Ava knew she needed sleep, that her mind was beginning to slip, its sharp effectiveness lost to the fog of sleep deprivation. But she wasn’t sure she could relax enough to fall asleep without her loyal guard to keep watch over her.
Cinnamon snorted again and tossed her head, making Ava smile.
“I’m not entirely friendless, am I, girl?” Her horse had always been her one weakness. From the first, she had been unable to prevent herself becoming attached to the animal. She had long ago concluded that one small crack in her icy demeanour was an acceptable level of vulnerability. Unlike humans, Cinnamon demanded nothing from her and existed outside of her father’s endless quest for power and perfection.
Standing, Ava went over to the mare and took her snout in both hands, resting her head against Cinnamon’s silky hair. It was nice to have contact with another living thing, even if it was only a horse. In fact, so much the better if it was a horse. There were no other people here to see her in her moment of weakness and no need to pretend a strength that felt increasingly far away. Yet another reason why she let herself love the animal. Cinnamon was the only one she could truly be herself with.
Finally, Ava decided that she simply had to sleep. Hans will return even more tired than I am now, she reasoned. I need to be rested enough then to keep watch or he’ll never agree to rest himself. She would simply have to trust that if anyone approached the clearing, Cinnamon would be spooked enough to wake her.
Knowing that sleep was her best and most effective strategy made it easier to give in to what her body was demanding. She wrapped herself in her cloak and lay down. Sleep came within seconds.
As she had expected, Cinnamon’s movements woke her. She lay still for a moment, assessing the horse’s sounds. When a friendly whinny of greeting erupted from the animal, she sat up, looking around for Dusty and Hans.
The pair entered the clearing, both rider and mount looking exhausted.
“You’ve slept?” asked Hans. He looked relieved to see her nod of agreement and busied himself removing Dusty’s tack and cleaning him down.
Ava watched him closely, analysing his movements and minute facial expressions. Something was wrong. He moved efficiently but without his usual grace. She had asked him to flee his home and everything he had ever known and he hadn’t hesitated. Yet now he looked like someone whose foundation had been shaken.
It frightened her but she was determined not to show it.
She waited until he finished every possible activity related to the horse and had turned reluctantly towards her.
“What is it, Hans?” she asked. “Don’t try to spare me.”
Hans sighed and allowed grief to colour his face and voice.
“I’m afraid I have only bad news, Your Highness,” he said. Ava felt her insides clench but she kept her face impassive and her regard steady.
“I had to go a significant distance back towards the capital before I encountered anyone.” Ava could tell Hans was delaying the moment when he would have to impart his news but she remained silent, allowing him to tell the story in his own way.
“I expected to find troops of guards close behind us. They would have been sent to ‘rescue’ you from whichever ruffians were being blamed for your abduction, of course. And they shouldn’t have been far behind. I found no sign of troops, however.” He paused, his eyes distant. After a moment he shook himself and continued.
“I did pass a royal messenger, riding hard towards the border but he didn’t even spare a glance in my direction. I saw no one else until eventually I came upon a small group of merchants, travelling fast, moving away from the capital.”
“By then I was too concerned to consider secrecy. I hailed them and introduced myself as a weary traveller, eager for news from Rangmeros.”
“They were clearly reluctant to stop and no wonder with the news they were carrying.” Again he paused and Ava began to feel impatient. Despite her best efforts, the tension was rising inside her.
“I’m so sorry, Your Highness. We knew that Joran had betrayed you but I’m afraid the situation is much worse than that. It seems that Joran betrayed his entire country. Yours was not the only attempted assassination last night. Your brother Konrad managed to fight off his assailant, although his wife was injured. But your father is dead.
“I’m sorry,” Hans repeated, his expression so full of gentle compassion that Ava thought she might break.
Instead, with a great effort, she kept her face impassive. For a moment it was all she could manage; she had no energy left to process his words or form a response. Eventually, however, a name floated to the surface of her mind.
“My uncle,” she said and it wasn’t a question.
“The only identified assailants were killed in the attacks. There is no immediate indication of who is responsible. Or if there is, the information is not being shared with the city at large.” Nothing in Hans’ voice indicated agreement or disagreement with her statement. He had schooled his face back to the appropriate blank expression of a guard although compassion lingered in his eyes.
“As my guard you spent almost as much time around my father as I did,” said Ava, impatient with Hans’ silent refusal to affirm her speculation. “If he was afraid of one thing it was his brother returning and attempting to take the throne. I’ll admit I always thought him overly paranoid. After all, my father banished my uncle before I was even born. But it seems that my father was right after all.”
“I will admit,” said Hans, “that the possibility had occurred to me.”
“So a royal messenger has been sent to seal the border and my brother begins the hunt. My uncle made a fatal flaw when he failed to kill Konrad.”
Unlike Ava, who worked hard to achieve her detached, rational state, Konrad had been born with their father’s natural coldness and logic. And unlike her father, he had also been born with a cruel streak that, if whispers from the servants were to be believed, had come from Ava’s maternal grandfather.
