A Royal Rebellion Read Free Page B

with iron bars near the top. He rolled over on the thin pallet that counted as a bed, and squinted through the shadows. The light in the hall was bright enough for him to see the top of his sister-in-law’s head, her typically tamed curls fuzzy and piled high, bouncing as she tried to see through the window in the door.
    He laughed, the motion hurting his ribs and shoulders, but it felt good to make a sound that wasn’t wholly pain-filled. If only the rest of the world could see the future Queen of Cassia as she was now, bored and alone at night, dressed in her nightgown and wandering through the palace like a recalcitrant preteen anxious to avoid going to bed.
    “Oomph! Oh, bloody hell, why are these blasted chairs so damn heavy?” Mason heard her swear through the door, and he thought it likely that the guard was either dead, knocked unconscious, or absent to miss the racket Arianna was making in the hall. A clang, then the door shuddered, and suddenly Ari’s makeup smudged and tired face appeared in the window.
    “Oh! So it’s true then, King Henry has finally done it. He always said he was going to lock you up and throw away the key one of these days, but I never thought I’d actually see him do it,” she quipped, the light bright enough for him to see her white smile, her hands clutching the bars.
    “Such a stellar wit for so exalted a personage,” Mason growled, painfully sitting up. He blinked against the light that came through from the hall, shielding his eyes until he adjusted. He heard Ari gasp, and he was about to laugh, expecting her to fall on her butt in the hallway, but all he got was the sound of sniffling.
    “Are you crying?” he asked, wary even though they were separated by the door. Crying females always made him want to run away. There wasn’t much that scared him, but a female and tears did it every time. And he couldn’t escape right now, he was locked up in a medieval cell.
    He was again thankful that his psychotic bitch of a wife wasn’t the type to cry, staying disturbingly dry-eyed even when faced with the most devastating of news. Nothing made that woman flinch, and sentimental she was not. For instance, she had yet to come visit him in his comfy prison cell, and he had no doubt she knew he was here. She just didn’t care. She was most likely hanging on his father’s arm, the bitch.
    “Why, for Saint’s sake, are you crying?”
    And she was. Big tears ran down her cheeks, a hand over her mouth, and she stared at him, eyes tracing over his bare shoulders and chest, obviously seeing the scores across his flesh from fist and scorching hot poker. He’d had worse, truly, but to the relatively sheltered eyes of Princess Arianna, he must be horrendous looking indeed.
    “Mason, tell me what is going on! This instant!” she demanded, furiously wiping away her tears, her angry response coming out to play when confronted by unpleasant news. “You’ve been hurt! WHY? King Henry said you were merely in here for a few days as punishment for letting Eddie sneak out, and he’d let you out once you told him where Eddie and his little pet were! What the hell is going on?!”
    He could continue to cover for this bastard of a father as he had for the last several years, or should he reveal the truth? It was the spoiled, erratic, and temperamental princess on the other side of the door who’d been misled the most by the King and his machinations, and she had no clue. Perhaps the truth would out, after all. Their family and kingdom were about to shatter, and Mason was so tired of carrying the lies that hid the truth around with him every-damn-day.
    The only member of their family right now who was stain-free was Edward, and he was blissfully unaware. His life was about to change, for better or worse, and he felt a twinge of regret. Perhaps Eddie would be better off if he stayed silent. But the dishonor of their father’s actions left them all marred, and those actions drove every decision