Rebel Princess

by Bancroft, Blair

  Kass made a face. She definitely thought too much. They were committed. On the ground, with the shining spires of Crystalia, the royal palace, rising above the dark green of the dense patch of trees about sixty meters from the shuttle’s exit ramp.

  Pok! Kass clutched Tal’s arms as a combination of dire thoughts and the sight of her childhood home nearly tripped her up as they hurried down the ramp to the ground. Home. Jagan. She could not possibly be bringing betrayal into the heart of Psyclid. To mother, father, sister. She simply could not be that wrong.

  Steady. A chance we have to take.

  Tal. In spite of his freezing formality since they’d left Blue Moon, their soulmate bond still worked. One of these days—if they lived past tonight—she’d find a way to convince him they were on the same path, no matter where that path might take them.

  But for now she had to take point, leading them to Crystalia, the first part of the journey relatively easy as they followed a winding path through the woods. Kass allowed herself a moment of congratulations. The park was exactly as she remembered it. She’d chosen their landing site well.

  Cloaked by the invisibility shield thrown around them by Jagan, they walked across the grass, Kass and Joss Quint in the lead, Tal and Jagan behind them, with Anton Stagg as rear guard. As dusk settled around them, Kass could see several couples strolling along the banks of a pond. She shivered. In case of any glitch in their plans, they were all dressed in black, but she didn’t even want to think about what the loss of Jagan’s cloak could mean.

  If only some of K’kadi’s cheerful confidence had rubbed off on her. But with each step closer to Crystalia, tension rose, pounding against her nerves like a drum beat. She had to force herself to breathe.

  A sigh of relief as the woods closed around them, but the shelter lasted only a scant five minutes. Ten steps short of exiting into the glare of the palace’s brilliant security lights, Kass waved them all to a halt. A fourteen-foot wall topped by spikes loomed ahead of them. Twenty meters away, a gate with armed guards standing at stiff attention.

  Unable to hide her anxiety, Kass glanced at Jagan.

  You think I cannot do my job? he huffed.

  Will you? she challenged.

  Terrified of a few Regs, midamara? And here I thought you were fond of them.

  Tal was watching them both. How much did he sense?

  Too much. She’d swear he had a dash of Psyclid in him somewhere.

  “Keep close,” she ordered, and led them out into the direct glare of the spotlights and the watchful eyes of the guards.

  No shouts, no alarms. Just a peaceful Psyclid evening. Though surely the guards must hear the thudding of her heart.

  “Now,” Kass whispered. A soft gasp from Joss Quint as all five rose in the air and sailed over the wall. Kass grinned. Better, much better. A great feeling when a plan actually worked.

  After that, it was surprisingly easy. Moving single file, their little black column snaked past guards, past servants carrying trays, courtiers and ladies-in-waiting lounging around a fountain. A good sign, Kass thought. Evidently, their information about the royal family was correct. Life in the palace appeared to be functioning normally. They wouldn’t have to look for Ryal, Jalaine, and M’lani in the dungeons.

  They did, however, need an obscure entrance into the royal suite, one where it was unlikely anyone would see a door open and close all by itself. Kass grinned, her confidence increasing. Accessing the royal suite was an easy task for someone who had run free in the palace from the moment she could walk. Although Crystalia had no secret passages, there were many hidden ways for servants to come and go unobtrusively. Unerringly, Kass led them down a long unguarded corridor, three steps around a corner, and opened the door on what appeared to be a supply closet, with shelves full of sheets, pillows, pillowcases, and bedcoverings along two sides.

  Jagan chuckled. Even I didn’t know about this one.

  Kass flashed him a grin, while enjoying the puzzled faces of the two marines. Tal simply raised an eyebrow. Strange creature. She’d swear he was enjoying himself.

  “Lock the outer door,” Kass told Anton, then put her fingers into an indentation on the rear wall and slid open a panel, revealing a passage dimly lit by small bulbs evenly spaced along the wall. “This is it,” she told them quietly. “This passage leads directly into the royal sitting room. As I’ve told you, Ryal and Jalaine are usually there this time of day.”

  “And if not?” Jagan prodded.

