Stop,” the guard barks. “Here.”

I halt, in the middle of a stone hallway, in front of a big wooden door. My heart is hammering, but my hands are free, and I hold my chin up high, just to show these men that they don’t scare me.

Even though they do. Even though I’m being held prisoner by a beast and his guards despite the fact that I haven’t done anything wrong.

One of them steps forward and unlocks the door with a huge skeleton key, the iron clanking hollowly in the wood, and the door swings open.

I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding, relieved for the first time all day.

It’s a bedroom, not a cell. It’s plain and simple, sure, but given the rumors I’ve heard about the prince and the castle, I was afraid that I’d be chained to a wall and sleeping on the straw-covered floor.

“In,” the guard growls, and I step over the threshold.

I’m still nervous — no, terrified — but I feel slightly better. I feel like I might actually be able to sleep for a few minutes tonight, and I’m pretty sure they’re going to let me pee without demanding that I let them watch me go.

“You’ll be staying here,” he says, his voice still rough. “Clothes will be brought. Meals will be brought. There’s a bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower through that door.”

I take a few more steps into the room. I’m still pretty sure that they have no right to be holding me like this, and I’m nearly positive they have absolutely no proof that I’m the spy they’re claiming that I am, but at least I’m not chained up tonight.

“Any questions?” he barks.

“Can I have visitors?”

“No.”

“I want proof that you’ve let my father go.”

“You’ve got the prince’s word.”

“No, I’ve got you telling me what the prince said. The prince himself hasn’t said a thing.”

The guard frowns at me, his face barely moving. He looks at me for a long, long time, like he’s reconsidering letting me stay in this bedroom and taking me down to the dungeons instead.

“Your father will be returned to his home,” he says, and that ends the discussion.

He spins on his heel, turning his back, and I look frantically around the room, trying to think of something, anything else to say, because I don’t want to be shut in this room alone.

“Wait!” I yelp.

He turns.

“There’s nothing to do in here,” I say, letting my voice lower so I sound meeker, pleading. “Can’t I at least have a book or something?”

The guards all look at each other. One shrugs, then the other shrugs, and finally the third looks back at me.

“We’ll see,” he says gruffly.

And before I know it, they’re through the door, the heavy metal key clinking in the lock again, and I’m alone in this cold, plain bedroom.

* * *

I just get in the bed. I don’t know what else to do, so I curl up right in the middle with the lights off and wish I were somewhere else.

Like my own bed, for instance. Like anywhere but here, in this cold, horrible castle with this cold, horrible man.

At least they agreed to let my father go. All I can do now is hope that they follow through with their promise, because I’m pretty sure I’ve done everything I can on that front. I came here, I raised hell until… well, until I ended up in a bedroom that’s not mine, locked away for God only knows how long.

They can’t keep you indefinitely, I tell myself. There are laws, citizens have rights, your father knows people who’ll organize, start protests and hire lawyers, demand to see evidence that what they’re saying is true…

But it’s not comforting. Not at all, because I also know that for certain crimes — treason among them — the rules are different.

I don’t know how this happened. I mean, I can follow back the steps that led me here, but I’m too tired, shocked, and drained to understand how those things added up to me being kept prisoner in this room with no real explanation.

I don’t know what I’m going to do about the rest of my life, how anyone can explain this to my friends, who’ll run the bookstore while I’m gone. I was in such a panic when I left that I can’t even remember whether I locked the front door, so for all I know it’s being ransacked by hoodlums right now.

And despite all that, I can’t quite get Prince Julian out of my head. As much as I want this to all be a bad nightmare, I keep thinking about the hard lines of his face as he looked down at me, on the floor. The scar that runs down his neck.

His one bad eye. It should make him ugly, but… it doesn’t. It makes him look commanding, serious, in charge. The kind of man who says something and expects obedience, no matter what.

I don’t know what kind of obedience. I don’t let myself go down that path. Not right now. Instead I breathe deep. I try to make my mind stop spinning out of control. I try to make a plan.

And after hours and hours, I think I finally fall asleep.