Page 11

M orning approached behind a layer of thick, dark clouds, and Iona, unfortunately, had not died sometime during the night. She stood in the misty castle courtyard, removed from the commotion of horses and half-loaded carriages, with her charcoal gray cloak bundled around her for warmth against the biting air.

Aedan, at her side, shifted his stance from one foot to the other. “I tried to weasel my way into the group, but your father absolutely refused.”

“I’m sure Besseta will thank him for it,” she said dully. “I can’t imagine she appreciates how much of your time I already commandeer.”

“She doesn’t mind. She knows how much you mean to me.”

The remark broke her from her despondent trance. She looked up at him gratefully. “You didn’t have to see us off.”

“I might kick myself for the rest of my life if I didn’t,” he uttered under his breath, and the lines between his brows matched the knots that tied her gut.

She had never traveled alongside Lisenn before. Now the sisters would not only share the same journey, but they would ride in the same carriage. They would share a single lady’s maid, too, with Lisenn’s current girl taking that position while Bina remained behind, no less dismayed at this development than Iona herself.

Any kind of “mishap” could occur going there or coming back. Lisenn, some twenty feet away with the Caprians, was all sparkling laughter in her blood-red cloak and traveling gown. The color suited her dark locks and milky skin, but it painted a ghastly image in Iona’s eyes.

A call sounded for their departure. Members of the royal guard mounted before and after the string of carriages. Aedan enveloped Iona in one final hug. “Be careful,” he whispered in her ear, “and if you ever feel unsafe, just run. You’ll find help and harbor among the people of Wessett if you need it.”

Her stomach twisted. “You’re making this worse by saying things like that.”

He didn’t retract the advice. Nor did he apologize. Instead, he tightened his embrace. “Maybe if I hang on to you long enough, they’ll start down the road and leave you behind.”

Such was not her luck. Her father, after handing his elder daughter into a waiting carriage, called Iona’s name.

She pulled from Aedan with a plummeting heart.

“Be careful,” he said again, and she nodded.

Her father’s goodbye was more aloof. “Your cousin seems excessively attached to you. I don’t recommend such closeness; it only breeds regret in later years.”

Iona glanced back to Aedan’s forlorn figure in the semidarkness. “He’s like a brother to me.”

“And family can never turn on one another?”

Her attention snapped to her father’s face, but he didn’t meet her gaze. Instead, he motioned her to the carriage where a liveried servant waited to hand her up.

Lisenn, already seated in the dim interior, observed her sister’s entrance with glittering eyes and a slow smile spreading across her face. Iona pressed herself into the corner furthest from that malicious leer. The door swung, like a trap that would pin her into her personal nightmare.

A hand caught it at the last second. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” said a woman’s voice outside. “Are we allowed to ride in here as well?”

Beyond the glass, the servant gibbered something unintelligible, but the petitioner didn’t wait to decipher its import. Instead she pushed into the opening, filling the doorway as she mounted the carriage steps.

Iona met the gaze of Clervie, who plastered on a smile. “Elouan’s planning to sleep the whole way, and he snores. You don’t mind us hitching along in here with you, do you?”

“We” included Denoela, who waited impatiently behind her.

At the far side of the carriage, Lisenn had gone rigid.

Clervie registered her presence. “Oh, how stupid of me. Of course you’re the one I should be asking, Your Royal Highness. You’ve been so cordial that I just assumed—”

“Of course,” Lisenn said, her voice clipped.

Clervie pointed between them. “Did you two want to sit together?”

From behind her, Denoela released an aggravated groan. “Just plant yourself already and let me up! Everyone’s waiting on us.”

Accordingly, Clervie twisted around to settle on Iona’s side, directly across from the crown princess. Denoela mounted the steps and pulled the door shut behind her, dropping into the last available corner.

“It’ll be nice traveling with only women for once,” she told Lisenn as the carriage rolled from the courtyard. “I can’t remember the last time I was so fortunate.”

The crown princess spared her a tight smile.

