Page 1 of The Masked Princess

CHAPTER 1

Annalise never imagined she’d miss the feeling of wind across her skin.

The sun filtered through the autumn leaves overhead, creating a dappled pattern of light and shadow on the ground. As the tree branches swayed with the light breeze in the garden, the scent of fallen leaves and fresh earth surrounded her. She was tempted to remove her mask, if just for a moment, to better inhale the intoxicating aroma.

The temptation was as fleeting as the breeze. Her mask, the ivory face that lay over her own, stayed in place, secured by a silver silk ribbon. It was better that way, for her and everyone else.

Thanks to her curse, the last time she went without a mask in public, the king lost an heir.

“How many more days of autumn do you think we’ll have before winter sets in?” Priscilla, her lady’s maid, asked as she hoisted the basket overflowing with herbs.

“Another couple of weeks if we’re lucky. Is the basket heavy? If you’d like, I can carry it for a little bit,” Annalise volunteered.

“And have the other servants see? No, Your Highness.” Priscilla paused and looked down, pursing her lips. “Although I do wonder about what we’re carrying. It’s such a great amount of dandelions, and such a small number of chrysanthemums. Do you think the healers really appreciate it?”

“I’m positive.” Despite the relatively warm autumn day, Annalise didn’t bother to wipe her forehead; the guards walking behind them would no doubt tell her father if she lifted the mask enough to remove the sweat on her skin, and the last thing she wanted was more of the king’s attention.

She glanced at the herbs piled high in Priscilla’s basket.

Her maid loved the delicate chrysanthemum flowers and had taken great care to not bruise the petals as she harvested them from the main plant, but Annalise preferred the dandelions. They weren’t the nicest flowers in the garden, but they were hardy. Dandelions grew wherever they were located, and their zest for life and perseverance, even in the face of the hardest adversity, spoke deeply to her soul. Many in her father’s court considered the dandelions a noxious weed that ruined their perfectly planned gardens and walkways. To Annalise, they were a reminder that even plants in the poorest soil could sometimes flourish.

They passed a group of courtiers as they made their way to the castle gate. She gave each person the courtesy of a nod. They, however, didn’t acknowledge her presence except for darting glances and the faintest of snide whispers.

Nevertheless, her posture was perfect, her head held high, and her footsteps so soft she doubted even a Master Hunter could hear her. Her hands, hidden beneath white silk gloves that extended under the long sleeves of her forest-green dress to her elbows, were clasped demurely in front of her. Everything about her mannerisms was carefully calculated to give the appearance of gentility, softness, and weakness, but it changed nothing.

Everyone knew who she was: the most dangerous person in all of Dovea.

As soon as they’d exited the gate and turned a corner in the road, out of sight of those within the castle walls, Annalise sighed and allowed the tension in her shoulders to relax just slightly. She should be happy to have a rare afternoon outside of the castle walls. Instead, the sight of the courtiers lurking around the gate set her on edge. To distract herself from the whispers, she turned to Priscilla.

“Did you hear anything newsworthy in the kitchens today?”

“Oh, yes. Everyone was talking about it—apparently a contingent of Rhinneans are on their way to seek an audience with your father. They’re expected to arrive by tomorrow morning.”

“That is quite surprising.”

The kingdom of Rhinnea had been at odds with Dovea for generations, although there had been peace between the two for as long as Annalise could remember. The origins of the feud had long been lost to time—some scholars said it was over a trade dispute as Dovea had the better ports while Rhinnea controlled the only trade routes to the larger continent, while others said it stemmed from a broken alliance hundreds of years before. Either way, the two kingdoms were constantly testing each other like two wolves vying for a choice piece of meat.

The most recent tenuous peace had lasted over twenty years, nearly as long as she’d been alive, and Annalise hoped that perhaps the new delegation could be a signal of something more stable. Certain members of her father’s court always jumped at the chance to suggest a renewal of the war, but through her walks in the city and dealings with the guilds she saw how the peasants lived and couldn’t imagine taking men away from their families to fight. Glory and honor were all well and good in theory, but she couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t better to focus on putting food in empty stomachs than finance wars that would soak the ground with blood.

A small group of approaching women saw the royal entourage and crossed over to the other side of the street.

Priscilla waited until they were once again alone on the sidewalk before dropping her voice. “There are also rumors that your father had turned his attention to a new lady, the daughter of Lord Adrilla.”

Annalise perked up at the tidbit of news. Ever since her mother, Queen Elvira, passed away in childbirth nearly ten years before when Annalise was still a young girl of fifteen, her father had kept a steady rotation of women. He was desperate for another heir, and when his infatuations didn’t fall pregnant, he tossed them to the side and moved on to the next lady who caught his eye. “So soon? Larken became his newest favorite just a few months ago.”

“Which is more than enough time for her to show signs of missing her monthly cycle, and the last I heard of it is that she’s as regular as ever.”

“Pity.” Annalise couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

Of the many concubines her father had, Larken was her second-least favorite. The woman was only a handful of years older than Annalise and as beautiful as the dawn, but she constantly wore a sneer when Annalise was near, as if she smelled something terribly unpleasant.

It was a strategic play on Larken’s part—King Everet, Annalise’s father, was ambivalent toward his only daughter and heir on his best days. On his worst, he had no compunctions showing distaste for her in front of the entire court. Many of his past concubines had done the same in order to curry favor, as if the cruelty would help them catch the eye of the king and give them a child to supplant Annalise. Larken had taken it to an entirely new level and even gone so far as to have her maids make life difficult for Priscilla, whose only crime was working for Annalise.

In the end, it was no matter. For all of her plotting and scheming and the rumors of the myriad potions she drank, Larken was no more pregnant than an old, withered grandmother, and it sounded like not even her great beauty could keep the capricious king faithful.

They walked past a stationery store, and Annalise thought of the two letters sitting on her desk back in her chambers. The first one was from Soren Kierson, a dear friend who she hadn’t seen in a very long time. They’d been childhood playmates; there were so few children her age who regularly visited the castle, and as the son of Dovea’s high general, he was one of her frequent companions. His mother had died when he was very young, and often his father would allow him to play with Annalise under the watchful eye of Queen Elvira. It had been over a decade since she’d seen the laughing boy with the auburn hair that couldn’t be tamed—when Soren was sixteen, his father had sent him away to apprentice to a ship’s captain.

Soren had promised to write, and write he had, but almost a year after he’d left, Queen Elvira died and Annalise’s curse came into being. Ever since that fateful day, Annalise hadn’t been able to bring herself to respond to his infrequent notes, although she treasured each one. In his most recent letter, received a few days before but written several weeks prior, he’d told her he was considering returning to Dovelan, Dovea’s capital city. She still wasn’t sure if she was excited to see him again or worried about what he would think of her curse.