Page 6 of A Fierce Princess

I scan and scan. I sip the tea that is now cold. Helga makes the best tea. I contemplate it as I read code on my screen. And then I see something, something very strange. It’s a bounty on a man. This is not unusual to see, but it’s the details that have me stopping.

Call me crazy, but I love a good mystery. The bounty is for a man named Logan Edvard Hansen, age twenty-six. My mind wraps around the names “Edvard” and “Hansen.” They are not uncommon names, but together they strike too close to home. I close the window on my search and begin a separate one.

It takes me the better part of an hour to piece together the story, but at three in the morning, I freeze as my mind sees the pieces begin to form a picture. It’s the stuff of legend, of lore.

I sit down and scan the information that I have found.

In researching, Logan Edvard Hansen, I came across something interesting about his mother. King Edvard paid for all the funeral expenses of a woman who was killed in a fiery car crash on a small island in the Bahamas. This was almost a decade ago. King Edvard has never married. Some say he had a mistress, but due to rules in the country, they could not be married. So he chose to rule alone. His brother, Sten, is next in line for the throne. Sten spends most of his time womanizing in the Mediterranean. Sten is younger than his brother. He’s close in age to my aunt Lara. I’ve met them both a number of times, but Edvard to me is my godfather, my Uncle Eddie, my father’s very closest friend. He also is the ruling king of a small country nestled in northern Europe called Montelandia, which happens to border my own country, Norddale. Both countries are classified as principalities by today’s standards, although our citizens are fiercely proud and love to argue about that classification.

I keep scanning. I find pictures of the woman killed in the crash. Leah Winters was a journalist. She was gorgeous. She spent five years living in Europe before she abruptly moved back to the United States and then later to the Bahamas. Her parents are still alive and live in Pittsburgh. She was an only child. Funeral services were held at a church near their home. I re-read the last few lines five times.

“Leah is survived by her parents, Ned and Joy Winters, and her son, Logan Winters, along with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Donations may be made to ‘Hansen Foundation’ in lieu of flowers.”

The Hansen Foundation is a famous foundation set up by King Edvard Anders Leopold of the House of Hansen. I find this to be a very curious coincidence.

My next stop is breaking into the birth records of Montelandia. This, I have to say, is much easier than one would have guessed it to be. One hour later, I find what I have been searching for: the birth certificate for one, Logan Edvard Winters Hansen, born twenty-six years ago to a Leah Winters and a father, Edvard Hansen. It gives no other information about the father. The birth was at a hospital in the capital of Montelandia, a very posh hospital.

It’s almost five in the morning, but my adrenaline is pumping now. There will be no sleep for me tonight. I head toward the kitchens to get a full pot of tea. Helga is already there, prepping for the day with the few kitchen staff that come in early and a few that handle the night shift.

“Good morning, Your Highness,” she says cheerfully. I walk over and give her a hug. Helga has been here since my father was young. She and her husband, Clause, live in a small cottage on our property. Clause tends our horses. They have sons, Pete and Lucas, who are ironically, my personal security. They had been assigned to general duties, but I talked my father into assigning them to me. One, because I trust them since we grew up playing together, and two, I may take advantage of their brotherly affections to…uh, circumvent the system at times. Daddy just sees two strapping young lads who would die for their good friend, so it works.

“Can I get a pot of tea, please?” I ask her as I sit and pull a cookie out of the cookie jar she keeps just for me on the giant kitchen island.

“Anna, you’ll ruin your breakfast!” she exclaims. I giggle because she says this every time, I steal a cookie. Her use of my mother’s nickname for me still warms my heart. Where my brothers adopted Suzy Q after we all spent several summers at a camp in the States, only she, my father, and a few others still use the nickname Anna for me. I have taken to using it when I don’t want to draw attention to myself.

She carries on with her duties while getting me a pot of tea. She tells me that a horse is pregnant, and we chat about possible names for it. It’s a descendant of my mother’s favorite horse. She asks if she can have the tea sent to my room. I shake my head and ask for a tray. I take the pot of tea up to my secret room. I have three hours left before I’ll be due at breakfast. I know that won’t be enough time to figure this out. I also know that a man’s life now hangs in the balance. The bounty is high, and it will be picked up by an assassin by breakfast time. I wonder who…I also wonder when…but mostly, I wonder why.

Chapter 4

My brothers and Sonya have always said my love of hacking would get me in big trouble someday. I highly doubt that they would have predicted that the trouble would be trying to stop a bounty on the head of who I think may be a secret heir to the throne of our neighboring country.

I pour my tea into my favorite mug. Chris bought it for me for my sixteenth birthday. It says, “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” It is my favorite quote from my favorite William Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My brothers have always said this about me. Mostly, I think it’s because I was raised by a household of men, much to my aunt Lara’s dismay. My auntie is my father’s younger sister. Rumor has it she was once betrothed to King Edvard, but no one speaks of that. Of course, she is now happily married to my uncle, Hans Jacobs, a wealthy entrepreneur. They sadly were unable to have children, which probably explains her extra interest in the upbringing of my brothers and me.

My mind spins around the factoids and memories. My brothers let me tag along to their karate classes, their archery practices, the shooting range, and a dozen other activities fit for princes but not princesses by royalty standards. My father, whom I had wrapped around my finger since birth, allowed me to be with my brothers. He said it made me stronger, and I would need to be stronger to survive in our world. I once heard Auntie Lara arguing with him that I should be learning ladylike things. After that, I was forced to learn art history, English literature, and even a class on fashion. I hated it all. But Auggie and Chris still let me train with them. Auggie even taught me stunts in his car. In retrospect, it was reckless of him to teach a fifteen-year-old kid maneuvering skills meant for a stunt driver, but that’s Auggie, always pushing the boundaries.

Dad always says he wishes I had more of a female presence in my life, but I have loved being one of the boys. My brothers never treated me any different because I was a girl or because I was small. In fact, they proudly bragged to their friends that their little sister could punch like a dude, throw a ball farther than any of their friends, and climb a tree higher than even they could. Meanwhile, I let Auntie Lara think she was helping to raise a lady. And now, I am like two different people in one body. I can play the part of the prim and proper princess, or I can be me, the hacking, ass-kicking, rulebreaker.

I break off from my stream of conscious thoughts and focus back on the matter at hand. As I continue to piece the puzzle together, I start wishing that someone, anyone knew my secret. What became an obsession all those years ago, now feels like an albatross around my neck.

I’m distracted when I find an interesting document in the police file on Leah Winters’s death. It looks like a marriage certificate, but the names are smudged, as is the date. I can make out an “ea” in the first name of one person and an “rd” in the other person’s name. I gasp, could Edvard and Leah have been secretly married?

By 8:00 a.m., I look at the giant chalkboard that I’m guessing belonged to my grandmother. At the top of it is “Logan Winters Hansen” and then everything else I have figured out over the past four hours.

I make three columns: “Truths,” “Maybe,” and “Questions.” I stare at it for a long moment and then add a fourth column, “Lies.”

Under Truths, I write:

Logan is twenty-six.

Logan was born in Montelandia.

Logan’s mother is Leah Winters.

Logan’s grandparents, Vera and Ned, live in Pittsburgh.

Logan currently runs charters on a sailboat that he owns.

Logan is…I stop myself from writing hot. Because that was the first thing that came to mind when I found a picture of him on the Internet. Instead, I write “Logan is in trouble.”

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