“Luca.”
Usually, one time was all it took.
But nothing.
“Luca,” she tried again, louder this time, as she stepped inside, breathing in lavender oil and new hay. The only answer was the stamp and snort of horses, rustling themselves into comfort.
Amarande wondered if he’d gone to dinner. If she’d missed him, and if he was lounging in the kitchens with Abene, Maialen, and maybe old Zuzen and his nightly pipe.
Dinner. Like she was to have with Renard far sooner than she preferred. A meal that could save war on one front but spark one on another, the southern kingdoms joining forces against the two northern kingdoms.
She needed to talk to Luca. Badly. To see his face. The understanding in his eyes as she explained. The flash of a dimple as he bit his lip to think. The tone of his voice as he nudged her toward the type of revelation that always hit her all at once—a dive into an icy lake.
Amarande called his name a third time and knocked on his quarters. The little wooden door opened in answer and she immediately knew she must press again for him to live within the castle. She may not be allowed to rule on her own, but surely she could make that much happen.
The room was empty and she gently shut his door. After she returned to the stable entry, she worked through the wisdom of hunting down Luca and his thoughts while gambling her chance to be on time for dinner with a boy whose army slept at her border.
And that’s when her eye caught it: a scrap of white parchment, folded neatly atop a mess of horseshoes and nails upon the workbench.
AMARANDE.
Luca knew his letters—Sendoa had made sure of that, as he had for all the palace’s children—but that handwriting wasn’t Luca’s.
The tremble returned to her fingers and this time her fear was there, firing up as it should have the second she saw Koldo sprint-stumbling down the hill from the castle the day her father died. It was a new fear—an anticipation of something shocking and awful.
Amarande’s heart rate spiked and her face burned as her fingers fumbled, cold, and she forced them through their tremble to work. She nearly dropped the parchment as it yawned open.
The words flashed before her eyes almost as if she already knew them. As if that new fear had scrawled them on the page itself, dragging the ink through the services of a left-handed scribe.
Marry Renard or you will never see your love again.
CHAPTER
9
LOVE.
The letter had named him right, though she’d never used that word with him. With Luca. With her love.
But that’s what he was. That was what they’d danced around. What they didn’t dare speak into the atmosphere. It was there—at least for her.
Hanging there between them during their time together, as tangible as their class, titles, and all the other things that gave that word a dangerous weight.
Luca was her love.
The reason—beyond her future and her hopes for Ardenia—that Amarande had spoken out at the funeral. Her feelings for him certainly weren’t a secret. She felt as if they flashed, bare, each and every time she spoke his name. But she’d never acted upon what bloomed in her heart, and somehow she’d felt that would keep him safe from the agendas and desires of everyone else.
Clearly not.
Renard had made a move. Possibly spurred on by his brother, with one well-placed comment in a desperate ear ahead of the funeral. Each had his own desire, threaded through the same path.
Her heart and Luca.
She read the words again. Over and over. Crumbling the parchment more with each pass.
Marry Renard or you will never see your love again.
Marry Renard or you will never see your love again.
Marry Renard or you will never see your love again.
Finally, her fingers failed, the paper drifting to the hay-pocked dirt. It didn’t seem right that the thing was featherlight. Not with all it meant.
Her first instinct was to run after Luca.
To find where he’d gone, who’d taken him, and retrieve him.
To make him safe again with her own hands and skills.
Someone had stolen her father away from this world, and now Luca was stolen, too.
But then she thought of Satordi. Of both the look on his face little more than an hour ago when he said, Don’t be a child, and the sting of his words days ago—You want to be a ruler? Act like it.
The princess Satordi wanted would stay, not follow her impulses into the near dark.
Wouldn’t be impetuous.
That princess would keep a cool head, using her words and diplomacy to avoid war on all sides and ensure no harm to Luca.
But the princess her father taught her to be, while strategic, wouldn’t sit and wait. Wouldn’t suffer through dinner with the boy who stole away her love—would she?
Make the first mark.
Holding Luca for the ransom of Ardenia’s future—her future—was quite the mark to make.
What had King Sendoa done when he found her mother gone? Had he run after her? Or had he retreated to his war room to run it over in his mind? When the Runaway Queen had left, he’d been at the front, ironically protecting Renard’s father from an invasion across the Divide by Eritri. But if he’d been home, he would’ve done something—wouldn’t he? When he returned home, he had done something, hadn’t he?
Just as at his grave, with each new question another appeared.
“Stars.”
With all her father taught her, how was it that Amarande suddenly felt as if she didn’t know anything at all?
* * *
NOW, standing before the great roaring-tiger doors of the red hall, the princess pressed shaking fingers to the sides of the garnet ball gown upon which her maids had insisted—another dress of mourning black would have been her first choice. Diamonds bled from her throat across the lace pulled tight over her bodice. The dress flared from the waist, silk in the same color, draped to her boot toes but not farther—trains and the princess did not mix well. Her hair, a fire-roasted chestnut in the dim light of the castle as the sun disappeared into twilight over the mountains, was down with the exception of a small braid pulling the hair off her temples—a crown, a maid had called it.
As she had that afternoon in the arena, Amarande looked the part.
But more than that, she knew she could be the princess she needed to be in that moment.
She could be diplomatic.
She could sit across from Renard and not rip Luca’s location from his throat.
She could mirror him—be as reserved as her official portrait, her temper tightly contained deep below the proper surface.
Yet what she could be wasn’t all she was. It never would be.
And so, folded over her heart was the scrap of parchment that claimed Luca, rescued from the stable dirt. A reminder. A promise.
And pressed tight against her ankle was her boot knife.
Amarande squeezed her eyes shut, touched her palms to the doors’ smooth paint, and stretched a warm smile across her face. It felt all wrong—wicked, misshapen—but it was what needed to be done.
Save Luca.
Avoid war.
Get the damned law changed before the reading of marriage vows.
Beyond the doors, a surprise: The Royal Council was not there. The entire dining hall was empty save for a single table set for two. At one end stood Renard—still with his fancy sword—flanked by four barrel-chested men in the deep purple of Pyrenee, the growling muzzles of gold-thread mountain lions winking in the torchlight from their right breasts.