The Lost Princess Returns Read online

  This would be one of those times.

  “Stand and be a man,” I said to Kral in Dasnarian, deliberately needling him. He rose to his feet, strong and tall, blue eyes wary. “How dare you,” I sneered at him, letting my anger shine. “You want to paint more blood on my hands, hang the responsibility for your death around my neck? Leave me to face your grieving widow? That is no reparation. You’re sorry for the part you played in what happened to me? Then live and make things right again.”

  To my surprise, Jepp nodded. “That is Danu’s way,” she said, in reasonably good Dasnarian. “Your death serves no one, but a life well lived tips the scales back to justice.”

  I nodded back. Then she turned and kicked Kral in the shin with a hard-tipped boot. He flinched and scowled at her. “That stung, hystrix.”

  “I sure hope so,” she fired back. “What in Danu’s tits were you thinking, springing that shit on me?”

  “It’s between me and Jenna—and I knew you’d try to talk me out of it.”

  “Ivariel,” I corrected, lifting my chin when he gave me a puzzled frown. “I left Jenna behind in a waterfront inn in Sjør, along with the diamond ring that had wedded her to a monster. She stayed in that room where she’d been left alone because her captor figured her for too stupid and timid to leave on her own via an open window. But I took her dancer’s legs and silent grace to elude you, Kral. Jenna was uneducated, but I have learned, so many things. I am Ivariel.”

  Kral eyed me with new glimmers of respect. Then he bowed to me, as he would to another man. “I greet you, Ivariel, who I recognize as my full-blood sister. Many years have passed—too many—and no apology is enough for what I did to you, and for what I stood by and allowed our family to do you, but I’ve forfeited the ambition that drove me. I understand you’re looking to put things right again, and I’m at your service.”

  “We both are,” Jepp put in, laying a hand on his arm. “Where Kral goes, I go—and I claim a friendship with your sisters, Inga and Helva, and with other women of the palace. My blades are in your service.”

  A relief washed through me that I hadn’t expected. Nobody expected me to forgive Kral, and that made my path forward much easier. “I accept your help and your blades,” I replied formally.

  Kral glanced wistfully at the sea. “Except I’m down a blade. Did you really have to throw it overboard? That was a really good sword.”

  Shockingly, I nearly laughed. By the twitch of Harlan’s mouth, he suppressed laughter, too. And I suddenly understood how Harlan had managed to forgive Kral. Our brother truly had changed, finding a new humility, a humor that made him more human. And I remembered, too, that Kral had been molded and warped to fit Hulda’s ambitions as surely as I had.

  I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Better to lose your sword than your head, brother.”

  Everyone relaxed. Marskal and Zynda edged into the previously tense circle. Zynda looked perfectly lovely and human—as if she’d never been anything else—her long, black hair coiled up and held in place with jeweled pins, her blue silk gown pristine. She glanced up at a whoosh of wings, and Zyr landed on a cleared space of deck, running a few steps to burn off the speed. Once he came to a halt, Karyn dismounted and Zyr became a man, neatly dressed, long hair tied back.

  The shapeshifting thing made my head hurt, my mind somehow not quite able to keep up with the shift in reality.

  “You get more used to it,” Jepp said beside me in Common Tongue. She smiled thinly when I started. I’d have to get used to these silent-footed warrior women, too. “Over time,” she clarified, “your brain quits trying to see the change from one thing to the other and you just accept that the hummingbird is now your gorgeous friend.” She eyed me, then thrust out a hand. “I’m Jepp.”

  Since I knew that, I took this for a more formal introduction. “I’m Ivariel.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, studying me. “I’ve heard a lot about you—at least, about you as a girl. Kral said you were stunningly beautiful and I thought he exaggerated, but no. You might be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

  “Even compared to Queen Amelia?” I asked, amused and more than a little taken aback. The seraglio of the Imperial Palace had concentrated the most beautiful women of the Dasnarian Empire—and I’d never seen anyone as lovely as Amelia.

  Jepp dashed her hand to the side. “Eh, that’s magic. You get used to that sheen of the goddess around her after a while, too. But you—you’re the real thing. That hair of yours, it really does look like ivory.”

