" For those first days it had taken all my energy just to keep up and not embarrass myself. But the regular food, and the rest, had restored a lot of my energy, and with it came curiosity.
I said tentatively, “You know, I have one or two questions…”
Amol’s eyelids lifted like he was thinking, Just one or two? and Snap took her underlip firmly between her teeth. She seemed to have the quickest temper, but she was also the first to laugh. Both of them turned expectantly to their captain, who said calmly, “Please feel free to ask, Lady Meliara. I’ll answer what I can.”
“Well, first, there’s that dungeon. Now, don’t think I’m complaining, but the last thing I remember is Shevraeth’s knife coming between me and a hot poker, you might say. I wake up with you, and we’re on the road, going north. Remalna-city is south. I take it I’m not on my way back to being a guest of Greedy Galdran?”
Snap’s head dropped quickly at the nickname for the King, as if to hide her laughter, but Amol snickered openly.
“No, my lady,” Nessaren said.
“Well, then, it seems to me we’re just about to the border. If we’re going to Tlanth, we ought to be turning west.”
“We are not going to Tlanth, my lady.”
I said with a deep feeling of foreboding, “Can you tell me where we are going?”
“Yes, my lady. Home. To Renselaeus.”
Not home to me, I thought, but because they had been so decent, I bit the comment back and just shook my head. “Why?”
“I do not know that. My orders were to bring you as quickly as was comfortable for you to travel.”
“I’d like to go home,” I said, polite as it was possible for me to be.
Nessaren’s expression blanked, and I knew she was about to tell me I couldn’t.
I said quickly, “It’s not far. I just want to see my brother, and let him know what has happened to me. He must be worried--he might even think me dead.”
At the words my brother her eyes flickered, but otherwise there was no change in her expression. When I was done speaking she said quietly, with a hint of regret, “I am sorry, my lady. I have my orders.”
I tried once again. “A message to Branaric, then? Please. You can read it--you can write it--“
She shook her head once, her gaze not on me, but somewhere beyond the trees. We’d ceased to be companions, even in pretense--which left only enemies. “We’re to have no communication with anyone outside of our own people,” she said.
My first reaction was disbelief. Then I thought of that letter of thanks I’d planned on writing, and even though I had not told anyone, humiliation burned through me, followed by anger all the more bright for the sense of betrayal that underlay it all. Why betrayal? Shevraeth had never pretended to be on my side. Therefore he had saved my life purely for his own ends. Worse, my brother was somehow involved with his plans; I remembered Nessaren’s subtle reaction to his mention, and I wondered if there had been some sort of reference to Bran in that letter Nessaren had just received. What else could this mean but that I was again to be used to force my brother to surrender?
Fury had withered all my good feelings, but I was determined not to show any of it, and I sat with my gaze on my hands, which were gripped in my lap, until I felt that I had my emotions under control again. "

― Sherwood Smith , Crown Duel (Crown & Court, #1)