Chapter Ten
She meant it,too, gray eyes sharp as a silver blade. No matter that Ursula claimed the priorities of the High Throne overrode all else, where she loved, she loved fiercely and without reservation. And as Danu’s avatar, she couldn’t abide injustice, especially wrongs against other women. I laughed, running a hand down her back, more in love with this warrior of a woman than ever.
“Jepp would never forgive us,” I pointed out.
“Jepp,” she said reflectively. “How she can love a man like that?”
“Because he’s changed.” I held up my hands when her gaze narrowed and sparked. “He has. You have to realize he was only a youth, too. At seventeen, he had years of bulk and fighting skill on me, but he was, if anything, more selfish, more narrow-minded, able to see only one path, oneambition.”
She snorted, but didn’t interrupt.
“He believed that he’d be made heir in Hestar’s place, as a reward for bringing us back.”
“Would your father have done that?”
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Who knows? Kral believed he would, and his mother Hulda molded him to want nothing but that, except perhaps her approval—which, along with her love, hinged entirely on Kral ascendingto the throne instead of Hestar. Kral…didn’t have it in him to have compassion for our sister. None of us were raised to have compassion for the weak, or for the women we believed existed to slake our needs and nothing else.”
She contemplated that—and me. “However did you emerge from that as the man you are now?”
I refilled my goblet and hers. “I broke into pieces and put myself back togetherin another pattern.”
“I see. So, Kral had you trapped and captive…?”
“Kral underestimated her. It never occurred to him that she’d act without my help, so he left her for the night in her own room at the inn and made me sleep in his.” I raised my brows. “Anything else wouldn’t have been proper.”
“She escaped in the night?” Ursula breathed, a hint of delight in it.
“She did.” I couldn’t helpsmiling also. “She must’ve climbed out the windows and made her way over the rooftops. No one saw or heard a thing. She was a dancer, did I mention that? I saw her dance the ducerse the night before her wedding, and she was stunning. You would appreciate the athletic skill of it. She wore bells, but danced so that they remained silent until she allowed them to chime.” I shook my head, rememberingJenna, her ivory hair like a banner of silk, gleaming with pearls and sparkling with diamonds, dancing as I’d never seen anyone dance, before or since.
“In the morning she was gone, leaving only that diamond ring behind. She arranged it just so, in the carcass of the fowl Kral had eaten for dinner. You should’ve seen Kral’s face.” I laughed, and Ursula laughed with me, the light of vengeancebright in her eyes.
“Good girl,” she murmured. “Good for you.” Her expression sharpened. “Surely Kral searched for her.”
“Of course—and dragged me with him, also of course. She wasn’t on the transportation I’d booked. No one had seen her.”
Ursula looked interested, loving the puzzle. “She left the diamond but had the other jewels, and you have to be talking sailing ships. So, she set sail forsomewhere else.”
I lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “Or she was enslaved.”
Ursula frowned, shocked out of her reverie. “Excuse me?”
“You, yourself, accused me of being from a race of slavers when we first met,” I pointed out. “While not entirely accurate, it’s also not entirely untrue. My sister was a lovely, nubile young woman, clearly of gentle birth, with no protection, no way to defendherself beyond a few last-resort moves I showed her with a dagger.”
Ursula smiled briefly. “Of course you did. But she might’ve found friends. There are good people in the world, too.”
I touched her cheek. “You are the idealist, though you try to act so tough.”
She narrowed her eyes in menace. “Iamtough.”
“You are,” I conceded. “My sister… was not.” I could only wish she’d been trained asUrsula had, to be a warrior, to survive.
“I don’t know, Harlan.” Ursula thoughtfully turned the goblet in her hands. “The woman you describe is no fragile flower. She gutted it out on that ride, gave up the drugs when she had to be in horrendous pain—climbed out a window and disappeared. She sounds like a survivor to me.”
“Then why didn’t I find her? Why didn’t she find me?” I tossed back therest of my wine, the grit in the dregs of it scraping my throat.
“I take it you looked.”
“Later, yes. After I left the third time.”
