AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter one
Dimitri
Ilay on Alexei’s empty bed, surrounded by the remnants of his life. The fire—a direct result of the orders I had given to halt the plague—had not only damaged the fields outside Tal, destroyed part of the city, and killed hundreds, but had also stolen my oldest friend.
He had lived here since we left the Tower at thirteen, accumulating knickknacks and memories. I had not visited since returning to Tal. Alexei had always come to me. Been there for me. But now that he was dead, I came to him asking for his advice.
“So, the woman you encouraged me to give a chance is a fraud,” I said, imagining him listening. “Somehow, she fooled us all. And now I’m fool enough to wish I could have lived in ignorance a while longer. Was she playing with me this whole time? The only true thing I have of hers is a shoe.”
Alexei would have mocked me mercilessly for mistaking a Lowtown woman, a poor commoner from what she had shown me, for a princess, because after I introduced her to the court, who would question it?
I should have known when she stole the crown. When she tried to kiss me. When she waited for me in my locked chambers. And Eki had tried to kill her, hinting she knew Helia was not a princess at all.
Not Helia. Not Princess. Not even Oberwaldian.
I should have realized no princess, no matter how practical, would have worn old leather boots. I flipped through my journal, wanting to tear out each of her images, drawn on long nights when I could not get her face out of my mind. I should burn it.
Of course, she had known how to play King’s Conquest. I cringed, realizing she’d understood my inappropriate words at breakfast that first morning. Later, her boldly marching into my bedchamber in front of servants and soldiers and councilors had seemed a statement. A show of strength from a foreign woman set to be queen, displaying how little she cared about rumors. Someone who chose her own path.
It had been the opposite.
The Oberwaldians were surely in on the ruse, for Flora von Heskin knew her niece. By the time she nodded along, I would never have questioned it. So why had the woman revealed herself?
“Did she save me in Lowtown or doom you?” The memories were pain-filled hallucinations of Alexei’s blood-splattered face in the mud interlaced with dreams of dancing.
She had come into my life like a tempest, disrupting careful plans and frozen emotions. Even now, she was tossing me around.
Wind spun my friend’s letters and belongings into the air, my magic mirroring my internal state. Like a barely trained mage, I’d let my emotions rule me. When I brought her into the princess’s chambers, I had mocked her for trying to make me lose control. How wrong I had been for thinking I ever had any.
I raised a bottle of Alexei’s finest wine to the empty room, drank deep, and cursed myself and the Wishmaker for letting me think I had found someone I could be myself with. Cursed myself forletting my guard down and, despite the lies, longing for her lavender scent and hungry kisses.
Talking to her had been like flying Cherny above the clouds where each unexpected gust could bring me down, and each look could make my stomach drop.
Would she have enjoyed flying pressed against me?She had said she feared the griffons too much to learn in Oberwalden. Another lie. Why torture myself with impossible conjectures? The real question was what I would tell my father.
“You should be here laughing at me,” I said to the empty room, knowing I was rambling.
My princess stared out from the journal page—the first drawing from the night I caught her. Or she caught me. I gripped the edge, ready to tear it off. Held it there until my fingers cramped before letting go. She still had me, damn her.
The real Helia’s portrait remained on the mantel back in my chambers, her large eyes following my every move.
Surely my father’s Roja had sought me there already. I was supposed to lead the investigation into the missing food after I had done so well with finding the stolen crown. But the real crown still sat in my bedchamber closet next to the incriminating shoe. Unable to decide what to do with either, they remained constant reminders of the previous month’s events. I could not even bring the crown to the treasury under the Women’s Tower myself—as the only man allowed inside was the king—so it would remain hidden until the wedding when I, somehow, would exchange them.
Wedding.
Did the imposter in the princess’s chambers still intend to marry me? Why had she done this? How?
And the shoe…
She needed to answer my questions.
I stuffed the journal in my coat pocket, heaved myself to my feet and left Alexei’s room and the bottle behind. The tempest would talk.
Halfway to the royal wing, a servant rushed up, too hurried to bow.
“Majesty, you must come—outside—it’s the princess.”
A hand clenched around my heart. What had happened? Had my father somehow found out? Had Eki tried to harm her again?
