STOLEN PRINCESS
Kelly St. Clare
Contents
Exosian Realm
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Thank You For Reading
Acknowledgments
About Kelly St. Clare
Also By Kelly St. Clare
Fantasy of Frost
Bonus Chapter
Stolen Princess
by Kelly St. Clare
Copyright © 2018 Kelly St. Clare
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, media, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination, or are used fictitiously.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
Edited by Melissa Scott and Robin Schroffel
Cover illustration and design by Amalia Chitulescu Digital Art
Map Art © 2018 by Laura Diehl, www.LDiehl.com
All rights reserved.
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.
Exosian Realm
Kia Kaha: stand strong.
One
Ebba slammed the bilge door behind her, ensuring her secret would remain a secret for a little while longer.
Skimming across the main deck of Felicity, she vaulted over the bulwark and onto the only wharf of their hidden sanctuary, Zol. The crew of Felicity and their tag-along, Cosmo, had been holed up on Zol for a whole month. A month of coconuts and rocking hammocks and gently lapping waves. A month of bawdy singing and laughing and ship repairs.
Ebba was ready to pull her dreadlocks out. Retirement sucked barnacles. And they pretty much spent their life sucking. She’d die if she had to be retired for too much longer—not that they had much of a choice, after everything.
Spotting Cosmo reappearing around the curve of the shore, she jogged down the pier to meet him, her various beads and adornments rattling as she did so. Cosmo was the only reason she hadn’t gone up in a wisp of dullness the last few weeks.
“Oi, prince slave,” she hollered in greeting.
He lifted his head and smiled wryly.
His amber eyes fixed on her with their usual intensity. His gaze had unsettled her for a good long while, and still did if she was too close to him when the orbs snapped onto her, but that was Cosmo; whatever he focused on, he focused on with riveted attention, always fascinated to learn every single thing. Ebba suspected one day his skull might explode. It couldn’t be healthy to learn too much. Where did it all go? A person couldn’t fit endless mangoes into a basket without them spilling out or getting squashed. But Cosmo and her father Barrels seemed to manage adding mangoes all the time, which made her think their baskets were bigger than other peoples’ to begin with. A slight pain stabbed over her temple, and she put the matter aside.
She eyed Cosmo’s bare chest, pleased to note the ex-servant looked harder than he used to. There were even muscles in his uninjured arm and torso. They’d saved him after Malice killed his master, Prince Caspian, and the entire navy crew he’d been traveling with. Suffice to say, he’d been as soft as any mainlander when they first took him in. Still was, mostly.
His fist was clamped around a dripping tunic.
“Ye haven’t been washin’ again, Cosmo?” she asked incredulously. “Ye just washed yesterday.”
He smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “Yes, Mistress Fairisles. I wash every day.”
She fell into step beside him as they made their way farther up the shore. “But why? Ye just get dirty again.”
Cosmo’s softness wasn’t any secret. He’d grown up on Exosia, a place where they never ventured into the sun or got their hands mucky. Clearly.
His tone was dry. “I do believe that’s the point.”
Ebba looked at him sideways. “The point o’ what?”
“The point of washing each day is that you get dirty each day.”
She shrugged. “The point o’ washin’ each week is that ye get dirty each week.”
Quiet laughter spilled from his lips. “As always, Mistress Fairisles, your logic makes a bizarre kind of sense.”
She patted him. “Don’t ye worry, Cosmo, we’ll be curing ye o’ softness soon enough. Won’t be long afore ye’ll only take monthly washes, like Grubby.”
Cosmo winced—a delicate wince as though he didn’t wish to offend her by showing his full reaction. It was another thing she’d learned about the Exosian servant; he often muted his real response or thought for a few seconds before he spoke, as though dampening what he really believed. Seemed an odd thing to do. She couldn’t remember pausing to think for more than three seconds in her life. But then, she was a pirate, and he wasn’t—yet. If Ebba could convince him not to return to Exosia for another few months, he might get close to pirate status, but that wouldn’t happen if their crew continued hiding in Zol, eating coconut stew and coconut mash, and drinking coconut tea.
Cosmo rubbed his shoulder and, forgetting to mute his expression for once, grimaced.
“Shoulder painin’ ye?” she asked. Six weeks ago, wooden debris caused by gunfire from the crimson-sailed Malice hit Cosmo in the left shoulder.
He smiled apologetically, though what in the Free Seas he felt sorry for, Ebba didn’t know. “It is taking a long time to heal,” he admitted. “For a while I was certain it was getting better, but. . . .”
She turned to him, searching his face. One thing about soft people: their skin was smoother than the spokes of a ship’s wheel. Cosmo had a natural regal bearing to his features and posture. She was never sure whether it was that, or his russet hair, now curling slightly at the ends, which drew her eye. His amber eyes snapped to her own moss-green gaze, and she blinked several times.
“But what?” Ebba prompted him. Was his shoulder getting worse?