  “We wait.” The voice of S’sorrokan. No arguments. “As agreed, the king’s private sitting room is the safest place for this meeting.”

  A mere six meters and Kass was at the peephole. Goddess forfend that any servant should interrupt the royal pair if they were engaged in something more interesting than reading a book or enjoying a cozy fireside chat. Her breath hissed out. She clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Until this moment she’d refused to seriously consider worst case. But now that she saw her parents sitting in their favorite chairs before the fire, their backs toward her, each peacefully reading and obviously in good health, her knees almost buckled. Mama! Papa! And M’lani, sprawled on a sofa, looking infinitely bored, occasionally plucking the strings of the lutá she held in her lap.

  Father, mother, sister, just as she’d dreamed of them. Goddess, praise be and thank you!

  Quietly, Kass slid the servants’ panel open, motioning the others to follow her into the room. The room’s three occupants didn’t move, but Kass felt her mother go on alert, her body tensing, searching . . .

  Fizzet! She didn’t want to startle Jalaine into some psychic reaction they would all regret, give her father a heart attack or provoke M’lani into a scream that would bring guards running. Kass glanced at Jagan. Can you drop my shield only? He nodded. Then do it.

  “Mama?” she said softly. “Papa?” The queen, sensing her elder daughter’s presence, was already turning. “Yes, it’s me, not an illusion. I’m really here.” Tears spilled down Kass’s cheeks as she ran forward to be enfolded in her parents’ arms. More sobs as M’lani inserted herself into the family circle.

  Sheer, unadulterated joy. So many years, so many trials. The ever-present fear of not-knowing her family’s fate. Kass had tried to shut it out, or she wouldn’t have been able to do the work required of her, but the questions were always there. Were Ryal, Jalaine, and M’lani being treated with respect, as rumored? Or were they constantly harassed, perhaps even kept locked up in Crystalia’s ancient dungeons?

  Kass sniffed, nodded a watery thank-you to her mother, who had just handed her a handkerchief. When she had blown her nose and wiped her eyes, she straightened her shoulders and stepped back a pace, forcing herself to remember they had not risked this mission for an Orlondami family reunion. “Mama, Papa, I have brought friends with me.” And Jagan.

  Her four companions snapped into view, standing in a line in front of the hidden panel, Anton and Joss with weapons at the ready, sandwiching Tal and Jagan between them. King Ryal, a man with hair black as Kass’s and the faintly tilted clear blue-green eyes he’d passed on to his son, put Kass aside. His face firming from loving parent into autocratic monarch, he examined his visitors one by one. Beside him, Jalaine, Psyclid’s ParaPrime, did the same.

  Dear goddess, Kass thought, she hadn’t planned past this moment. She’d envisioned rosy moments of reunion, introducing Tal, Jagan outlining his plan. But what if her parents resented Tal’s Regulon heritage? What if they struck down Anton and Joss for carrying weapons into their presence? What if they feared Jagan more than they trusted him?

  But Jalaine, a striking woman with a waterfall of auburn hair flowing over her gown of leaf green embroidered in gold, was ignoring Jagan, staring at Tal instead. “We know you,” she said. “You are Admiral Rigel’s son, the one who supposedly died fighting the Nyx.”

  Using his best court manners, Tal strode forward and knelt on one knee before Psyclid’s king and queen. “If I may be forgiven an
ancient quote, Your Majesties, ‘News of my demise has been greatly exaggerated.’”

  “More like well planned and executed,” Ryal commented dryly. “You are S’sorrokan, are you not?”

  “Yes, sir.” An appreciative gleam lit Tal’s eyes, and Kass felt a surge of pride for the quick intelligence of the two most important males in her life.

  “Rise, Captain. You are welcome here as the young man we once knew and as the powerful man you have become.”

  A rush of hope before Kass realized her father’s approval was for Tal alone, not for a liaison between the two of them. Yet her mother must have sensed the connection the moment Tal decloaked.

  “Jagan Mondragon,” Ryal ordered, “step forward.”

  Tal recognized dismissal when he heard it. He inclined his head to both Ryal and Jalaine, then stepped back, but only as far as Kass, standing beside her, arms behind his back in parade rest. Yet she didn’t so much as turn her head to offer a smile or a “well done.” He might as well have gone invisible again.