  “I’m the product of meticulous breeding,” I replied, hearing the bitterness in my own voice. “Like a racehorse or a hunting hound, I was carefully bred over generations to be decorative, and pleasing to the male eye.”

  “The female eye, too,” she replied with a flirtatious smile.

  “Jepp, don’t hit on my sister,” Kral said, sounding both annoyed and amused.

  Jepp winked at me saucily. “Your brother has this monogamy thing, and I’ve promised to go along with it, so I’m really not making an offer.” She leaned in to whisper. “But if I were free…”

  I laughed, and her grin widened. Kral and Harlan, standing together, watched us with cautious smiles, too. Sobering, I said, “I knew your mother. Did they tell you?”

  She stilled, cocked her head as if hearing a distant sound. “No. And Andi spoke to me this morning to warn of your arrival. She might have mentioned that.”

  “I think she knew I wanted to be the one to tell you.” I took a breath. “Kaja saved my life.”

  “Will you tell me about her?” Jepp asked quietly. “I was a girl when she died.”

  “I know. She was so proud of you, her Jesperanda.”

  Jepp’s mouth twisted even as her eyes shone with unshed tears. “You did know her. She was the only one to call me that.”

  “Yes, I met her on the ship I took to escape Dasnaria. More to the point, she cornered me. She taught me how to hold a blade, how to adapt my dances for fighting, and simple things like counting and how to stop being so afraid. When we reached the Port of Ehas, she took me to the Temple of Danu and gave me my first sword. Your mother was my first and best friend—and she saved me in every way possible.”

  “That sounds like Mom,” Jepp replied in a hushed tone. “Thank you for this gift.”

  “Thank you, for lending me your mother.”

  She nodded, eyes bright. “Should we hug?” she asked. “I feel like we should hug.”

  I laughed, feeling watery also, and opened my arms. She seized me in a tight embrace, then kissed the side of my neck, bared by my upswept braids. “Thank you,” she said again, then released me.

  Stepping back, she surveyed the gathering. “So, if we’re done with nobly sacrificing our lives and getting weepy over people long dead, can we get to the business of talking war?”

  Oh yes, she was definitely Kaja’s daughter.

  “You can’t be serious about sailing an army of elephants to Dasnaria,” Kral declared, scowling at me.

  We sat around a table in the captain’s dining room, the woodwork inlaid with a master carpenter’s hand. Ochieng possessed considerable skill in the art, so I knew enough to recognize a master at work—even though this style was distinctly Dasnarian. Another disconcerting mix of feelings washed over me as those two worlds overlapped, my recent past mingling with the distant past to make for an unsettling present. I’d left Dasnaria knowing so little about my country outside my small cage, and now I returned much wiser and more experienced—and yet most things of the empire were new to me.

  I raised a brow at Kral’s challenging statement, oddly reassured by his arrogant behavior, so much more familiar than the humble, apologetic Kral. “I am absolutely serious. My husband Ochieng grew up training elephants. When the barrier expanded to include Nyambura, flooding us with magic, his native talent blossomed into a magical ability to care for and sustain the elephants. He can keep them sufficiently warm.”

  Kral waved t
hat away. “Eh, it’s summer in Dasnaria right now, just as it is here. Warmth isn’t the concern.”

  I blinked at that, realigning my assumptions. Until my wedding, I’d lived all my life in the cloistered confines of the seraglio at the Imperial Palace. When I left on my wedding journey, a week after my eighteenth birthday, it had been bitter winter outside. Somehow I’d always thought of Dasnaria as eternally covered in deep snow, bitterly cold, with overcast skies only occasionally parting to reveal a distant sun in pale skies. A flush of shame roiled my stomach at the reminder of pitiful, stupid Jenna, who hadn’t had the wit to recognize Dasnaria had seasons, too.

  Harlan, across from me, watched me with steady gray eyes, perhaps guessing at my embarrassment. He didn’t say anything, but gave me a moment to regain my poise by turning to Kral. “Don’t dance around the issue, shark,” he said. “Just spit out your concern.”

