Chapter 13

The clanging of Didé's boots against the polished marble floors echoed hollowly through the cavernous palace corridors as he was escorted by four burly royal guardsmen. Their grim, impassive expressions and vice-like grips on his bulging biceps left no ambiguity - he was being treated as a dangerous criminal rather than the prince he was.

Despite the humiliation burning in his gut, Didé maintained rigid composure, stalking forward with his chin aloft and eyes locked straight ahead. Still, his jaw was so tightly clenched that the corded muscles danced beneath his ebonydark skin.

The discordant scuff of rapidly pounding footsteps caused one corner of his mouth to twitch in fleeting annoyance before smoothing away into stony neutrality once more. He recognized that frantically shuffling gait all too well.

"My Prince...My Prince! Wait!" The reedy, anxious voice of Miwoh reached them just as the royal guards turned down the dim corridor leading to the palace dungeons.

Sure enough, the squat, balding little man soon came wavering into view - his bald pate glistening with perspiration and his cheeks puffed out like a swollen bullyfrog's with exertion. Clutching feebly at the folds of his rumpled mustard robes, Miwoh skidded to an ungraceful halt directly in their path.

"Out of the way, elder," one of the armored guards growled in warning, his hand instinctively dropping to the polearm slung across his back.

Lifting one pudgy, ring-laden hand in a placating gesture, Miwoh wheezed out in his quavering tenor, "P-Please, just a moment to address my prince, good sirs. I mean no disrespect nor intent to impede."

Pursing his lips sourly, the captain of the guard detail waved his subordinates to a halt with a curt nod. "Make it quick, old man."

Taking several gulping breaths to recover his wind, Miwoh toddled forward until he could grasp the hem of Didé's lion-mane cape between his plump fingers. Looking up at the prince with watery, beseeching eyes, Miwoh began in a tremulous stammer.

"Y-Your Highness, I beg you to reconsider whatever foolish course this is. To willfully accept imprisonment over mere pride?" He shook his jowled head adamantly, albino brows furrowing above his bulbous nose. "It is not the Didé I helped raise all these years."

Didé's jaw tightened further at his former caretaker's words, but he did not interrupt or brush the older man away as Miwoh pressed on with desperate urgency.

"You must go to your father at once! Beg his forgiveness on bended knee for the inexcusable insult you dealt by impugning his vigilance over the Princess Ona's safety." Miwoh's eyes glistened with unshed tears as his hands gesticulated imploringly. "The king's rage will dim once he sees your sincere contrition, I am certain of it! All will be well if you only do this simple thing!"

Finally, the prince inhaled a slow, deep breath and tilted his head downwards to pin Miwoh with a piercing golden stare from beneath lowered brows. When he spoke, his tone was as caustic as vitriol yet still measured with disciplined restraint.

"I will not practice hollow theatrics of repentance, Miwoh...nor beg the king's pardon where none is warranted." He shifted his gaze forward once more to the descending stairwell leading to the dungeons. "I have done nothing beyond stating hard truths and refusing to abase myself before father's tyrannical arrogance."

Squaring his broad shoulders, Didé shrugged free of the guards' slackened grip with a dismissive jerk before continuing to stride inexorably onward. "If he would have me imprisoned for owing him rightful criticism in this matter of Ona's abduction, so be it."

Behind him, Miwoh's mewls of protest trailed off into a stricken, muted whine as the prince disappeared through the oubliette's yawning maw. The gilded torchlight flickered ominously across his stoic features, casting his chiseled jaw and brow into stark relief tinged by grim resolution.

As the last warmth of that radiant glow faded around the winding descent, darkness swallowed Didé whole - leaving nothing but echoes of jangling chains and the clanging of an iron cell door slamming shut in his wake like the toll of a judgment bell.

•

The chill dampness of the stone cell permeated didé's very bones as he sat slouched against the mossy bricks, hands bound by coarse iron manacles. Yet his mind's eye remained firmly fixed upon a memory from his distant past - a time of youthful innocence and joy that now felt an eternity removed.

He could see it all as plainly as if it were unfolding before him once more. The sweeping tile courtyards and terraced gardens surrounding the ornate Tiger's Keep Palace where he and Ona had been reared as children. He would chase her lithe, giggling form through those idyllic environs for hours on end, her long chestnut tresses streaming behind her like a river of silk.

Try as he might, he could never catch the agile, effervescent girl - his own strides too long and lumbering compared to Ona's cheetah-like, ever-dodging movements. He remembered how her tinkling laughter would intermingle with the melodies trilling from the courtyard fountains, echoing off the frescoed walls and alcoves where they played their infinite games of pursuit.

Eventually, Ona would grow breathless from their romps and let him catch her at last, collapsing into his enveloping embrace as they tumbled into a gasping, mirthful heap upon the fragrant blossoms scattered across the smooth flagstones. In those cherished moments, cradling her delicate, beaming face in his cupped palms, he knew an untrammeled contentment that he'd never experienced before or since.

How they had adored each other - the adulation of innocents yet untainted by the world's harsh realities and lofty ambitions. Even after the rites of royal matrimony were announced between himself and her a decade later, sealing their political union for the kingdom's future, that simple, unconditional love persisted. 