Her father’s harsh acts, even his attempted annexation of their neighbour, Arcadia, had always been dictated by reason. Reason fuelled by a love of power. Her father’s actions were always calculated to bring him the greatest advantage, regardless of the effect on others, good or bad. He had succumbed to sentiment only once, in his youth, when he banished rather than killed his brother. He spent the rest of his life regretting that one weakness and resolved never to allow emotions to interfere with his decision making again. It was a lesson he frequently attempted to ingrain in his children.
Konrad also loved power but seemed to derive a sick pleasure from carrying out even the most callous of his goals. While he was as intelligent as their father, Ava was convinced that it was cruelty, not reason, that drove him. In this instance, however, the two parts of his nature would come together and make him relentless in avenging their father and eliminating their uncle.
Ava wondered why the thought gave her no pleasure.
“I suppose we had better return to the capital, then,” she said, her voice sounding dull in her own ears.
“I’m not so sure,” said Hans grimly, snapping Ava back into the present.
She looked at him with a sharp question.
“The merchants also reported that you had been assassinated.”
Ava’s mind quickly filled in the rest.
Hans nodded his agreement to the conclusion he could read on her face. “The state in which we left your room should leave no doubt that an attempted assassination was foiled and that you had fled. The absence of our horses from the stable would confirm that conclusion.”
“So my brother has chosen not to pursue me but instead to spread the word that I am dead,” said Ava, finding that she felt no great surprise. “My brother has clearly decided I am an inconvenience he can do without. A threat rather than an asset. My uncle almost did him a favour.”
“Yes,” said Hans, his voice dark with an emotion Ava couldn’t quite identify. “After all, here is proof, if ever he needed i
t, that your father’s lesson was right. Siblings are best eliminated.”
Ava could see the sense of his words but they opened a yawning chasm before her feet. She had given not only her life but her whole self to Rangmere, changing herself into the person her father had assured her Rangmere needed. And now she was to be cast out, driftless, aimless? On the run with two deadly enemies after her?
It wasn’t right!
Her anger felt good, strong, purposeful! She was a princess of Rangmere and she would not be cast aside. She was not defenceless. She had tools at her disposal and she was entitled to use them.
“My godmother!”
Hans started violently at the outburst of sound.
“You have a godmother, Your Highness?”
“Of course I have a godmother,” Ava looked at him scornfully, “I’m a princess! All princesses have godmothers.
“I’ll admit,” she continued graciously, “that your confusion is not entirely unmerited as I’ve never actually called on mine before. But I’ve been assured she attended my Christening. And my grandmother taught me the words to call her.”
The memory made Ava pause. She would gladly have called on her godmother and offered anything the godmother wanted in exchange for curing the lingering illness that claimed the Queen’s life. But Ava suspected her mother had guessed as much and so never told her daughter about her godmother or about the words that would call her.
That task had been left to her grandmother. She taught them to Ava the night before she disappeared and it was the one thing that gave Ava hope that maybe her grandmother had fled the palace.
At least, that’s what she told herself. It was better than believing what most of the court did: that her father had done away with his mother-in-law once his wife was out of the way. Her father’s belief in the necessity of killing off threatening relatives was no secret. And Ava’s grandmother had always disapproved of everything about him, from the way he ran his kingdom to the way he raised her grandchildren.
Ava shook the thoughts off. Both her grandmother and her mother belonged to another life and another Ava. One who had been drowning in the fear and grief and anger that came from watching one parent slowly die while always failing to meet the expectations of the other. She’d said goodbye to those feelings a long time ago and had never missed them.
Squaring her shoulders and clearing her voice, Ava said the words.
Nothing happened.
Chapter 4
Ava tried to suppress the disappointment and ignore Han’s confused gaze.
“I’m sure those were the right words,” she muttered.
“Oh, they were,” said a new voice from the edge of the clearing.
Ava and Hans both whipped around towards the newcomer, Hans taking a protective step in front of Ava.
Ava had expected to see a motherly woman with wings. But the grey in the hair and wings of the being before her gave off more steel than softness.
Ava stepped around Hans. She wasn’t intimidated, she knew her rights.
“I have been wronged,” she started grandly.
“Excuse me?” said the godmother, cutting her off.
“I have been wronged,” repeated Ava, a little less sure. “My uncle has attempted to kill me and now my brother is apparently banishing me from my own kingdom. You have to help me.”
“I have to what?” said the godmother.
“Help me!” said Ava, starting to get angry. “I’m a princess and you’re a godmother. Your job is to help me, to serve me. And now I’m commanding your assistance.”
“Commanding, is it?” The steel was in the godmother’s voice as well now. “It seems you’ve got a few things muddled up, missy.”
Ava bristled at the impertinence and opened her mouth to put the godmother in her place.
“I don’t serve you, your royal highness,” the godmother said before Ava had the chance to speak.
Her words shocked Ava into forgetting what she had meant to say.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Precisely what I just said, young lady. I…don’t…serve…you.”
