Page 1

CHAPTER 1

Amelie swung the sword at her sister.

“You’ll never take me alive!” yelled Colette.

“As you wish,” replied Amelie. “We fight to the death, you cur.”

“Cur?” Colette fell about giggling, her sword hanging at her side. “Are we pirates now? I thought we were playing knights.”

Amelie frowned, her sword still raised. “We are not playing anything. We are practicing. What if raiders attack us before our brothers return? A whole band of them could creep out of the forest and invade our cottage in the night. Shouldn’t we know how to defend ourselves?”

“Dear sister, you are twenty-three years on this earth. Have you not outgrown your formidable imagination?” Colette crossed the courtyard into the blue shade of the ancient oak tree. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand, then sipped cool water from a pail. “Raiders do not come this far inland, for we are too poor to be enticing. They haunt the merchant trails and seaside villages. Places with castles, and jewels—things worth stealing.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” said Amelie, finally letting her sword fall. She joined her sister in the shade, taking a sip of water herself. Her chestnut hair fell in shiny waves around her flushed face. “What if you were set upon without warning?”

The midday summer sun filled the countryside with buttery warmth. On the other side of the courtyard, the family cottage stood modest and neat among the towering trees of the forest. Bees buzzed in the fragrant flower beds and a creek burbled just beyond the tree line.

“Well, that depends,” said Colette with an impish grin. “Can I choose who sets upon me?”

Colette was two years younger than her sister, blonde-haired, with freckles across her nose. Both women had large brown eyes, like their older brothers and late mother.

“I think not,” replied Amelie, gazing at the cobalt sky and white puffs of cloud above the treetops. “I believe that would go against the very notion.”

“Oh, do indulge me, though. The heavens would not set a hideous man upon me.”

“And you say I have an overactive imagination? Besides, I don’t care what a man looks like—his heart and mind are what matters.”

Colette scoffed. “So you say. But wait until a square-jawed Hercules sweeps you off your feet and makes you his own. You’ll change your tune quickly.”

Amelie swatted her sister. “Hercules can keep his sweeping to himself.”

She lowered the pail into the well by a rope to fetch more water.

Colette leaned back against the oak tree. “Oh, please. You think about men. I see how lost you become in those books of yours. You will not convince me it’s all tea parties and noble causes. Handsome brutes lie within those pages. Indecent proposals. Burning desire.” She wriggled her eyebrows. “There’s sex in those books, admit it.”

Amelie hauled the overflowing pail from the well. “Occasionally. If it’s essential to the story.”

“Essential to the story?” parroted Colette with a sigh. “Now where’s the fun in that? Why not have tea parties, noble causes, and sex?”

Amelie set the pail on the grass and narrowed her eyes at her sister. “You talk as if you know of such things.”

Colette held up her hands. “I don’t. Of course, I don’t. Not firsthand, at any rate. But perhaps I would like to.”

“Oh, gods.” Amelie giggled. “What am I going to do with you? Please do not ever speak that way in front of Raphael. He will lock you in your chambers until your hair turns grey, and I shan’t think him unwise for it.”

“I am only teasing,” said Colette with a reassuring smile. “Mostly.”

“Well, you know I would never betray your confidences,” replied Amelie. “A woman’s imagination should be her own, after all.”

Colette smoothed the skirt of her dress. She and Amelie wore matching garments sewn from the same bolt of periwinkle-blue cotton. The only difference was in the style, and that Amelie’s had accumulated several tears on the hem from tramping through the forest in search of mushrooms and wild spearmint.

The swords were similar, too. Their eldest brother, Raphael, had brought them from Port Hyacinth, the seaside capital of Velandia kingdom. He’d served there on the royal guard but was discharged upon their father’s death last year, to take care of his three siblings.

“You can’t say you never think about meeting a man,” said Colette, pushing off the tree trunk. “Do you not wish to fall in love?”

At the mention of love, Amelie’s heart twinged. Her books were more than tea parties and noble causes, it was true. But they were also more than sex. They told of faraway lands and impossible feats and strange creatures. Amelie longed for adventure—to experience a world bigger than her own. But love? That was a far trickier beast, in her mind.

When she thought of love, she’d recall the utter brokenness of her late father when her mother passed away, many years ago. The idea of such pain was far more terrifying than any raider or demon.