Page 101 of Falling Princess

It’s a risk we shouldn’t take. I couldn’t find it in myself to care. Lorcan squeezed once and let go.

For the first time in my life, I delivered the blessing flawlessly.

Seated in the front rows of the Temple were twenty men more likely to become my husband six months from now than the assassin who has stolen my heart.

After the ceremony, I went down into the Hall of Ancestors to pray. Somewhere down here is the hidden door to Saskaya’s secret laboratory. She spent an entire year searching for the entrance, scouring old texts and poking at every flaw and crevice in the stone walls before finding it. Then spending another few years piecing together the disassembled Sentinel pieces stored there, and learning how to use the ancient guidance system. She showed me the interior once, with its mysterious pedestal bed that mimics the shape of the Sun Temple Plateau.

I knelt silently on the stone for an hour or more, contemplating my ancestor’s remains interred in the opposite wall. The lights in the form of constellations on the ceiling shone softly like stars on a cloudy night. I whispered the usual prayers and sat with my eyes downcast, empty stomach rumbling. Midwinter is a fast-until-you-feast kind of holiday.

Mother. I wish you were here. I wish I could ask you what to do.

Her absence echoed hollowly in my heart. After a while, I pushed up, knees aching, and made my way back down the center stairway to the waiting coach. Lorcan followed a few steps behind me.

On the return journey to the castle, I couldn’t help myself. I twitched my curtain aside when I thought my father wasn’t paying attention. Outside my window, Lorcan’s horse’s hindquarters churned through the thick drifts.

“See anything interesting, Daughter?” my father asked as I stared at my knight’s straight back. I startled. Busted.

“Nothing particular.” I let the curtain fall. “It’s a pretty landscape with all this fresh snow.”

“Looks well trampled to me,” he replied, yawning. “With all these visitors and outriders.”

He dozed. There were gray smudges under his eyes. He looked as though he was carrying the weight of the world.

Me?

I just wanted my knight to kiss me again.Princess fail.

Maybe he’s right, and I’m using education as an excuse to avoid responsibility. Hehasgone out of his way to make it possible for me to study abroad.

When my father started snoring, I again moved the curtain back to look outside, wishing I could have ridden, too, instead of jolting along over rough, pitted roads of frozen mud. This time, Lorcan’s horse was immediately next to my window.

His eyes met mine in a brief sidelong glance, bright and knowing. His nose and cheeks were rosy from the cold. A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

An answering one pulled at mine.

My father made a sound, and I let the fabric drop, wary of being caught. But it was nothing, a false alarm. When I looked out at Lorcan again, he had moved ahead, and all I could see was his hair poking out beneath his cap above his broad shoulders, obscured by a swirl of snow.

Near the castle, my father roused and tried to talk with me. I made a halfhearted attempt to follow the conversation.

“You did well today.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Have you given any thought to your suitors?”

I shrugged. A memory of the night I spent in his arms at the safe house in Edinburgh seared through me. “I have one in mind.”

“His name?”

“I am not prepared to share that information without speaking to him first.”

“Zosia.” My father casts me an irritated frown. “There is no man in Auralia who would turn you down. Name him.”

I wasn’t aware I had the option of choosing any man I wanted, and if I spoke my mind, my father might dismiss Lorcan in an attempt to force me toward a more appropriate selection. So instead, I asked, “What if I want him to choose me, too?”

My father’s expression was pure confusion. “Who wouldn’t choose you?”

“I phrased it badly. What if I want to be chosen for myself, not what I am?”

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