Iona, meanwhile, pressed deeper into her chair, her lungs cinched tight and her right hand clasped protectively around her left wrist. She was a rabbit caged among wolves. Although the pair of Caprians couldn’t hold a candle to her sister’s malice, their bygone cruelty yet played upon her mind: bullying and back-biting, four years with hardly a moment’s repose. A week of pretending to be nice couldn’t undo that legacy. Had they joined this carriage to continue it, or did they, like their leader, profess to have changed?

But only Jaoven and Neven had actually apologized to her, and that only because she represented an obstacle between the Caprians and their goals. Sincerity for wrongdoing played no part.

Or if it did, she amended, recalling Jaoven’s earnestness that second morning, it played a secondary part. She still had trouble believing he harbored any true regrets aside from those resulting from her unexpected change in status.

“So you often travel in mixed company?” Lisenn asked the pair of women. “Here in Wessett that could be grounds for a scandal.”

Clervie hummed. “It was in Capria, too, before the war. When you’re fighting for your life, you forget about trivialities like the sex of the person fighting next to you.”

“I see.” The crown princess folded her hands in her lap and shifted her attention out the window.

Unperturbed, Clervie turned to the younger sister instead. “You’d have made a good soldier, Yanna. You have a mind for survival.”

Wary of how Lisenn’s focus shot back to her, Iona stiffened. “Don’t—”

“She’s right,” Denoela said. “You would’ve been an asset in the field—assuming you were on our side.” To the mutinous expression that crossed Iona’s face, she chuckled, rueful. “Maybe we should be glad you were Wessettan and not from Ghemp after all.”

“What’s this?” Lisenn cocked her head, a curious gleam in her eyes.

Iona’s pulse escalated. “It’s nothing.”

The quick denial only caused more damage. Clervie pointed from one corner to the other, and whether her confusion was genuine or practiced, it drew Lisenn in. “You’ve never told your own sister about your time at the Royal College? Why not?”

“Because I don’t like to talk about the past,” Iona said through clenched teeth .

Lisenn could smell blood, and she always knew the best method to pursue it. In the blink of an eye, she became the picture of sisterly concern. “Why would they think you were from Ghemp? Is that what you told them?”

When Iona clamped her mouth shut, the elder princess switched her audience. To Clervie she said, “Our parents sent her abroad to keep us apart. We distracted one another from our studies too much. I understand it now: the future of Wessett lies in my hands, and it’s my duty to learn everything I can about being a good and just ruler. But it was so difficult when we were children. I was sick with worry for Iona all the time she was gone.”

She must have concocted this story when the Caprians first arrived, a ready excuse for the distance between the pair of sisters, and one that painted her in a loving, compassionate light. It rolled off her tongue so glibly, a lie born of steady practice.

And if Iona contradicted her now, it would only make Lisenn appear that much more sympathetic and trigger vengeance yet to come when they were alone again.

“Did she have a difficult time at your college?” the elder sister asked, false anguish practically dripping from her.

“No. It was fine,” Iona said. Surely the Caprians would let the subject drop. It reflected terribly on them, and who would want that?

Someone like Clervie of Trevilis, as it turned out. “Fine? Hardly. You were miserable there, and it was our fault.”

Her teeth set on edge, and the pad of her thumb dug against the very spot where her arm had once broken. “Why are you doing this?”

Clervie met her gaze, her dark eyes steady. “Wounds can’t heal unless you get the poison out.”

“I don’t have any wounds.”

“If you don’t, I do. And Denoela, and everyone else who tormented anyone at that school. How can we make amends if—?”

Sick at heart, Iona cut off the lofty speech. “You don’t have to make amends, not here, and not like this. ”

But her declaration came too late. “Tormented?” Lisenn, like a child about to cry over a sickly fawn, reached across the gap to grasp her sister’s knee. “Iona, were you tormented there? How could you never say a word? I’m your sister .”

Every ounce of Iona’s self-control poured into maintaining her pose, into not wrenching her knee from beneath her sister’s touch and angling her whole body into the tufted velvet that lined the carriage interior. She needed the Caprians to believe her sister was kind. She needed them to take Lisenn away.

