base. His fingers found what he needed, and he pulled out a dark object, hiding it from Ari’s sight. It went under his jacket, and he reached back in.
    Deeper than before, he found the stone lever, and yanked.
    Nothing happened at first. Quiet ruled the ancient room, and the dust swirled in the faint light. Arianna huffed behind him, and Mason listened.
    A hollow groan reverberated through the room, the floor vibrating. Echoes bounced off the walls, and Arianna gasped, spinning, trying to see the cause of the noise.
    Mason smiled. He carefully put the hidden panel back in place, and stood. His body was sore, and tired, but he was damned if he was going to spend one more fucking night in this wretched prison.
    The palace stopped being home the day his mother revealed the truth, letting him read her journals as her life bled out through internal injuries that could never be repaired, the disease destroying her body from the inside out. She died, his father watching unseen from the door, Mason crying at her bedside, clutching her forgotten journal in his hands. Mason had thrown himself at his father in righteous anger, only to be knocked to the floor, mouth bleeding.
    That moment was the exact time the palace stopped being home, and his father became someone to hate.
    “Ari,” Mason said. She turned from her search, and waited. “I still think you’re a spoiled brat. You care more for fashion and Malcolm’s crown than you do anything else, but I’ve never meant you harm. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
    “I love my children.” Arianna replied softly. She walked forward, and hugged him, surprising him. He hugged her back for a brief moment before backing away. She gave him a bitter smile. “I love them enough to be angry at their real father, but never angry enough to regret them. You need to leave, Mason. My children need me to stay.”
    “He might kill you.”
    “He might,” Arianna said, stepping back, taking the high step back down the main floor of the throne room, backing away. “Then if this is the last time I’m ever going to see you, I should tell you that I don’t really dislike you all that much. I have a suspicion that your escape had something to do with that noise, so I’m going to leave before I see exactly how you get out. That way I won’t be lying when I tell them I don’t know anything.”
    “Smarter than you look,” he murmured, backing away into the shadows. “Be careful, Arianna.”
    He turned away, and headed for the heavily shadowed doorway in the wall behind the throne. There lay King Airric’s old bedroom, and inside, the ancient escape route he found as child. The knowledge was lost to the centuries, and Mason was certain that no one other than he recalled that there was a tunnel under the Old Castle, leading out past the new palace’s boundaries. Not even his brothers knew.
    “End this madness, Mason,” she called after him, voice fading as the distance between them grew. “Cleanse the line of Airric of his insanity.”
    Mason found the secret door beneath Airric’s ancient bed.