Prince Aldric Thorne's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Prince Aldric Thorne woke to hands on his throat. Two guards dragged him from the bed before he could speak. He had slept in the enemy king's guest chamber for six months, a prisoner dressed as a hostage, waiting for word that his defeated kingdom of Vael was safe. He wanted his own freedom. More than that, he wanted his people fed through winter. Neither goal survived the moment a guard shoved a leather pouch into his face and said his family seal was stamped on it. They pulled him through the corridor in his nightshirt. He read the guards the way his father had taught him at seven years old, when he first learned to smile at strangers. Angry. Certain. Beyond bargaining. He tried anyway. He said the pouch was not his. He said he had never seen the white powder inside it. A steward held the pouch up to the torchlight and pointed at the seal pressed into the leather, and no one looked at Aldric's face after that. The courtyard was already full. The post stood in the center, thick wood bound in iron rings, chains hanging from the crossbeam. Aldric saw the king on the high balcony, watching without expression. Aldric dropped to his knees on the stones. He begged. He said he would swear on any relic they brought him. He said his father had sent him here in good faith. A guard cut the nightshirt off his back and lifted his wrists into the rings above his head. The first stroke opened him from shoulder to hip. He counted to four before he stopped counting. The whip had small barbs along its length, and each pull took skin with it. He heard himself cry out and hated the sound. He thought of the grain stores in Vael and how a dead prince could not argue for them. He held on to that until the eighth stroke, when he stopped holding on to anything. They cut him down and dragged him across the courtyard by the ankles. His back left a wet trail on the stones. The cell they threw him into was stone on three sides and iron bars on the fourth. A guard locked heavy manacles around his wrists and ran the chain through a ring in the wall. No water. No bread. The door slammed and the torch went with it. By the second night the fever came. Aldric hunched in his semi-standing position, hung upright and stationary by the shackles on his wrists. Something small moved along the wall near his feet, and he saw a rat watching him from the dark, its eyes catching the thin light from the corridor. He tried to pull his foot out of reach but the chain stopped him short. The rat’s eyes appeared to gleam with evil intention, and the wounded prince shuddered openly. But whether the rat was real, or a figment of his ill mind remained unclear. Aldric shivered, telling himself that the beast would leave him alone if he stopped watching it. When it moved again, a ragged shriek left his throat - but the creature made a hasty retreat. From the hallway outside his cell, there came the sound of rapid footsteps. Then the grate at the top opened, and a pair of eyes squinted into the darkness. “…Everything alright in there?” Aldric didn’t know the guard, and he was afraid to show weakness, but the tears that spilled down his cheeks at the humanizing question didn’t care for his dignity. “Please…” His voice crackled with emotion as he squeezed the words through. “I need water. I… I’m going to die like this.” The guard paused, considering the request with a careful quirk of his eyebrows and a deepening frown. Then he turned and walked away. Aldric cursed his desperation. He cursed this awful kingdom who only seemed to produce heartless monsters. He cursed his heart for daring to hope— The footsteps returned, slower this time. The creak of a key in the lock, and the deadbolt snapping open, before the door swung inward, and his small cell was invaded. “Here.” The guard held a small cup to the prince’s lips, and Aldric drank greedily from it, momentarily uncaring if he did so politely. When it was empty he sighed and settled back into his uncomfortable crouch, with a suspicious glance at the guard before a soft thanks left his lips. The knight seemed surprised, but said nothing more as he left. The sound of the deadbolt snapping back into place a declaration in itself. Aldric didn’t know his name, but it seemed the guard had taken pity on him, and he was grateful. His eyes closed again, as the fever raged, and he fell into restless dreams. When Aldric awoke next, his cell was again being visited, but this time it was a woman in white robes that entered, a healer. She cleaned and treated the princeling’s back under the watchful supervision of the guard. Aldric hardly had the words to thank them. Seeing the young prince tremble, the guard brought a blanket. Aldric was stunned by the man’s unexpected kindness, but he couldn’t help feeling suspicious of the altruism. Nothing was ever free in this world, and with a growing sense of dread the princeling wondered what this knight could possibly want from a prisoner - albeit a noble one. What was he planning to make the prince do? A brief flashback had the weakened prince shuddering under the memory of rough handling and a dark room. He opened his eyes to see the guard watching him carefully. Prince Aldric, quickly put up a wall between them, unwilling and unable to show his fear to this man. The guard smiled half-heartedly, and then escorted the healer from the room; leaving Aldric alone in the dark once again with only his troubled thoughts for company. Aldric fretted until an exhausted sleep took hold of him once more.