But she also needed space to breathe, where the walls and ceiling didn’t seem to press in and down upon her.

“She probably didn’t want to worry you,” Denoela said, her voice seeming too far off in Iona’s ears. “It’s difficult to talk about such things to one’s own family.”

Lisenn’s insistence escalated. “But what kind of torment? You have to tell me. Please, I must know it all.”

What transports would such tales put her in? What ideas would they spark? Iona, cobbling enough of her senses for one final escape attempt, looked Clervie straight in the eyes and said, “If you truly wish to make amends, you’ll let the subject drop.”

“I won’t allow that,” said Lisenn before the other girl could respond. “If I marry your crown prince, I’m going to be your queen one day. You wouldn’t withhold something this important from your queen, would you?”

For the first time since entering the carriage, Clervie and Denoela both seemed uncertain of themselves. Iona, trembling, waited for them to capitulate, to expose her humiliation to the smothered delight of her worst enemy.

Across the carriage, Clervie met Denoela’s gaze and, in an under-voice, said, “I think I’ve approached this all wrong.”

Denoela settled deeper into her corner. “That’s a rarity for you.”

To this odd banter, Lisenn blinked. “I beg your pardon? What does that mean? ”

But Clervie switched subjects, her countenance suddenly alight with curiosity. “If your sister went to the Royal College in Capria, did you attend a similar school here?”

Lisenn eyed her, suspicious. “I’ve had private tutors my whole life. We don’t have the blessing of such a college here.”

“Ours was sponsored by the former royal family, for centuries. They wanted a place for the future generation of leaders to learn policy and make connections among their peers. You have nothing similar?”

A pretty smile broke upon her face. “I’m afraid we don’t. You said yours was sponsored by the former royal family? Does the current family not want to keep the tradition?”

Clervie and Denoela exchanged a telling glance. “They might, but only with reforms. It hasn’t been determined yet.”

The elder princess fiddled with the fringe ornamentation on the edge of her cloak. “What kind of reforms? What went wrong?”

For all her desire to avoid talking of the Royal College, Iona longed to ask the same question. The college had served the upper Caprian nobles well. At what point during or after their civil war had they decided it was an environment poisonous enough to abolish?

Perhaps the lower nobles had not been so eager to die for a crown that relished grinding them beneath its heel. The Royal College may well have been a microcosm for their broader conflict.

“The college became a society in its own right,” Clervie said, sinking into her chair as though settling in for a long story. “It had its own rules, its own traditions, and the students followed them blindly. Foolishly.” Her eyes slid toward Iona, toward the fingers yet clamped around her left wrist. The princess shifted her hands into her lap instead, fists clenched. “We prided ourselves on our rank. Once a year, the teachers trekked up to the castle for a conference with the king, and the students remained behind on the campus with a skeleton staff and strict instructions: anyone caught with a toe beyond the grounds in the time between when the provost left and when he returned would be expelled. We were supposed to study for final exams during that week.”

Lisenn chuckled. “I can only imagine that forbidding students to leave made them keen to do it.”

“It probably would have,” said Denoela, “except that the students had a longstanding tradition of their own: we always played a certain game.”

“The Hunt,” Clervie added with a nod.

Iona’s knuckles turned white against the backdrop of her charcoal-colored skirt. She directed her attention to the world beyond the carriage windows, where a pale dawn spread through Wessett’s capital city. A glimpse of the ocean flitted between buildings every time they crossed an intersecting street.

The pair of Caprians were determined to broach this forbidden subject, even if they had to take a roundabout way. She tried to close her ears to the talk, but utterly failed.

“And what were the rules of this Hunt?” Lisenn asked, a note of intrigue in her voice.

In Iona’s periphery, Denoela held both hands palm-up as though comparing invisible weights. “All of the students divided into two groups: those who hid, and those who hunted. The game could start any time during that week, and when the signal rang across the school, those who hid had half an hour to escape the main building and disappear onto the grounds.”

Lisenn’s interest ebbed, her expression flattening. “This sounds like a game for children.”

