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CHAPTER ONE – Lilias
The Howling Plains
I could almost believe this is the Howling Plains, where the dead wander until they lose all memories of their time in the living world.
From my place on the bed, propped up on a mountain of pillows, I face a window that opens to the glassy surface of a lake reflecting snow-covered mountain peaks. The buzz of insects fills the room, drifting in from the world outside, and tight buds that will swell to flowers dance languidly on the vines that wreath the window frame. There’s even a white curtain that sways in the breeze. If this is the Howling Plains, well, there are worse places to be.
But I know better. I lean back on the pillow and close my eyes.
I’m not dead. This isn’t the afterlife.
And I’ll never see my father again.
The door opens with a creak. I turn, blinking as the room swims into focus. An older woman enters the room with a tray in her hands. There’s a steaming mug on the tray, next to a plate filled with bacon and biscuits. The woman’s gray hair is pulled back in a loose bun, and she’s wearing a white apron. She seems vaguely familiar, like someone I met in a dream.
“Oh, you poor dear,” the woman says.
She sets the tray down on a dresser and comes to the bed, a white handkerchief in her hand. She presses it against my cheeks, and only then do I realize I’m crying.
“It’s so hard,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “Losing a pregnancy.”
I frown as I take the handkerchief from her and wipe my eyes. Memories come back to me in flashes, like the shattered pieces of a broken vase. Blayne standing over me, saying if I didn’t drink the potion, he would force it down my throat.
And blood. Looking down in horror at the blood that stained my skirts, forever ruining that beautiful yellow dress. Zarek cutting strips from my skirt, bringing me water so I could wash, until I didn’t even have the energy to do that.
The woman’s hand closes over mine. Her fingers are hard, the hands of someone who’s worked outside, and her touch is warm.
“It’s not the last one,” she says, with a soft smile. “You’ll have more babies. I promise you.”
I try to return her smile, but my eyes sting and my lips refuse to curl into the smile I know is proper. I want to tell her the truth, that I was never pregnant, that I bled for days because of Blayne and his damned potion. But then I’d need to explain everything else.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
She nods, then comes back to my bed with the tray. I don’t realize how hungry I am until I start eating, and the woman fusses around the room while I finish the meal. When she turns back to me, I finally find the courage to ask the question that’s been drifting through my mind ever since I woke up to stare at the lake outside the window.
“Where’s Zarek?” I ask.
“Oh, he’s in the garden, I expect,” she replies. “There’s little enough reason to leave, this time of year.”
I frown. Another broken shard of memory rises through the murky fog of the past few days. A man on horseback, waving his hand at the valley behind him. And then introducing himself as Prince Zarek.
I try to smile politely.
“I mean,” I say, “where is the man who arrived with me?”
The woman’s face shifts, and suddenly, there’s a guarded wariness in her expression that wasn’t there before.
“He’s fine,” she replies, which doesn’t exactly answer my question. “I told him you’ve been asking for him.”
I have? I almost ask her when I said something like that, but then it comes back to me in a flood, like wine spilling over parchment. I was in this room, on this bed. The window was dark, and the woman put a lantern on the table. She washed my face and hands, and then the rest of my body. My legs, streaked with blood. My stomach, still tender and sore. When I cried, she wiped my tears and told me to rest, that things would look brighter in the morning. And when she finished, she said she would bring my husband to me.
As I fell into a dark, dreamless sleep, I remembered Blayne and the parchment he waved in front of me. And I wondered which husband she might bring.
“I—” I begin, then close my mouth. “Thank you.”
The smile she gives me looks like her heart is breaking, although I can’t imagine why. She pats my hand again, tells me to rest and regain my strength, and then leaves, carrying the empty tray with her.
I turn back to the window. Wind ruffles the glassy surface of the lake, breaking the reflection of the mountain peaks into shards of white and gray. I think about Zarek, sitting in the shadows, telling me our marriage could be annulled. And then I remember Blayne, and the way his lip curled as he told me he’s not raising the snake’s spawn.
And then something else comes to me, something so bizarre it must have been a dream.
Zarek, sitting next to me in the forest with pine boughs swaying behind him. The sun was setting, sending shafts of golden light through the trees, turning every speck of dust into a shining, dancing gem. His eyes were closed, and his head was tilted back.
And he was singing.
