Chapter One
THERE WERE BLUEBELLSas far as she could see. It was peaceful. So nothing. Nothing like she had ever experienced while growing up in the palace at Cape Blanco. Here, in the wilderness she knew peace. Here at the convent she finally felt like herself.
Fern.
Who felt so different than Fernanda Luisa Camila Esperanza Cortez, Princess of Cape Blanco, the small archipelago on the cusp of the Alboran Sea, crowded with her brothers and their aspirations of power.
They were all handsome and world-renowned for one thing or another. Juan—a great politician and heir apparent. Miguel—a financial genius, who was cold as ice. Julio—an actor, of all things. Rafa—a writer who seemed to delight in his own tortured mind. And Ricardo—who was perhaps the only brother who’d ever engaged her in conversation, but was a terrible rake, a model and a professional cad.
Fern was the youngest, and the only girl. Her lone claim to value of any kind was the marriage contract drawn up by her father with the presumed leader of Asland. The island nation, populated by Vikings hundreds of years ago, had been ruled by a monarchy ever since—until the royal family had been overthrown in a military coup that had promised greater freedom but had ushered in authoritarian rule.
Fern’s father had made a bargain with the president that Fern would marry his successor—who had been all but handpicked by the current president—when she was born. The unionwould ease trade between the countries and offer great military support.
Fern had been opposed. But it had also been a fact of her birth.
Like her green eyes, black hair and small stature.
Something she was born with. She might wish she was six feet tall, but she couldn’t change her height. Just as she’d always wished she wasn’t promised to be married off to a false president for the pursuit of yet more power.
But three years ago the authoritarian regime had fallen—a revolution led by the long-believed-deceased heir to the throne had upended everything, and restored balance and freedom to Asland.
King Ragnar was as formidable as he was dangerous—according to her father. And the agreement—should he choose to try and apply it under the present circumstances, could put them all in danger.
Which was when—at the age of eighteen—Fern had been sent off to the Isle of Skye to an isolated convent, where she felt like she had found herself for the first time.
Funny how she felt more…herin hiding than she ever had when living in the palace at Cape Blanco.
Or at the very least she felt connected to part of herself—her strength—that had never been allowed to blossom before. In the palace she’d learned diplomacy. Watching her brothers spar with one another had taught her well just whatnotto do.
What she had never been allowed to be was soft. It was far too dangerous. But here? Here she could embrace the quiet. The contemplation. The rhythms of nature. She had spent her life locked in quiet wars in the palace in Cape Blanco, and had never known who she was apart from that.
It had been an awful thing, her life in the palace. She’d had all those skills, and yet her word had never been respected. She was as smart and strong as any of her brothers, yet it didn’t matter.She was forced into a mold for self-preservation, and then it wasn’t even valued.
She despised men.
Men and their pursuit of power.
She had been steeped in it all her life. Her father and her five older brothers wanted nothing more than power. Her oldest brother—the heir to the throne—was as rigid and exacting as their father. And just as much of a liar.
Then there were the spares.
They were no better.
They spent their time in Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, forging alliances and trying to jockey for power positions within their father’s administration by greasing palms the world over.
When you were a small nation, diplomacy was of utmost importance. At least, that’s what her father always said.
She didn’t feel they excelled at true diplomacy. They were simply very opportunistic, and very practiced liars.
As for her, her entire function had been to become a wife. So she’d learned diplomacy of another kind—but while she’d been taking in her lessons she’d been learning other truths. She had learned that as long as she seemed biddable, as long as she kept her voice soft and expression sympathetic, she could often manipulate a situation better than her father or any of her brothers.
They didn’t look for the strength inherent in women.
They didn’t look for the steel in the softness.
They were a pack of misogynists.
Her mother had never been considered a full human. She was an accessory to her father, and if she was unhappy with it she never betrayed it to Fern.
