A long-forgotten memory surfaced with such ferocity I took an involuntary step back. Vorestra’s bright sun beating down on us. The hot sand under our feet but cooler as we burrowed them deeper. Palma branches were waved over our lounging mothers by servants dressed all in white. A hand pulling me higher up the dune, sparkling gold sand shifting quickly beneath us. “Race you to the top, Tessa.” Laughter as we rolled all the way down and then landed in a heap at the bottom. Only to jump to our feet and do it again. “You can call me YourHighness,” I’d told him. “Because I can always reach the top faster than you.”
My skin had turned as red as a strawberry that day. And my dark hair had lightened until streaks of gold wove through it. My brothers had gone hunting for sand dragons with Caspian’s older brother Carrigan. But Caspian, Katrinka, and I had been too little. Brayn hadn’t even been born yet.
I had been maybe five.
“Caspian?” The name was a whisper on my lips.
His mouth twitched. “What an incredible story,” he murmured. “A forgotten princess. Raised by monks in some faraway land.” He leaned forward, his voice dipping as if he were telling me a legend of old. “No one really believes you, you know? You might have fooled the council, but the rest of us can see straight through you.”
He was hard to read. This man with skin the color of milky tea and eyes such a light gray they seemed almost void of color completely. “You have a scar,” I said plainly. “Beneath your left shoulder blade. Your brother pushed you, and you landed on your father’s shield.” What I didn’t say was that Carrigan had pushed him off a wall fifteen feet tall and had been disappointed when the shield hadn’t killed him.
His smug expression didn’t change. “Common knowledge.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, is it? You’re often found shirtless running dunes for all the realm to see?”
“Often shirtless,” he agreed. “But no longer running dunes. I’m sure several ladies can collude with your allegations. Or could have passed along the information to any interested party.”
Why had he been asking after me? Was it to flaunt his bedroom prowess and belittle me? Surely, there was another reason. I restrained the urge to roll my eyes and storm off. I didn’t have to prove myself to a second son from Vorestra. His opinion had no bearing on, well, anything.
“If I were an imposter,” I intoned dryly, “why would the state of your shirtlessness be of any import? Surely, there is other, more vital, information to seek out about the realm. Or your kingdom. Anything at all really. Your brother’s shirtlessness, for instance. The true heir to Vorestra.”
He shrugged, and it was as elegant and condescending as one would expect from a spare heir. “As an imposter, I’m sure all manner of court gossip is of interest to you.”
His allegations were growing tiresome. “Is this why you asked for me? To accuse me of trickery?”
He smiled, but it was all wickedness and insult. “To see for myself. I knew Tessana Allisand. She was spoiled and pampered, and generally a foolish little girl without real knowledge of the world. I guessed she would not have survived eight years in the wild. I was right. Whomever you are, you are not her.”
His words cut deeper than I wanted to admit. Had I been a spoiled child? No more than he. We had grown up in palaces, our every whim pandered to.
“It is true the girl you knew all those years ago did not survive. But that does not mean she didn’t become something else...someoneelse. And not because of the wild. But because of the monks who raised me.” I took a step back from Caspian and his annoying accusations. The trial was long over. The sovereigns of this realm had declared me the true heir to the Allisand bloodline. I had thought I would be done proving myself to people. But I was wrong. Were there more people out there like Caspian? More dissenters who assumed I was an imposter? Was I still on trial even now? “You didn’t cry.”
His gaze sharpened. “What?”
“When you fell. When... Carrigan pushed you. You didn’t cry when the shield cut open your back. You picked it up and threw it at him. It knocked him off the wall too. He was asleep for three days because of the wound to his head. And, if memory serves me right, the fall also broke his wrist.”
His face gave nothing away. “Common knowledge.”
I nodded regally and turned my back on him, knowing full well it was not common knowledge.
“Never,” my dad had hissed on the journey home. “I will never send a daughter of mine to marry one of those barbarians.”
My mother had run her hand through my hair, holding up the fading gold strands to the light of the window. “They are wild,” she agreed. “They need the taming touch of a woman, perhaps.”
“They need the sharp end of a paddle. Brothers who regularly try to kill each other? What kind of life would that be for Tessana? No, there is not enough gold in the world to tempt me into a marriage deal with that family.”
The memory sent a shiver down my spine, but I ignored it. The Bayani brothers had always been trouble. I shouldn’t be surprised that Caspian was still trying to disrupt and unsettle as much as he could. I would just have to work hard to avoid him at all costs.
My guards, Curtis and Dover, stepped to either side of me, intuitively meeting my needs without my command. It was a clear sign that this... meeting with the second son of Vorestra was finished. Although I did not miss that Caspian did not have a contingent of guards with him. Was that because he was a male? And I was nothing but a delicate female who needed protection at all times?
Or was it because he was nothing but a second son. And I was the heir to the Crown of Nine?
“Till we meet again,” he said to my back as I moved down the corridor toward my bedroom once again.
“Ifwe meet again,” I murmured more to Shiksa, who was still curled in my arms, than to Caspian Bayani. She lifted her head and touched her nose to mine, a comforting sign of affection. Which was needed since the sensation of his eyes on my retreat did not leave until well after I was back in the safety of my own rooms.
But I determined to shake off his threats, and his distrust, and the way it still felt as though he were watching me, even alone in my rooms. It was those gray eyes, I decided. They weren’t natural. A beautiful terror.
No matter. We’d met. He’d delivered his threats. Now that it was over, I could move on and forget about him entirely. I’d learned to evade him when I was a child after my father had asked me to disassociate with him. It hadn’t been easy then. I’d enjoyed his friendship and the way he always seemed bent toward an adventure. But I could do it easily now... now that we had nothing in common and no connection to bring us together. He could believe however he liked. And I would go on behaving however I liked.