  Well, fyd you, princess.

  The regal tones of Psyclid’s ParaPrime, standing stiffly erect beside her husband, cut through Tal’s sulks. “Jagan Mondragon, you fled our country, taking the best of our gifted with you. Yet now you return—in company with our daughter who was a rebel long before the rebellion. And,” Queen Jalaine continued, emphasizing each word, “with the dashing S’sorrokan, who has taken from you everything you once wanted. Your motives are suspect, Sorcerer Prime. Explain yourself.”

  Mondragon, his expression unfathomable, stood tall, looking down at his queen and high priestess of all things psychic, clearly aware one of her primary roles was to keep his powers in check. “Majesty, it was the right moment.”

  “In what way? Explain.”

  The sorcerer gave a deprecating shrug. “If I may offer advice, Majesty, never go to Bender’s Folly. It should, in my opinion, be termed Hell One, not Hell Nine.” He cocked his head to one side. “Or perhaps Hell Nine Hundred and Nine, if—”

  “Insufficient. Do not attempt to distract us with irrelevancies.”

  Mondragon spread his feet farther apart, scowled at the floor, then returned his gaze to his queen. “It is not every day a Reg huntership travels outside the sector to offer a Psyclid sorcerer a ride home.”

  Tal heard a choking sound that might have been King Ryal thrusting back a laugh.

  “Your humor fails to amuse me,” Jalaine declared. “Continue.”

  “As much as I dislike to admit it,” the sorcerer said, dragging out each word as if it were painful, “I realized, however incongruous it might seem, that Rigel could do the impossible. He could bring down the Regulon Empire. And, besides, L’ira demanded my return. I had no choice.”

  The facile-tongued bastard! Tal choked back a snort. The queen was right—Jagan Mondragon’s loyalty to the House of Orlondami was highly suspect.

  “And now?” Jalaine persisted. “Why are you here?”

  This was it, Tal thought. And not the best moment for presenting Mondragon’s plan when the queen was already hostile.

  But it wasn’t the queen who disapproved. The sorcerer had barely begun to outline his plan to organize Psyclid’s psychic talents when King Ryal roared a resounding, “No! You would violate Psyclid’s prime rule?” he continued, pounding out his words like blows of a hammer. “To push out the Regulons, you would unleash a power that could destroy us all?”

  “You cannot put the genie back in the bottle, Jagan,” Jalaine added. “We might rid ourselves of the Regulons but find ourselves in the midst of chaos more deadly than the occupation.”

  “I can control—”

  “Perhaps you, Sorcerer, are the genie that cannot be put back,” Ryal said harshly. “My wife tells me there has been a Dissolution, however irregularly it was accomplished, so you must find another path to the throne. Out of chaos, a new ruler shall rise. Is that it, Mondragon. Is that your goal? Answer me!”

  “It’s all right, Father,” said a voice they’d all forgotten. “I am happy to legitimize the ambitions of the Sorcerer Prime.”

  Chapter 36

  M’lani! Kass took a less emotional look at her little sister, no longer a child, but a beautiful young woman of twenty-one. With hair a shade darker than her mother’s and the same fiercely intelligent green eyes, her sister was as spectacular to look at as her declaration was a surprise.

  “L’ira, M’lani, stand next to Jagan,” the king decreed.

  Not good. Kass did as she was told, as warning alarms sounded in her head. Her father was up to something, possibly something outrageous.

  “L’ira, is your mother correct when she tells me you have effected an irregular dissolution of your betrothal to Jagan Mondragon?”

  Kass’s insides squirmed, but she stuck her chin in the air. “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you considered that Rigel will never rule here? Even if our people would allow an alien consort, Talryn Rigel would never fit the mold. He is a powerful leader in his own right, L’ira, you must know that. And meant for far greater things than a small, obscure planet like ours.”

  Kass blinked, her lower lip quivered. “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Then you must make a choice. You are our firstborn, the rightful heir to our throne and heir to the ParaPrime as well. We had great plans for you. Plans that still may be fulfilled. You can accept Jagan Mondragon—if he will still have you—and keep your titles.” Kass heard M’lani’s small gasp of protest. “Or you will wed Rigel—if he will have you—here and now and follow him wherever his fate takes him.”