The fading light played across his face, and the wind tugged at his hair. He looked pale and exhausted; still, he was singing. They sounded like prayers, the soft melodies that spilled from his lips, although they weren’t any prayers I recognized.
I snort, then shake my head against the pillow as the room dissolves in a fresh flood of tears. That much, at least, must have been a dream. I don’t even know if the man I called Zarek is still here, wherever here is.
And, whatever else he might have done to keep me alive while he brought me here, I cannot imagine the snake of Vsenrog praying.
CHAPTER TWO – Zarek
The Prince of Dungal
“Oh, gods help me,” I groan as my traitorous eyes blink open, allowing daylight to cut through my hangover and stab me directly in the skull.
I roll over, then wince as something crashes to the ground. Something hard and hollow. I squint at the floor, confirming my suspicions. It’s a wine bottle. An empty wine bottle.
Well, maybe it’s empty. I’d better make sure.
My head throbs as I sit up and reach for the bottle. I shake it, confirming my worst suspicions. Fucking empty.
With a groan, I lean back against the wall and run my fingers down my side. Someone wrapped me in bandages, an older woman with her hair in a bun, but I can’t remember a name. I was pretty drunk at that point, and she looked like she trusted me about as far as she could kick me. Not that I blame her, of course.
There’s a knock on the door. Before I can say fuck off, it opens, bringing another flood of painful sunlight.
“Morning, sunshine,” a man’s voice says.
I growl. He closes the door, then sits down by the bed. The scent of fried meat fills the air, and my stomach makes a very impolite sound. I blink until I recognize the man in front of me.
“Fuck,” I mumble.
It’s the prince, the real prince. Zarek of Dungal, the son of the king and queen. And he just happens to be godsdamned handsome.
“Yeah, nice to see you too,” he replies.
He’s smiling, but in a strange way. Like he’s about to deliver bad news. I turn to the table and see a tray with a plate and a steaming mug. Zarek follows my gaze, then hands me the mug.
Great. The true prince, the man who is technically married to Lilias, is thoughtful as well as handsome. How wonderful.
The tea is scalding hot, but I drink it anyway. The burn in my throat is a nice counterpoint to the hangover trying to split my skull and the dull ache from my ribs. Through the rising steam, I watch the man whose life I once stole.
We used to be friends, or at least as close to friends as a prince can be with a commoner. His nursemaid said we were two peas in a pod, although that always seemed vaguely like an insult.
“Agnes,” I say, suddenly, as the name of Zarek’s nursemaid comes back to me. “She’s the one who—”
My voice fades as I wave at my bandaged ribs. I don’t think I recognized her last night, not with her gray hair. And with all the wine I drank, fucking idiot that I am.
“Yeah,” Zarek replies, with that strange, tight smile. “She asked me to talk to you.”
I finish the last of my tea, then set the mug back down on the tray. The back of my mouth still tastes like wine and bad decisions, but at least the headache has settled somewhat.
“She said you’re taking it pretty hard,” Zarek continues, looking around the room like he’d rather stare at cobwebs in the corners than meet my gaze. “And, hey, I get it. It’s terrible, losing a pregnancy.”
I open my mouth to ask what in the hells he’s talking about, think better of it, and close my mouth. The prince runs a hand through his hair and then, finally, looks me in the eye.
“My wife lost our second,” he says. “We were only a few months in, but still. I know how it feels to learn you’re going to have a child, and I know how much it hurts to lose that hope.”
My mouth falls open again. I don’t know what in the holy hells the Prince of Dungal is babbling about. Still, one very important word jumps out at me. Something that my brother Petrys didn’t tell me when he whispered about the valley that holds the remains of the Kingdom of Dungal.
“Wife?” I ask.
Zarek gives me a stupid, shit-eating grin. “Yeah,” he replies. “For almost a decade now. And three children. So, you know, that wasn’t your last chance. The two of you, you’ll have more—”
I stop listening. The strategic implications burn through my mind.
The Prince of Dungal is married? He has heirs? Does this mean Dungal has allies, that it has power beyond this one hidden valley?
“Who is she?” I blurt.
Zarek blinks.
“What kingdom, I mean,” I continue. “I apologize, but Petrys didn’t mention any of this. And, hells, this changes everything. Who are you allied with? What kind of support will they—”
Prince Zarek laughs. It’s loud and sudden, and I can’t help feeling that there’s some wonderful joke out there that no one bothered telling me about.