He glanced around, probably checking for her fathers, and then lifted the hand that had been rubbing his shoulder. She peered at the exposed bronzed skin, no longer white after weeks outside, noticing a black mark. “Ye said ye’d washed.”
“I did. That’s what I’m talking about. I don’t know what it is.”
Ebba took a step closer and reached out to touch his skin. The black mark was small, only the size of half a copper coin. Five short tendrils weaved outward from the smudge like the rays of the sun . . . a very black and angry sun. Her breath caught, and she glanced up at him. “What do ye think it is?”
His gaze dropped as she tilted her head to look at him. He wet his lips before answering, “I have a feeling it’s nothing good.”
She came to a quick decision. “We need to tell my fathers.” Spinning on her heel with a crunch of the sand, Ebba stalked in the direction of the shacks around the next bend.
“Wait. Wait!” Cosmo w
hispered loudly. He grabbed her hand in a light hold. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We should keep it secret. Just for now.”
His mangoes were spilling out of his basket. “Why not?” she demanded. “Ye’ve got black stuff in yer arm. They may’ve seen sumpin’ similar. And the crew of Felicity don’t keep secrets.” Though that wasn’t strictly true. She’d learned a whole heap about her fathers in recent times that they’d never breathed a word about.
He tilted his head to where Felicity bobbed back on the pier. “No? You’re not keeping your own secret on the ship?”
Traitorous blood crept into her cheeks. No one knew about the thing she kept hidden in the hold, and that was the way it would stay. Aye, so their crew kept secrets, but not important ones . . . that would bring the wrath of the rest of the crew upon them. “I don’t know what yer talkin’ about.”
“You disappear into the hold every day for an hour, Mistress Fairisles.”
“Pirates need their alone time, once in a while.”
Amusement lit his eyes, and she placed a hand on her hip, eyes narrowing.
“What’re ye so afraid o’ tellin’ my fathers for, anyway?” she shot.
He cast a furtive glance toward the shacks before startling, and peered down at his bare chest in sudden alarm. He shook his tunic out and shrugged into the wet linen, still stained despite his once-daily washes.
“Why’re ye getting dressed?” she asked. “Ye’ll just need to be takin’ it off again to show my fathers.”
He cleared his throat, muttering, and she strained to hear, catching something about six overprotective pirate fathers.
She shook her head and resumed her push through the sand to the shacks. “Yer a clownfish, Cosmo. That’s for sure.”
“I don’t mind being a clownfish,” he murmured. “As long as I’m still swimming by the end of the day.”
They made their way around the white-sand beach and came to the first of the shacks. There were now eight. The shacks sat in small clearings their crew had formed in the coconut trees fifteen feet from the cliff face—so rocks crumbling off the cliffs didn’t land on them. The eighty-foot space from the water to the bottom of the cliffs was half-filled with coconut trees, which hugged the ring of sheer cliffs all the way around the inlet. Only the tunnel to the ocean outside interrupted the shore on the southern end.
“Mistress Fairisles,” Cosmo said.
At his odd tone, she peered to where he pushed through the sand beside her. “What?”
His brows furrowed, and he searched her face. “Don’t you ever wonder why you have six fathers?”
Ebba’s gaze froze on Cosmo’s face before she remembered to walk and act naturally.
The truth? When she was really young, Ebba hadn’t thought to ask the question. It wasn’t like she’d had other families around to show her what was normal. But once she’d seen how different her family was from others, Ebba began to wonder why the subject hadn’t been brought up in her life. Scared of what the answer might be, she’d run in the opposite direction as hard as possible, and her fathers certainly hadn’t pursued the subject. It was fact that a pirate didn’t need solid answers to survive—and one of their ship laws. Who cared about the why when it didn’t change the reality of a situation? Knowing why a shark was chasing a person didn’t change that it was, or that the person should swim like Davy Jones himself was coming after them. In her experience, pretending away the oddities in life had always worked and kept the crew happy.
A month ago, that changed.
Their crew had returned from thwarting Malice, but they hadn’t gone back to normal. Life wasn’t quite the same. In some small, fundamental way, they were all altered, including her.
“Nay, I don’t think about that,” she replied to Cosmo through gritted teeth.
“I didn’t mean to offend you, Mistress Fairisles,” he replied, watching her closely.
She sighed. “I’m sorry. It be a sore point for me. Esp’cially after going through Syraness and everythin’ with Malice . . . It may sound odd and un-pirate-like, but I’m wonderin’ if I should be questionin’ a few things here and there.”
Cosmo appeared to think for a few seconds before answering. Always thinking. “I don’t see the harm in that,” he said, expression neutral.
Ebba shrugged. “Aye, well, I ain’t decided on the issue.”
Their run-in with Ladon had revealed a few things about her fathers’ past, previously concealed. Despite her new understanding that some things were bad enough to not want to discuss them, Ebba had since caught herself wanting to ask questions she’d never wanted to ask. Ebba-Viva Wobbles Fairisles, born-and-raised pirate of the Free Seas, was considering that she should stop pretending about a few things. Like why she had six pirate fathers . . . amongst several other large issues, like the presence of magic.