“It was,” Clervie said, “only none of us realized what children we were. The school grounds were extensive, three square miles of park and woodland, with lakes and rivers for classes in swimming and rowing. And the game didn’t end until all the prey had been caught. Sometimes it lasted for days.”

That prospect appealed more to Lisenn. “Did you hunt or hide, Iona?” she asked, careful not to let too much glee bleed into her voice. Iona observed her ghostly reflection in the window but did not turn. She would likely pay for the impertinence later, but in this moment, she didn’t care.

Surmising that she would receive no answer, the elder princess turned her question elsewhere. “Clervie, did my sister hunt or hide?”

Stiff-shouldered, Iona waited for the response.

But Clervie side-skirted it. “We decided by rank: those of higher birth hunted, and those of lower birth hid.”

Surprise pulsed up Iona’s spine. She twisted around; Clervie stared somberly back at her, inviting her to betray the shameful truth herself. Iona, eyes narrowed, looked away again.

On the opposite side of the carriage, Lisenn regarded this interchange. “So Iona must have hunted, then. Unless… didn’t you say she claimed to come from Ghemp? What rank did she carry?”

Clervie evaded again. “Your sister was a master at the Hunt. All three years I participated, she was the best player in the school.”

Was the girl trying to flatter her? It was a ridiculous lie, but Iona resisted meeting her gaze again. Beyond the window, the city gave way to stone walls and hawthorn hedges, with meadows rolling into the distant haze. Clervie neatly shifted her story again.

“The problem with such a tradition, as you can imagine, lay in the disparity between hunters and prey. Because the prey always came from families of lower rank, they couldn’t risk expulsion by fleeing the grounds for that week. Instead, they were forced to skulk through the woods or face the ridicule of capture. And it happened year after year, generation upon generation, with no way for those in the lower ranks to avoid this fate unless they also sacrificed their education and the connections they could make within the Royal College.”

“So it bred unrest in the lower nobility,” Lisenn concluded. “And that influenced your civil war?”

“Relationships where one party dominates and the other submits can’t last unless the submitter allows it,” Clervie said. “When they tire of oppression, they have only to revolt. ”

“And those who dominate have only to kill them—in self-defense, of course.”

Naturally her sister would jump to that conclusion. Iona’s fingernails dug crescent-moons into her palms, a specter of her own possible fate staring her in the face. True, Lisenn had never used lethal force against her, but that was no guarantee that she never would. The more Iona rebelled, the more violently her sister might respond.

“There is another option,” Denoela said. “Those of higher rank can acknowledge their lower-ranked peers as equals. No one has to die.”

The crown princess tipped her head, as though considering this. “But then the ranks become meaningless.”

Clervie laughed. “But Your Highness, they’re meaningless either way. A king who kills his subordinates to keep his power over them has no power when they’re dead.”

A flash of annoyance—of the true Lisenn, who made Iona’s blood run cold—crossed her pretty face. “Fortunately, Wessett doesn’t carry such traditions among its rising generations. Perhaps that’s why we have no Royal College here. Yours predates our country. The children of Wessettan nobles would have attended when Wessett was only a Caprian province instead of a kingdom in its own right.”

“Perhaps their experiences there prompted them to secede,” Denoela said. “The island nobles decided not to let the mainlanders dominate them anymore. And you are stronger than us now because of it.”

Lisenn lapsed into silence, rubbing one finger along her chin as she looked out her window. In the quiet that followed, Iona chanced a look at their Caprian travel-mates.

What had been the purpose of discussing that topic in particular? At school, Denoela had reveled in her superiority, reminiscent enough of Lisenn that Iona had avoided her altogether. Clervie, quiet and cunning, had wielded her rank as a weapon, forcing those beneath her to do her bidding on threat of harassment if they failed.

The Hunt had not contained itself to a single week. It ran the whole year long, with the prey forever under attack .

For Iona, it was running still, though under different terms. If, as Clervie claimed, she was a master at the game, that was only because she’d been playing some form of it her whole life.