“Oh, my old friend,” Zarek says, shaking his head. “You’ve been in the palace a long time, haven’t you?”
I have no reply for that, so I cross my arms over my chest and try to ignore the smell of the bacon on the tray.
“My wife,” Zarek says, “is Zoe. Agnes’s daughter.”
“What?”
The word comes out of me in a rush, like an explosion. That’s impossible. I remember the nursemaid’s daughter Zoe. She was a few years older than the prince and me, and she liked to walk around the palace halls like she owned the place. Zarek followed her like a puppy dog on a chain, at least until she was sent away to live in the mountains.
When I asked my mother why Zoe had to leave, she said it wasn’t good for the prince to get too attached, which was the same reason she gave when she said I shouldn’t name the chickens she kept in the yard.
As a kid, it confused the hells out of me. I only understood it years later, as I tried to survive the palace of Vsenrog by pretending to be something I never was.
“You married her?” I stammer. “Zarek, you’re a prince.”
He laughs again, softer this time. And then he meets my gaze with a sad little smile.
“No, I’m not,” he says. “You’ve heard the song, right? The Kingdom of Dungal is ash and dust.”
“But—” I begin, thinking of contracts and alliances, of a red ribbon tied around my wrists and a beautiful princess who did not cry during the wedding ceremony.
“Yes, I married her,” Zarek says. “I had a choice, you know. I could cling to ash and dust, limp to our former allies, beg for some sort of alliance. But that would have tipped Vsenrog off, wouldn’t it?”
With a dull sense of horror, I realize what he’s saying. King Malrik had no reason to think I was anyone but the rightful heir of Dungal. But if the real Zarek showed up in another kingdom, marrying another princess—
I swallow hard. Zarek shakes his head.
“Or, I could let go of Dungal,” he continues. “I could finally marry the woman I’d loved since I was a kid. I could live a life where no one would try to kill me, where I’d never have to order men to die for me. I could have a garden, and chickens, and sons that no foreign king would ever try to take from me.”
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the wall.
He always loved my mother’s chickens, Prince Zarek. He named them. When they inevitably ended up on the dinner table, he cried every time.
I always thought he was a bit of an idiot, honestly.
I open my eyes and smile at my prince. “You grew up,” I say.
“So did you,” he replied. “Now, eat something. I swear, they can hear your stomach growling all the way in Vsenrog.”
He stands up, and I lean forward to grab the tray.
“You would have made a good king,” I tell him, as he turns toward the door.
Zarek snorts. “I thank the gods every day that I didn’t have to test that.”
I grab a piece of bacon, shove it in my mouth, and try not to groan with pleasure. After days of stolen, half-ripe peas and tiny radishes, this is pure bliss. Zarek stops at the door and turns back to me.
“Oh,” he says. “Go visit your wife.”
I snort, almost choke, and force myself to swallow what’s in my mouth.
“She’s asking for you,” Zarek adds. “And, listen, I know what you’re going through. What you’re both going through. It’s easier to go through it together.”
Oh. The blood, of course. The potion that horrible son of a bitch gave her that made her bleed for days. Zarek must think she had a miscarriage. Hells, everyone here must think she just lost a pregnancy.
But that doesn’t change the truth. I swallow hard. The bacon shifts uneasily in my gut.
“Technically,” I admit, although the words scrape the inside of my throat, “she’s your wife.”
Zarek laughs. “Oh, really?”
“She married Zarek,” I say. “The Prince of Dungal.”
My gut seizes. Suddenly, I want to ask him for more wine. Preferably enough to drown myself.
“I’m sure Zoe would have some choice words in response to that,” Zarek replies.
“Well, legally—”
“Oh, shut up,” Zarek says, and there he is, that bossy little prince I remember from my childhood. “Stop being an idiot. You think that woman wants to see me? You think if I walk in there and introduce myself as her legal husband, she’d do anything other than punch me in the face?”
He’s smiling again, like there’s a big joke, and I’m not in on it.
“Go see your wife,” he says again as he opens the door. Sunlight floods the room once more. “Or I’m going to bring her here to see you.”
“Fine,” I mutter. “You don’t need to threaten me.”
He grins as he closes the door behind him. I don’t remember him smiling like that as a kid. Hells, his mother and father never smiled, not that I saw.
Maybe that’s what living outside of a palace does, I realize with a strange sort of pang deep in my chest.
Maybe I would have smiled like that too.
Meredith Hart 