Page 39 of Pawn of the Cruel Princess
“Yes, Highness.” I swallow, trying not to grimace. “Do you want me to crawl before you?”
“No, no. Forget all of that. I’ve changed my mind. There are enough perfectly groomed, perfectly trained thralls among the nobles. Maybe what they need isn’t more of the same, but a new kind of thrall.” Her fingertips tuck beneath my chin, grazing the place where she cut me. “Perhaps they need the wild stallion, untamed.”
“Did you just compare me to a horse, Princess?”
“You have the mane of one.” She almost smiles, trailing her fingers through my hair, sweeping it back over my shoulder. “Be obedient, yes, but I also want you to be yourself. Show them a little of your spirit. Charm them, as you said.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
“Are you questioning me?” Her eyes narrow.
“No, my lady.”
“Good. Follow me.”
I’m wearing the collar again, and she holds my chain. She tugs lightly on it as she strides ahead, up the gleaming white path to the beach palace. Meldare and the two bodyguards fall in behind us.
Ruelle isn’t the vivacious, commanding goddess her sister is. No, my Princess is something different—quiet and intense, an explosive waiting to detonate. Every line of her slim body vibrates with energy, with determination. She’s wearing a gauzy dark-blue garment that streams and ripples in the wind, yielding glimpses of her lithe, toned limbs. The thin jeweled tiara in her hair flashes as she turns back to look at me, assessing my stance, my walk.
She nods. And I feel a faint rush of pleasure at her approval.
Perhaps she has already trained me without my realizing it.
13
I’ve visited our beach palace at Oleyra several times, mostly when I was younger, and never in the past thirteen years. My father doesn’t like to come here, because this is the place where my mother left him. He won’t speak of it, but the servants say my mother met a beautiful ship’s captain and sailed away with her. She left my father a letter, begging him to be kind to my sister and me.
I hate my mother, of course. But I understand her, too. Her marriage to my father was an arranged match. She cried on her wedding day and screamed on her wedding night—and most nights thereafter. Or so said one of my tutors when she was instructing me about sex and procreation. I was ten at the time.
I don’t hate my mother for leaving Padra and Vienne. I hate her for leaving me behind. Abandoning me to them.
Since then, my father has quietly kept a mistress—a new one every few years. They keep getting younger. The current one claims she is twenty-five, but she looks not a day older than eighteen. He visits her at a house he bought for her in the city, so we rarely see her in the palace.
Vienne has convinced Padra to open the beach house for her only twice since our mother left. I didn’t go with her either time.
And now, looking up at the buttery plaster of the walls, the pale-yellow pillars, the tiered balconies, the window-boxes spilling crimson blooms and shimmering green ivy—I wonder if I’ve made a mistake coming here. It feels gut-wrenchingly familiar, yet strange. Once-precious memories, swirled and soured by time and trouble, like a muddy finger dipped into a clear pool.
A number of the household servants have gathered to greet us, all who are not attending other guests or preparing chambers for new arrivals. Master Thranwright, the Manager of Festivities, is at the doors to welcome us, too.
My sister and her procession have already gone inside. I moved slowly up the walk on purpose, giving everyone in the house time to gather and greet Vienne, allowing a couple minutes for her first impression to fade.
I mount three wide front steps, traverse another stretch of walkway, then ascend three more. Master Thranwright is nodding to me, his eyebrow arched as he appraises my new pleasure thrall.
And I make one more split-second decision. “Walk beside me, Ducayne.”
Obediently he moves to my right side, and we enter the palace together.
I have never experienced a rush of power like the one I feel when I lead my gorgeous enemy captain into the Summerglee house.
The foyer of the palace is a wide, airy space furnished with gaming tables, couches, painted lamps, and potted plants. People are standing among the couches and tables, fresh from greeting my sister, and their attention immediately focuses on me and my thrall.
Ducayne looks like a god—tall, beautiful, and powerful. Rich muscle ripples beneath his skin as he strides beside me. The breeze flowing through the open windows and doors of the palace lifts his black hair, swirling it around his shoulders. His posture isn’t military, or noble, or thrall, but a little of all three—a natural, easy confidence with a touch of restraint.
Our entrance is everything I imagined.
And he makes it even better, because instead of keeping his head down as Vienne’s thralls did, he gazes around, taking in everyone and everything. When I glance at him sidelong, he’s grinning at an olive-skinned girl with dark eyes. She holds a piece of paper, which she’s folding nervously, repeatedly—but under Ducayne’s gaze she drops the paper without seeming to realize it.
There’s a girl with honey-blond hair farther on, and he nods to her. I think she’s Countess Jilleen, heir to prominent holdings in the middle South.
