“I planned to go with her. My sister… she knew nothing of the world. She’d been raised very deliberately that way. I’d never thought about it—as I’d never thought about so many things back then, in my selfishness—but she’d been educated only in pleasing her husband. You know already that Dasnarian women can’t handle money ormake trade transactions of any kind, by law of the empire, but my sister couldn’t even count.”
“Of course you had to go with her.” Ursula picked up her wine again and sipped, considering me, her thoughts obscure.
“And I had no wish to return to my life,” I admitted. “I couldn’t be a part of a family who did that to their own. I wanted nothing more of being an Imperial Prince and all that entailed.”
“Which is why you were so angry with me the day Kral arrived at Ordnung, and I called you Prince Harlan Konyngrr,” she noted.
“Yes.” I grimaced, acknowledging. “You understand more now why I am not… entirely rational on the topic.”
“I do.” She gazed out the window at the lovely summer afternoon, her profile sharp, her bearing so regal. “I won’t beat you up about this, but you could have explained.It would’ve helped to know before now.”
I brushed a hand over her hair, less an apology than an effort to demonstrate what I had no words to express. She gave me a sidelong look, and shook her head. “Finish it. What happened?”
“Kral found us.”
“Kral.” She pressed her lips together. “I see.”
“He tracked us. Caught me naked in the bath, my weapons on the other side of the room.”
She wincedin sympathy and I knew she, of all people, would understand that level of nakedness, of powerlessness.
“He intended to escort us back to face our father, said all would be forgiven if we gave him no trouble. My sister, of course, would be returned to her husband, who owned her under Dasnarian law.”
Ursula set down her goblet and leaned against the window sill, breathing the fresh air, her knuckleswhite. “I’m sorry I stopped you from killing him,” she said conversationally.
“No, it’s good you stopped me.”
“Oh, right.” She gave me a lethal smile. “Because now we can go kill him together.”