He remembered the dozens of letters she would pen to him while they were apart, carried by swift riders from her palace to his distant military academy across dense forests. Page after page filled with coded endearments and coded endearments,  hastily scribbled parables of her day and inside jokes between companions who were closer than mere kin.

Each missive was still preserved in a sandalwood chest, scribed in her flowing calligraphy and spritzed with aromatic perfumes - eternal memento's of her ceaseless adoration for him and he for her. Prized above even the jewel-encrusted coronets and rubied scepters that would one day grace his brow, those letters from Ona were priceless beyond measure.

But that idyllic dream had all come crashing down amidst violence and terror, he realized with a dull pang in his chest. Memories of more recent events displaced the rosy recollections as the metallic clang of a heavy iron key turning in the cell's lock jarred Didé back into grim reality.

His head snapped up instinctively, every sinewy muscle instantly coiled like a serpent about to strike as the barred door creaked open with an ominous groan. Steeling himself for another confrontation with his father's headsmen or torturers, he was utterly unprepared for the lithe, lethally beautiful figure that slipped into the dim cell instead.

She moved with the boneless fluidity of a panther stalking prey - each precise footfall utterly silent yet possessed of a coiled, predatory power. Twin blades nearly as long as she was tall were clutched in a reversed grip, steel rasping against leather scabbards as she drew them in one sinuous motion.

Even in the gloom, Didé could make out the swordswoman's exotic, heart-shaped visage and curtain of cascading sable tresses framing almond-shaped eyes that glinted dark and feral. Full, sensuous lips peeled back in a feline sneer to reveal a flash of gleaming incisors as she prowled sinuously forward.

A single name rumbled from Didé's throat laden with equal parts awe and wariness as he drank in her dark, compelling beauty, "...Nakaba."

To his surprise, a ghost of a conspiratorial smile quirked the corner of her lush mouth in reply. Reaching his side in two languid strides, her blades whickered outwards - their vicious adamantine edges effortlessly sundering the restraints binding his wrists asunder.

"Well met, little princeling," she purred in a voice that sounded like velvet drawn across bared steel. Crouching on the balls of her feet, she leveled that intense, leonine stare at him from beneath a fan of sooty lashes. "But we haven't much time to waste with pleasantries, I'm afraid. Not if my task is to be completed."

Didé rubbed his newly freed wrists, watching the mysterious assassin warily from beneath hooded lids. "Task?" He rumbled with deceptive mildness. "Has the King arranged for me to be silenced, then?"

Nakaba merely smiled that secretive, unknowable smile once more as she flowed upright in one agile, coiled movement. "Ask me no questions, My Prince, and I'll tell you no lies." She secured her wicked blades and swept towards the open cell door with a sinuous, purposeful stride. "Suffice to say, we want the same thing in this instance."

Brows furrowed in confusion, Didé nevertheless followed the deadly, hypnotic figure out into the dank dungeon corridor beyond - stepping gingerly around the motionless, prone shapes of the slain guards. His sharp gaze took in the deep, welling lacerations and perfectly angled slashes that had severed their vital organs with almost surgical precision.

"Help me find Ona, Nakaba"

Nakaba scoffed, not even deigning to look over her shoulder as she led them unerringly deeper into the belly of the dungeons. "And exact recompense upon the cowards who stole her away from your matrimonial bed?"

A grim smile tugged at the corners of didé's mouth, hardening his features into a merciless cast as they wove through the shadowed passages like twin spectres of retribution. Perhaps father had unwittingly provided the solution by imprisoning his son after all. With Nakaba's lethal talents guiding them, nothing would stop their manhunt now.

When at last they emerged into the sultry desert night beyond the palace walls, Didé inhaled a revitalizing breath of dry evening air. Without a word passing between them, the prince and the assassin sprinted across the moonlit sands towards the royal stables - side by side, coveting the same insatiable thirst for brawl.

Didé and Nakaba moved like blurs, their blades flashing in the torchlight as they fought through the ranks of the palace guards. Despite the guards' training, the two warriors were faster, more agile. They spun and wove between the guards, delivering precise strikes to disarm and incapacitate rather than kill.

Within moments, a pile of groaning but alive guards lay in their wake. Didé and Nakaba raced through the palace corridors, their breaths coming in ragged gasps. They burst through the doors into the stables, making straight for the most well-bred horses.

With deft movements, they bridled and saddled two immense stallions. Didé swung himself up into the saddle, his eyes casting about for pursuit. "This way!" he called to Nakaba.

They charged out of the stables into the moonlit palace grounds. Up ahead, the massive palace gates began to grind open, more guards rushing to cut them off. Nakaba shouted a guttural war cry and snapped the reins. The powerful horses put on a burst of speed, thundering past the guards before they could react.

Out into the sleeping city streets they rode, hoof-beats ringing off the stone buildings. They crashed through the undermanned southern gate, leaving it splintered in their wake. Then they were free, out on the open plains. The thick forests of Njo loomed ahead. Didé's Ona was closer than ever.