  Kral gestured around him with an incredulous expression. “Have you forgotten where you come from, rabbit? We’re talking about invading the fucking Dasnarian Empire! The closest port to the Imperial Palace is Jofarrstyr, which is heavily fortified. Then it’s a journey of several hours—at a good clip—to reach the Imperial Palace, which is impregnable.”

  “It is,” Jepp put in, looking around the table. “Of all of us, only Kral, Harlan, Ivariel and I have been there and—”

  “I don’t count,” I interrupted.

  She closed her open mouth, giving me a fierce glare. “Don’t ever say you don’t count. You absolutely matter, to everyone in this room, and more.”

  “I mean,” I said gently, “that my experience with the Imperial Palace is quite limited. I only left the seraglio for my wedding and a few associated events. When I departed on my wedding journey, I was secluded in an enclosed carriage. The entourage paused for me to have one look at the Imperial Palace—the famous view, from the end of the lake,” I added for Karyn’s benefit, and she smiled nostalgically. “That’s the one time I’ve seen the palace from the outside. That is why it’s not useful to count me as someone who knows the place,” I said to Jepp, giving her a wry look. “Ironically enough, you know the place of my birth better than I do.”

  Unabashed, she gazed back thoughtfully. “Just as you knew my mother better than I did, at least as adult to adult.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me, and I nodded solemnly. How oddly like mirrors we were, Jepp and I, connected by so many threads. Time enough to muse over that later. “Kral makes an excellent point,” I said, making myself look at him—and savoring the surprise in his glacier blue eyes. “Even with the elephants, our warriors, and those troops Her Majesty the High Queen might agree to lend, we don’t have enough might to take Jofarrstyr, much less the forces I assume would be positioned against us on the road to the Imperial Palace. Also, most of those people are innocent of wrongdoing. It’s Hestar and Hulda we want.” Even Kral acknowledged the truth of that. “I also understand that you and our allies don’t have the might to defeat the navy currently mustered and circling us in this storm?” I asked Kral.

  He jerked his chin in annoyed confirmation. “I understand Nakoa is letting the storm disperse even now, which will leave the Hákyrling and the few other ships with us surrounded, just a few morsels of juicy bait for those circling ships.”

  “Diverting weather takes tremendous magical effort,” Zynda said to Kral. “Nakoa has sustained your impasse as long as he could.” She appeared to be languidly relaxed in her chair, but I caught the terse edge to her voice. As did Kral.

  “Your impasse, too, shapeshifter,” Kral growled. “I seem to recall that we have been out here buying time for you, so your precious Annfwn wouldn’t be overwhelmed by two enemies at once.”

  “Don’t pretend you did it for us, beetle man,” Zyr sneered, tipping his chair back onto two legs and balancing precariously. “We know your motivations.”

  “Beetle man?” I asked, partly because I really wanted to know, but also to diffuse the building argument.

  Zyr glanced at me, sharp humor in his deep blue eyes. “In their armor, they look like giant beetles, don’t you think?”

  I passed a hand over my mouth to cover the snicker—because he was absolutely right about Dasnarian armor—and Karyn poked Zyr in the ribs. “Behave,” she hissed.

  He snuck a kiss, moving fast enough that I almost thought he’d shapeshifted, and grinned at her scowl. “You know you love it when I’m irreverent.”

  I thought I had the meaning of the word—as they were using Common Tongue along with the rest of us for this discussion—but Karyn blushed so deeply that I wondered.

  “Kral is our ally as much as anyone,” Jepp put in crisply, casting a quelling glare liberally around the table. “And Her Majesty appointed Kral general of her forces, so unless someone wants to cross blades with Ursula, I suggest we dispense with this bickering. What do you propose, Ivariel?”

  “So,” I said, taking the cue, “the storm will disperse in another couple of days. Our ships cannot stay here for long. We cannot defeat either the Dasnarian Navy currently fielded against us or the empire itself by force. That leaves us guile, cunning, and stealth.”

  Kral eyed me. “The objective?”

  “Liberate our sisters, remove Hestar from the throne, and kill Hulda.”

