Page 88 of Ties of Dust

“No.”

“You’re from Dernan.”

“Yes.”

“And…” He struggled to get his mouth around the words. “And you’re a princess.”

Flora nodded. “I am, strictly speaking.”

“So all those times you insisted on giving me the deference due to my station…all the times you stood behind my chair during a meal…”

“I wasn’t trying to be false,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t in Carrack as a princess, Cassius. I was there as a guard.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” He couldn’t quite keep the hurt from his voice.

“Try not to take it personally,” Flora said with a pleading edge. “It was my intention to never tell anyone. Well, except Mim.”

“Princess Miriam knows?”

She nodded. “I confided in her back at school. She’s the only one, though. The mistress never knew—she would never have let me work as a servant or take a charityposition in the school if she did. And the rest of the Siqualian royal family have no idea.”

Cassius ran his hand through his hair.

“But why? Why hide it?”

“Because I didn’t want the life that had been laid out for me,” said Flora. “I know it sounds selfish and irresponsible, but you don’t understand, Cassius. I know you have a great deal of restrictions, but your movements are much more your own than mine ever were. And arranged marriages notwithstanding, Miriam has a level of freedom that I could never have dreamed of. I wasn’t allowed to have my own interests, my own desires, my own ideas. I was a resource to my parents, not a daughter. Every happy memory of my childhood is from a day when I escaped what I was supposed to be doing and paid the penalty afterwards. And the older I got, the harder it was to give my minders the slip. I couldn’t live that way. It was killing me. I had to escape.”

Cassius searched her face, his sympathy stirred by the desperation in her eyes.

“I’m sorry your life was like that,” he said gently. “You were not made to be caged. But I still don’t understand how I didn’t know that a princess of Dernan was missing.”

Flora gave a bitter laugh, the sound unlike her usual chuckle. “They would never have advertised it. My defection would be a humiliation in their eyes.” She shrugged. “I’m the ninth of ten children, and my absence wouldn’t be as conspicuous as you might think. I imagine they made up some story for the court.” She glanced at the closed door between them and the rest of the guardhouse. “Clearly the guards had instructions, however. I suspected as much, which was why I was reluctant to pass through Dernan on our first journey together. I doubt I would havebeen recognized at the border with how I was dressed then—I’ve been gone five years, after all. But if we’d been forced to divert to the capital, I would have been lost.”

“Lost?” Cassius raised an eyebrow, his mouth quirking into a small smile. “You make that sound very dramatic.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t even return his smile. Cassius frowned, wondering if he’d been wrong to assume she was exaggerating in memory the frustrations of her fifteen-year-old self.

“Why are we back here now?” he asked abruptly. “If you were so determined never to return?”

“Because I want to help,” she said. “And I have an idea for how I can.”

The door opened, and the guard from earlier appeared.

“We will escort you to the nearest town via horseback, Your Highness,” he said. It took Cassius a moment to realize the man was speaking to Flora, not to him. “From there a vehicle can be secured to convey you the rest of the way. With an escort of guards, of course.” He glanced at Cassius but didn’t address him. “Your companion can make his own way to the capital if he chooses.”

“No,” Flora said flatly. “He comes with me, or I don’t go at all.”

The guard fidgeted uncomfortably. “Your Highness, you are in no position to decline to attend the capital. We have our orders from Their Majesties, and we will carry them out, forcefully if necessary.”

Cassius raised his eyebrows, incredulous of the man’s audacity.

“This is how you speak to your princess?” he said. “This is how she is welcomed home after an absence offive years?”

“This matter doesn’t concern you, sir,” the guard said gruffly.

“Actually, it does.” Cassius moved calmly toward the man, letting all the authority of his position bleed into his voice. “She doesn’t go anywhere without me.”

The guard hesitated, thrown by Cassius’s manner. As a member of the royal guard, he would have learned to recognize authority when he saw it.

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