“But, all the stories…” Ava reeled from the new blow to her foundations. “All the stories say that godmothers are there to help princes and princesses. That’s their job.”
Her godmother regarded her with something approaching amusement. “Is that what they say?” she asked. She turned to Hans who had been watching the exchange in silence, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“What do you think, young man,” she asked. “What do the stories say?”
Hans coughed and looked at Ava uncomfortably.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you,” said the godmother, her amusement visibly growing.
“They say that godmothers are there to ensure that true love always reigns over the kingdom,” said Hans, his hand leaving his sword to tug at his jacket. “They help deserving princes and princesses but also deserving woodcutters and the like.” He threw an apologetic glance at Ava.
“Ah yes.” The godmother nodded. “I see that someone was listening.”
She turned back to Ava. “And I’m afraid that a princess you may be, young lady, but deserving you are not.”
Ava gasped in outrage and straightened as tall as she could go.
“And who decides who is and is not deserving?” she spat at the godmother. “You?”
“Of course not!” The godmother seemed genuinely surprised at Ava’s response. “We serve the High King. He is the one who determines who receives our help.”
“The High King?” Ava and Hans exchanged equally bewildered looks. “Who’s he?”
“Who is the High King!?! Only the ruler over the Four Kingdoms, and the lands beyond. Who indeed!”
Hans and Ava continued to look confused and the godmother shook her head darkly. “Degenerate times we live in, degenerate times.”
Ava shook herself out of her stupefaction. “And where does this ‘High King’ live?” she asked sceptically.
“In the Palace of Light, of course.”
“And you say he has decided that I am unworthy of your assistance?”
The godmother nodded.
“Then I demand an audience with him.”
The godmother actually laughed at that. “Foolish child!” she said. “You don’t seek the High King, he seeks you. You could no more find the Palace of Light than you could fly.”
“I will see this High King,” said Ava through gritted teeth. “And hear from his own lips what gives him the right to set himself up in judgment over me. And I’ll do it with or without your help.”
The smile on the godmother’s lips faded and she cocked her head as if listening to something Ava and Hans couldn’t hear.
“Well, well, well,” she said after a long pause. “It seems you are to be given your chance.”
“He’ll see me?” asked Ava.
“You’ll have to find him yourself,” warned the godmother, “and I don’t quite see how you’re going to do it. But apparently you’re to be given the opportunity. And even a little assistance.” She shook her head wonderingly.
Moving with a nimbleness that belied her grey hair, the godmother stepped closer to Ava and touched the top of her head.
“This will help you stay out of your brother’s clutches long enough to attempt your quest.”
Ava returned her regard steadily but the godmother made no attempt to give her anything.
“But don’t bother calling for me again. I won’t come. It’s on you now.” The godmother stepped away from the princess. In the next moment she was gone.
Ava turned to Hans in confusion. He was staring at her with wide eyes.
“I thought she said she was going to assist with avoiding my brother,” Ava said.
Hans gave no reply but pointed at Ava’s head.
“What? What is it?” she asked, touching her head and face. Nothing felt different.
“Your hair,” said Hans at last.
Ava p
ulled one of her long curls forward to examine it and gasped. She was holding a long, wavy length of dark brown hair.
“And your eyes,” Hans continued, “they’re brown.”
Ava gasped again and her hands flew to her eyes as if she would be able to feel the difference in colour. She tried to conjure up a mental image of herself with wavy brown hair and brown eyes. Slowly a smile spread across her face.
“So that stupid godmother did something helpful after all,” she said, in delight. “I’ll warrant Konrad himself wouldn’t recognise me like this.”
Hans looked much less sure about the change. “You’re not upset?” he asked.
“No, of course, not. It’s brilliant! A strategic move I could never have pulled off on my own. Now I just need to think about how best to put it to use…”
Her mind was already moving. After a long moment, a soft sigh reminded her of her companion. Looking up, she met his eyes.
“You’re exhausted, Hans,” she said in the gentlest voice she had used since awakening in the palace. “I slept while you were gone. Now you sleep and I’ll keep watch.”
Hans opened his mouth to protest and then shut it again. Instead he nodded tersely.
“Wake me if you hear or see anything,” he warned and waited for her willing assent before wrapping himself in his cloak and lying down in the middle of the clearing.
Ava positioned herself on the opposite side of the clearing to the horses, reasoning that together they were covering the different approaches, and sat with her back against a tree. Drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them, she stared blankly into the forest.
With the evidence of the godmother’s power on her head, she could hardly doubt her words regarding this High King. How strange, she mused, to wield so much power and authority and yet be willing to be unknown and unregarded. It was a mentality completely unlike the one her father had modelled to her.
Uncomfortably, the godmother’s words came back to her. “…deserving you are not.” She considered all her actions since Joran had appeared beside her bed. She analysed what her father would think of her responses.
The Princess Fugitive: A Reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood (The Four Kingdoms Book 2) Page 3
