Page 2 of Stolen Princess's Secret

He stepped forward, avoiding his father’s gaze as he leaned to whisper in her ear, ‘Remember that secret place I showed you?’ The secret room in the fortress wall that he’d made his own with candles and hay bales and borrowed blankets and his collection of pretty feathers in an old clay vase. ‘Go there if you need to and I’ll find you. I’ll never rat you out.’

Her lips tightened even as her eyes grew shiny with tears, and then she nodded, once, and flung her arms around his middle and hugged him hard before turning away.

Tomas met his father’s hard gaze and squared his shoulders as Claudia set out for the castle. ‘She’s scared.’

‘She has a brother. And a mother. And they are much better placed to withstand a king’s wrath than you.’ His father’s hand on his shoulder was firm. ‘You can’t encourage her to come to you for comfort, do you understand?’

‘Because she’s a princess?’

‘That, and because if you fall foul of the King, no one will be able to protect you from his wrath. Not even me.’

He shrugged away from his father’s hand in a rare display of defiance. It wasn’t right for Claudia to be so scared of her father. It wasn’t right for her mother to lie in bed day after day and let her children bear an evil king’s wrath. He didn’t even know what the word wrath meant, but he knew what he meant whenever he thought of King Leonidas. Vicious, like some of the wild eagles in their care. Vicious and angry and impossible to understand.

‘Why can’t we ask if Princess Claudia can come here more often and help us with the birds? It would keep her out of sight, just like with the mares. She could imprint one of the peregrine fledglings as part of her lessons, and then she can be here with us more without having to sneak away. What’s wrong with that? Can we at least ask for that?’

‘You’ve far too much of your mother in you. Soft-hearted.’

Tomas’s mother had died years ago from a blood cancer that had taken her within weeks of finding out she was sick. Tomas liked the thought of being a lot like her. She’d given great hugs and laughed when his hair refused to stay flat. She’d made his father smile and laugh the way no one else ever had. It wasn’t wrong to be soft-hearted like her, surely.

‘It’s just not right that no one keeps a little kid safe. Please, Father. Can you ask if she can imprint one of the eyas? It’s not a bad idea.’

His father bent down until he was at eye level. Hope filled Tomas’s body, his soft heart and probably his puppy eyes, as his father nodded slowly. ‘I’ll try. But you have to promise to leave this to me, understand? You say nothing about wanting to protect her and this being a way to do so. You stay out of trouble and out of sight if her father comes hovering.’

‘I promise.’ Tomas nodded as hard and as fast as he could.

Days later, his father won permission for Claudia to take falconry lessons, and for a while Tomas’s plan worked a treat.

But good intentions didn’t always win against evil deeds.

In the end, none of Tomas’s fine plans had been enough to keep the little princess safe.

CHAPTER ONE

THERE WAS NOTHING unusual about the cool summer day with the bluest of skies and a fickle wind that ruffled feathers and whipped at his canvas coat. It was just another day in the life of Tomas Sokolov as he stood on the highest battlement of an ancient mountain fortress, with a hawk on his arm. He was the King’s Falconer, and he’d been born to this blessed life and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Not for him the life of a nobleman with all its responsibilities and fancy trappings. He didn’t particularly like people—apart from one or two who had slipped beneath his skin as a child, and he wasn’t drawn to power. Or maybe it was more that when he stepped up to train his eagles and falcons and anything else that came his way, his will was absolute and he liked that a little bit too much. Tomas the tyrant, the dictator, the autocrat. Maybe he was drawn to power after all.

Byzenmaach, his homeland, had already seen far too much of that.

But old King Leonidas had passed, and the rule of King Casimir was upon them, and Tomas had no beef with Cas. Better a pragmatic statesman at the helm than a petty madman. Alliances were being built. Prosperity beckoned like a promise. All good, very good, and none of it his responsibility. He had no cause for complaint.

So why, on this fine and perfectly normal afternoon, was he up here looking to the north where the narrow mountain pass brought visitors down onto the plain? Why did restless anticipation ride him so hard?

The hawk knew what was coming her way—the freedom of flight and the hunting of prey. He untethered her, enjoying the look of fierce anticipation in her eyes as she sat perched on his gauntlet.

‘Are you ready?’ he murmured. ‘Maybe you can tell me what’s out there.’

Wolves or wolverine, brown bear.

Something.

‘What are you doing?’

He didn’t need to look over the parapet to know who he would find down there, but he did it anyway. ‘You’re back.’

At seven years old, young Sophia, newfound daughter of King Casimir, was almost a replica of her late aunt Claudia. She’d been conceived during a brief fling and had spent the first-six years of her life growing up as a normal kid with no knowledge of her father at all. The way Cas told it, he’d certainly had no knowledge of his daughter. Only after Cas had come for her and become engaged to her mother had young Sophia begun to live a life of royalty. Tomas often wondered whether she even liked her new life or whether she missed her old one. Did she enjoy her gilded cage?

She had Claudia’s eyes—those remarkable golden eyes ringed with greeny-grey—along with a child’s endless curiosity and tendency to roam the winter fortress with a pair of wolfhounds at her side. She was a sweet child and a bright one, and it wasn’t her fault that Tomas could barely look at her without being swamped by unwanted memories of her aunt.

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