“I’m sorry for prying,” Cosmo said. “We can talk of something else if you prefer. Until you’ve come to a decision. If that happens, I hope you know that I’m happy to listen and talk.”
Ebba exhaled slowly and nodded, relieved the prince slave had backed off.
She picked up her pace as murmuring voices drew her to the third shack down the row and put the conversation with Cosmo aside for the time being—or maybe forever if she could manage it. The odds were fifty-fifty.
“Ye’re not just puttin’ up a shelf, Barrels,” an exasperated Plank was doing his best to explain. “It will be a perm’nent fixture o’ the place. And it’s got to be matchin’ the other shacks yet suit the other furniture and general feel o’ the room.”
Ebba groaned loudly and Cosmo nudged her arm, grinning.
Stubby and Locks had fortified the temporary shacks, and then Plank had entered interior decoration mode. Usually, Ebba loved accessorizing and mixing and matching textures and materials, but her enthusiasm for the project had died right alongside her eagerness to stay on Zol for the rest of her life. Somewhere in the second week.
“Plank, dear fellow,” replied Barrels, “I do not care where the shelf goes as long as I have somewhere to put my books.”
She and Cosmo halted in the doorway.
Each crew member of Felicity had their own shack made of wooden slats. Woven tree leaves formed the flooring atop the sandy ground, and a bed pallet sat against the far wall. On the right wall hung a picture of Ebba that her fathers had someone paint ten years before. Her eight-year-old self was scowling at the painter, but all six of them had shed tears and bought a copy all the same.
Barrels strode to the left side of the shack and held a sawn-off plank against a different spot.
Plank rubbed his forehead, looking around in desperation. He caught sight of the pair of them in the doorway. “Ebba! Perfect. Come and tell Barrels where the shelf needs to be.”
Ebba shoved her beaded dreadlocks out of the way and scanned the room. She pointed to a space above the bed. “It’s got to go there.”
Plank whirled back to Barrels in triumph. “See. I was tellin’ ye that.”
Barrels pushed up his spectacles and smoothed a wisp of peppered hair back into the black leather thong he always wore. All of her fathers had gray or white hair, aside from Plank, who—though not the youngest of her fathers—possessed a full head of raven black curls.
Cosmo crossed his arms. “But what if the shelf falls on his head as he sleeps?”
“Ha!” Barrels said, coming over to clap him on the back. “That’s what I said.”
He and Plank faced off, neither willing to budge on the matter. She was glad Grubby wasn’t here. Confrontation made the youngest of her fathers extremely nervous.
Ebba cleared her throat after a glance at Cosmo. “So,” she drew out, “Cosmo’s got a black sun in his arm.”
Cosmo glanced at his shoulder at her comment, the wrinkle on his brow clearing as he inspected the shape of the mark. “Huh, it does look like a sun.”
Barrels and Plank slowly turned from each other to pin their full attention on the younger man.
“Does he now?” Plank asked, taking a few predatory steps. “And how do ye be knowin’ about that, Ebba?”
Cosmo began to stutter, but Ebba spoke over him. “Why, I saw it after he’d washed, o’ course.”
“W-what she means is—”
A voice bellowed from outside. “Lunch is up!”
Cosmo bolted out the door.
Ebba went before her fathers. “Ye should take a look at it, the pair o’ ye. I’ve never seen anythin’ o’ the like.”
“Ye’d think with how much he be washin’, he wouldn’t have a grubby spot left,” Plank mused.
Ebba nodded. “That be my exact thought, too. So why is it there?”
“Maybe he doesn’t wash right. Maybe that’s why he needs to do it so often.”
They approached the fire pit in front of the middle shack, and Barrels sniffed the air. He blanched, and without bothering to sniff the air themselves, Ebba and Plank reversed their direction without hesitation, gapping it back the way they came.
“Oi, you lot. I said lunch is up,” Peg-leg roared.
Ebba eyed the light sweat on Plank’s forehead as he turned back with slumped shoulders and ventured to sniff the air. He gagged. “Seaweed babies with shark’s teeth, we can’t leave now, he’s seen us. He’ll get in one of his moods.”
“He’s already in a mood,” Barrels argued. “We haven’t had fresh vegetables in weeks.”
Ebba grimaced. When Peg-leg was upset or angry, it showed in his cooking. Meals had grown steadily worse in the last two weeks, taking a sudden dive three days ago when the last of the bananas were eaten. Peg-leg strongly believed in a balanced and nutritious diet. The garden he’d planted a couple of months ago wasn’t ready to harvest, and the supplies they’d brought with them from Kentro were now gone. Peg-leg grew angrier by the day and his meals worse.
Ebba-Viva Fairisles: Stolen Princess (Pirates of Felicity Book 2) Page 1
