Sold To The Cruel Prince

Chapter 186: The Rebels (2)

When they stepped inside, the noise of the festival seemed to vanish at once.

The place was little more than a wooden shed attached to what looked like the storage space of an inn. It was cluttered with crates and rough tables, with strips of meat hanging from the rafters and the smell of herbs, smoke, and blood clinging stubbornly to the air.

Yet beneath the unpolished appearance, there was movement and purpose. Men and women were gathered there in quiet clusters, some tending to the injured, some sitting with bandaged limbs or bruised faces, and others moving about with the practiced efficiency of people who had long since learned how to survive without waiting for anyone else to save them.

The moment Aveline entered, the room changed.

Heads turned.

Eyes settled on her.

Then the people looked to Aelion, not with hostility exactly, but with silent question, as though asking whether he had truly brought her here of all places, and whether she was safe to be trusted among them.

A few glanced toward the back of the room, where a narrow passage had been hidden behind a hemp curtain, and from there came the muffled sounds of movement, of someone speaking softly to a wounded man, of someone else rinsing cloth in a basin.

Aveline did not mind the suspicion.

In fact, it only made her more curious.

These were the rebels. These were the people who had been willing to throw themselves against the crown in the middle of a festival. Some of them were hurt. Some of them were helping the hurt. All of them looked very ordinary at a glance, and yet ordinary people did not usually become rebels unless they had been pushed too far.

She wanted to understand them. More than that, she wanted to know what sort of world had driven them to this point.

So when one of the wounded men was brought near, she simply stepped forward and helped with the dressing as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Her hands were careful. Competent. She had the easy efficiency of someone who had been made to do practical things long before she had ever been given the luxury of choice.

The rebels noticed that at once. One of the women glanced at her work, then at her face, and something in her expression softened.

Aveline, in turn, began to speak.

Not because she was trying to win their affection, but because she knew what it was like to be treated as less than a person. She told them, quietly at first and then more openly, about the house she had come from in Aurelmont. About being made to feel less than a servant in a noble home. About how little value she had once been allowed to have.

Even Aelion did not seem to know that part of her story, and when he heard it, he looked at her with a softness that made her chest tighten unexpectedly. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

The room shifted after that.

It was subtle, but real.

They began to trust her more.

Not completely. Not blindly. But enough to speak more freely, enough to tell their own stories in return. They were simple people in the way the powerful never were. Their griefs were plain. Their anger was plain. Their loyalty to one another was perhaps the plainest thing of all.

They were united by a hatred that had not been born from vanity, but from hunger, humiliation, and years of watching the noble class feed itself while others suffered.

Aveline listened.

And the more she listened, the worse she felt for them.

The more they talked, the more it became clear that this was not a gathering of faceless agitators. These were people with broken hands, sick children, missing brothers, vanished wages, and burned farms. These were people who had been squeezed until rebellion was all they had left that felt like dignity.

A place where there were no class separating them. Everyone was known by their names and not their titles. A place where everyone was equal.

Aelion stayed close enough to make her feel at ease, and that too seemed to help. It made her presence in the room less threatening, less strange. Some of the rebels even began to tease him after a while, their suspicion easing into something almost familiar.

"So this is why you were so eager to bring her in?"

"Finally found a woman, did you?"

A few of the women exchanged knowing looks, and one of the men even gave a low whistle that made Aveline laugh despite herself.

She waved a hand dismissively. "I have a man. Aelion is more like my brother."

The room erupted at once.

There were loud whoops, delighted sighs, and exaggerated sounds of disappointment from those who had clearly been hoping for something more scandalous.

Aelion looked mildly offended, which only made the laughter worse.

Aveline, for her part, grinned as though she had just won something.

And for the first time since entering that cramped, smoky little room, she felt the weight of caution ease just enough to let herself breathe.

After a few minutes, Aelion was called inside.

Aveline did not turn toward the curtain. She stayed where she was, talking with the others instead, listening to the flow of their stories as naturally as if she had always belonged in a room like this. She found that she liked it. Stories felt warmer than history. Better than those obnoxiously ornate books that wrapped truth in expensive language and pretended that made it noble. Here, people spoke plainly. They told the truth as they had lived it. It was messier, rougher, and far more alive.

From them, she learned that there was a severe shortage of cotton in the kingdom.

That alone made her frown.

Cotton was not some luxury item. It was warmth. It was blankets, padding, winter clothing, something to keep the cold from creeping into bone and breath and making life miserable. Aveline knew that better than most. After her parents died, she had been left in the Willowgrave mansion with very little protection from the elements, and she remembered too well what it felt like to shiver through cold nights while pretending not to care.

"Surely the crown officials have to do something," she said.

Her words were met with a collective look of disbelief, then a wave of tired dismissal so immediate it nearly spoke for itself.

Inside, Aelion pulled the hemp curtain closed behind him.

One by one, the others drifted out, until only Aelion remained with another man who stood a little apart from the rest. He had silver hair that fell to his shoulders and a face that had been worn into severity by life, though he could not have been much older than his thirties. Still, something about him made him look older than that. Not in years, but in burden.

"Uncle," Aelion said, smiling as he stepped forward.

Then he leaned closer and whispered into her ear, the words low enough that only the man beside him could hear. "I’m sure I’ve found the Dawn Hare, Uncle."