The princess felt his safety was an uncertain thing if she couldn’t see him, and so, though it was an impossibility, she kept reading the darkness as she ate a meal of salted cod reconstituted in an olive sauce—the soldiers had pulled out all the stops for royalty in their midst. It was hearty and savory, and she let the juices drip down her chin as she scanned the camp, her heart reaching through the distance to Luca.
The girls she’d chosen as her guards ate in silence, bracketing her. Though she admired both for the way they fought, they were clearly out for gold more than anything else. Osana—that was a disappointment, though the princess didn’t dignify the girl’s choice by begging her to confirm her betrayal. As for the pirate, Amarande wasn’t sure why she was here. Perhaps this was what she must do to receive payment, having bungled the job of delivering Luca to the man they’d met at the Hand.
For a moment, Amarande considered paying the women off in diamonds to whisk her and Luca away from the camp, but givenall at play here, that seemed to be a gamble that didn’t guarantee much of a return.
Royals and the Warlord were brutal, yes, and their lack of benevolence sowed women and men like these.
Amarande was only half-confident she could close her eyes in the same space as these girls and not wake to her throat being slashed, but she trusted them more than any of the men in the party, and she had to sleep if she was going to figure out a way to survive what was to come tomorrow night. And every day after.
Dinner was finished without a cry of pain from Luca’s general direction, and Amarande allowed herself to be satisfied with that. It was the best she could hope for. A soldier came around and gathered their dishes, and then her guards drew the flaps of the tent closed.
“Princess, we must bind you for sleep,” Osana said. “The prince commands it.”
The girl held out a length of rope, her gaze not wavering. If she was embarrassed about switching sides, she didn’t show it. Amarande presented her hands without comment. At least within the castle, she wouldn’t be bound. A guard or two at her door, but not a rope every night—she hoped. Osana tied her arms. “Legs, too, Princess.”
Of course.
The princess presented her ankles, again without a word. She waited for Osana to steal the knife from her boot—she certainly knew about it after witnessing the beginnings of Amarande’s fight with the giant—but the girl didn’t take it. Maybe she liked the princess more than she could say in front of the pirate. Or not.
From across the tent, the other girl watched, loosening the handkerchief from her head. The pirate’s long hair spilled forward like a lion’s mane, and she pulled it back, braiding it, with the kerchief to tie the ends. In her lap was the saddlebag Amarande had stolen from her. She’d already cataloged everything that remainedinside but hadn’t commented on the clothing of hers the princess currently wore, or on the fancy dress the princess had stuffed inside.
Braid finished, the pirate still watched. Amarande felt uneasy under her glare, as fierce as she imagined a Warlord-lit fire pit to be. The only woman who had a stare more intense was Koldo, and that was only because she had twenty years of practice on this girl.
Amarande lay back onto the furs the soldiers had given them. She shut her eyes, bound wrists propped behind her head. It was still another minute before the pirate spoke.
“You’re not going to marryhim,are you?”
Amarande’s eyes popped open and shifted to the pirate’s brilliant gold ones. The princess said nothing. The pirate pressed on.
“You love Luca… don’t you?” Again, Amarande was silent. The pirate’s words became more forceful with each syllable. She was angry. “Youcamefor Luca. Youfoughtfor Luca. You nearlyslit my throatfor Luca.” Osana was watching Amarande’s face now, too, their last conversation together running its course over her features. “Do you know how many times he told us you’d come for him? How much faith he had—has—in you? I could nearly pluck his love for you out of the air and slice it up for dinner, it was so solid. He loves you and you love him—true love, simple as that.”
The pirate was breathing hard as she finished.
“I can confirm this,” Osana said when Amarande didn’t answer the pirate. “That’s why I remembered the boy at the watering hole—I’d never heard someone speak like that ever in my life.”
She’d seen him?Why hadn’t she said so when they were together? When she knew what the princess sought?
Somehow this hit Amarande harder than the pirate’s words.
A new weight tore at the princess’s throat, sad and heavy. She swallowed it down but sat up, feeling as if it might choke her. She caught her breath and stared at both girls. Girls who didn’tunderstand the position she was in. Girls who believed they knew her or Luca or both. They didn’t.
“I was born without true love as a possibility. I thought I could change that, and I was wrong.”
“Nonsense,” the pirate girl spat. “True love is already yours. True love is the most powerful force on this earth—we just forget it because those with power here deal in fear rather than love.”
She wasn’t wrong—the Warlord, and every other ruler within the Sand and Sky, used fear in one way or another to solidify their power. Even Amarande’s father had done that in his own way, by building his army and using force to protect everyone else—currying fear and twisting it into his own currency.
The pirate pressed on, Osana nodding. “If you marry Renard, your true love won’t just—poof—disappear in a curl of smoke. It will still be there in your heart. You will feel it until the end of your days, and so will he.”
That sad, heavy thing solidified and the princess stilled. “Thank you for reminding me how much I am about to suffer. I very much appreciate it.”
Undeterred, the pirate girl was forward enough to seize the princess’s hand. Her voice was barely a whisper. She leaned over and forced the princess to meet her eyes. “Don’t marry Renard.”
That fierceness within this pirate wasn’t fury. Amarande was struck with the fact that she knew this girl’s name and should use it.Ula.
“What do you care what I do, Ula?”
“Because when you saved us from the asps, I saw something greater in you. You are a leader who will rule not from a place of fear, but a place of love for anyone in your kingdom. Even someone at odds with you. In that moment, I suddenly had as much faith in you as Luca did. I believed you would not only save him, but you would save me, and my companions.” Ula took a shaky breath. “I don’t want to see you give in, Princess.”