  ~ 8 ~

  “Oh, is that all.” Kral threw up a hand in a dramatic gesture. “What are we waiting for then? Let’s just skip off, do that, and be back in time for supper.”

  “You asked for an objective,” I pointed out sweetly, “not the strategy.”

  “I asked for a rational plan,” he shot back, “not a fantasy of vengeance.”

  “Be careful, shark,” I warned in Dasnarian. “I may have declined your sacrifice, but I reserve the right to exact any vengeance that occurs to me.”

  Harlan looked between us, quietly measuring. “I’d never realized how alike you two are,” he commented, also in Dasnarian, smiling broadly when we both turned icy glares on him. He held up his hands in peace. “Don’t gut the messenger.”

  Kral and I exchanged assessing looks. We hadn’t been close as children. As full brother and sister born only a year apart, we’d been naturally competitive. Something, I realized, Hulda had encouraged. Hestar, born two weeks after I was, to our father’s second wife, had been my closest playmate. We’d looked so alike that the ladies of the seraglio had called us twins. Until we’d been forcibly divided, molded into our separate and disparate gender roles, we’d been great companions, very alike in our imagined games. There had been a time I thought we’d have that forever.

  Then he was groomed to be emperor and I was sold off to be chewed up and discarded.

  But Kral and I… we’d ended up on similar paths. Both of us exiles and rebels. In his face, I saw my own. The same hardness, the same yearning for more.

  “I say we concoct a strategy to infiltrate the Imperial Palace and execute a coup from within,” I offered, switching back to Common Tongue. “I bet you know the defenses of the place like the back of your hand, Brother.”

  “I did before,” he admitted. “They might have changed.”

  I shook my head. “Dasnaria is not a place of rapid change.”

  “And Hestar is not a man to change things,” Harlan put in. “He worshipped our loathsome father and emulates him in all ways.”

  “Besides, why change what has worked for hundreds of years?” Kral said in wry agreement. “All right then, yes I know the defenses.”

  “I memorized quite a bit of the layout in my time there,” Jepp added.

  “The knowledge won’t help us much as there’s only one way in and out of the Imperial Palace,” Kral mused, then glanced at me. “You’ll recall going through all the stages and checkpoints along the long drawbridge.”

  I nodded, not saying I didn’t remember anything much except pain and the haze of the dulling opos smoke.

  “Then there’s the Imperial Palace guard,” Kral continued. “A small army right there.”


  “I have another, secret army inside,” I said, and Kral frowned, perplexed. “The women of the seraglio can help us,” I clarified.

  A thick silence fell, and it was Karyn who broke it. “But will they?” she asked.

  “They certainly have good reason to,” Zyr burst out, slamming his chair down onto all four legs and glaring at her.

  “Reason isn’t enough,” she replied calmly, then looked at me. “Remember what that was like, the feeling of terrible danger and the prospect of lifelong isolation for the least step out of line. The women of the seraglio have not lived their lives with even a thought of leaving the Imperial Palace. Most wouldn’t dream of contradicting a man, much less rebelling against them.”

  “Inga and Helva would,” Jepp put in with confidence.

  I considered Jepp and Karyn’s points while Zyr muttered to himself and Zynda listened with interest. Marskal hadn’t said anything, but the thoughts moved behind his quiet brown eyes. Deep waters there. “I haven’t seen or talked to my sisters in all these years, so I’ll accept your word there, Jepp. I’m not surprised to hear they have spine. And you make a good argument, Karyn, but I have to point out that you rebelled, and you left Dasnaria.”

  She flicked a glance at Kral. “I didn’t leave so much as was pushed out of the nest. I have never been one with spine.”

  “That’s absurd,” Zyr spat, rounding on her. “You have more spine, more sheer courage than anyone else I know. Maybe you needed the spark that Jepp lit, but you fed it fuel and fanned the flames.”

  She smiled at him, looking misty, then turned back to me. “A spark, yes. Maybe with the right tinder we can fuel the flames of rebellion buried in their hearts. We know they’re not truly happy, and so many of those women nurse black rage deep inside.”