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The people of High Cliff—my home—had a custom, you see. Every child born in our land must be christened with our ceremonial mark within a week of birth. Once the mark was applied, that person would then be able to recognize his or her one true love at first sight.
I know, I know. Stop rolling your eyes already. Even I admit it was a trite, romanticized practice set forth by some young, dreamy-eyed teen queen centuries ago, but that truly didn’t matter. It had become an honored tradition among my people, so the kingdom of High Cliff treated it seriously. And when other lands ridiculed our sacred custom, well… We took it as an extreme affront.
Which caused wars. Many wars. Many expensive wars.
Call us pansy-assed weaklings concerned with nothing but finding true love? Fine, we’ll kill all your warriors and take your land. How about that?
Actually, no, that wasn’t quite true either. I wasn’t sure if many outside kingdoms even knew about our sacred marks, and the last war we’d gotten ourselves involved in was supposedly to stop a dark magic family’s reign, but in all honesty, Father hadn’t joined that fight until they’d mocked our marks. So… I stuck with my original theory: the marks caused wars.
And now the kingdom of High Cliff was broke from all this fighting. But never fear, we still had our honor and respect plus more battle-ravaged land than ever, by God. No one dared to blaspheme the mark these days.
Not to our faces, anyway.
We’d become so damned honorable and respectable that other kingdoms—richer, newer, younger kingdoms—were willing and even eager, to align themselves with us for a bit of that old, honorable, and respectable standing we had among the Outer Realms.
Thus my reason to leave home forever.
Father had agreed to pull High Cliff from its debt by marrying my sister, his only princess, off to the king of Donnelly’s younger brother, Prince Brentley.
Donnelly was the youngest, most prosperous kingdom in the Outer Realms, also known as the kingdom within the sand. To me, it was quickly becoming that kingdom within the pain in my ass. Because seriously, what insane people had ever looked around at all this nothingness and thought, hey, let’s make a home here?
Idiots.
I glanced toward Allera once more, still unable to quite believe she’d actually agreed to go along with this ridiculous bargain, though honestly, what alternative did she truly have? Father would’ve no doubt exiled her if she’d refused, and she would’ve had to flee to somewhere just like Donnelly for refuge. I guess she might as well marry a wealthy man with high standing who could
help her homeland prosper, if she were going to come here anyway. Doing this was likely the most pleasant option she had left.
Either that, or she was simply a true patriot to our kingdom.
Didn’t mean I needed to escort her, though. I wasn’t being forced to marry anyone. But honestly, who could let their only sister, their favorite sibling, the one person in the entire realm of realms who still seemed to like me, go off alone and tie herself for the rest of her life to a complete stranger?
Not me, I guess. So here I was, accompanying her.
Besides, after Father had kicked me out of my own army, there was nothing left for me at High Cliff. He already had his heir and a spare with my older brothers, Erick and Olivander, and then Allera, his princess, to marry off to other kingdoms. As the youngest of the four, I was quite unneeded and unnecessary. To the great and mighty King Ignatius Bjorn of Realm High Cliff, I would only ever be seen as that damn whelp who’d killed his queen during childbirth.
“Halt!” I called, needing to walk off some of my mood and stop thinking about this already. Nurturing such a pity party helped no one.
The parade of soldiers and servants slowed to a relieved stop, and half of them dashed off into the lump of twigs that passed as bushes for much-needed respite.
Allera lifted her face my way and arched her eyebrows. “Another break? I thought you said we were nearly there an hour ago?”
I nodded as I climbed off my steed. “According to the map, we are. But the horses are thirsty, and I thought you might wish to freshen up a bit before meeting your new husband. Wouldn’t want to give off a bad first impression, now, would we?”
The word husband made her cringe, but after a moment to think it through, she nodded and waved me toward her. “Good thinking. Help me out of this carriage then, would you? I can barely move in these cumbersome skirts.”
I sniffed. At home, she wore pants whenever possible, avoiding Father with me where we spent most of our days out in the villages, helping crofters with their daily chores. I wasn’t sure how she was going to handle constraining herself to a castle now and wearing a dress every day, because what were the odds her second husband would be as lenient on her as her first had been?
Flinging open the door to her carriage, I held up a hand to help her down. “This is stupid. You know that, right? You’ve never even met this guy. What if he’s some rude old asshole with no teeth and smells like decaying flesh?”
Allera narrowed her eyes and bit out, “You’re not helping.”
Batting aside my proffered hand, she tried to descend without my assistance and missed the step, falling against me. I muttered my impatience and caught her waist before swinging her the rest of the way to the ground.
“What if he never lets you wear pants again?” I asked, cutting to the heart of the matter. She could be about to lose any freedom she’d ever had.
She gulped unsteadily and looked up at me from solemn green eyes. Tightening her jaw, she bit out, “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“But—”