  Kass swayed, sucked in a sharp breath, steadied herself. Not here. Not now. Not like this. Not when Tal was so angry with her. Through a miasma of pain, Kass murmured, “I don’t think he wants me.”

  “Sir!” Tal’s voice. If he accepted her, it would be for all the wrong reasons. “I can’t ask Kass—L’ira—to give up everything she is for love of me.”

  Kass sagged. He didn’t want her.

  “Captain Rigel,” said Queen Jalaine, “do you love my daughter?”

  Tal stood at attention, looking Jalaine straight in the eye. “I have loved her since the first moment I saw her on the bridge of Orion, though I was too stupid, too arrogant, to realize it at the time. But she haunted me. For her I gave up everything, launched a revolution. So the answer to your question, Your Majesty, is yes. I love her.”

  Jalaine offered a regal nod of acknowledgment, then turned to her daughter. “L’ira?”

  I gave up everything . . . I love her. Kass’s thoughts spun on a whirlwind, spiraling from despair to joy. Even the massive self-worth of a princess royal had never led her to assume that Tal’s love for her had sparked the rebellion.

  Offering a watery smile, Kass looked directly at him. “You know quite well it was the same for me, and I have loved you much longer than that. Since I was twelve years old and everyone laughed at me for being moonstruck over a man who barely acknowledged my existence. Jagan can confirm. He teased me unmercifully.”

  Jagan nodded, his eyes gleaming with the suggestion he still found satisfaction in recalling those torturous moments.

  Kass lifted her chin, flinging out words she’d been too proud to say before, oddly relieved now the moment had finally come. “You, Tal Rigel, are the reason I adopted a new name and applied to the Academy. You were the sun in my sky. Dazzled by you, I let myself look at Psyclid through your eyes. I saw our vulnerability, knew I had to learn to fight. And, yes, the love of a child became the love of a woman.” She offered a wry smile. “A bit rocky at times, but love nonetheless.” Kass steepled her hands over her mouth. This was the moment of truth, the moment of decision. Irrevocable. Time to speak her heart, admitting her faults as well as her love.

  “Like all women in love,” she said, still speaking directly to Tal, “I saw only your face in front of me, not the faces of those to whom I had a duty. Oh, I kept insisting someone on Psyclid must learn to fight, but clearly I gave up my rights to Psyc
lid long ago. I’d like to say some grand psychic ability told me my fate lay elsewhere, but the truth is, it was simply love. If you will have me, I gladly renounce my rights and will stand by your side through whatever is yet to come.”

  “Rigel?”

  Tal stepped forward and took his place beside Kass, speaking to her alone. I never wanted you to give up everything for me.

  You did. Why should I not do the same?

  They turned from each other to face Ryal and Jalaine, shoulder to shoulder.

  “Know all ye present,” King Ryal intoned, “that Blue Moon is ceded to my elder daughter, L’ira Faelle Maedan Orlondami, as her personal recompense for giving up her rights to the Psyclid throne.”

  Kass gasped. Tal squeezed her hand. Together, they bowed their thanks. Queen Jalaine removed a filmy scarf the shade of Blue Moon’s mist from around her shoulders and draped it over her free-flowing auburn hair, assuming her role as high priestess of Psyclid. Kass swallowed hard, clenching her fists at her sides. This could not be real, she’d fallen into one of her fantasies.

  But a glance over her mother’s shoulder revealed Anton Stagg and Joss Quint, rifles still at the ready, though their customarily expressionless faces had cracked into avid fascination with the scene before them.

  Real. This was real. “L’ira,” Jalaine was saying, “I know this is not the wedding a young woman sees in her dreams. And, Talryn, I regret you have no family present, but it is our hope you may one day renew your vows with members of the House of Rigel, as well as the House of Orlondami, observing with pride and joy. And now, with the permission of the king?”—Ryal offered a regal nod—“we will begin. You will kneel.”

  In spite of her mother’s efforts to ease the shock of this sudden wedding, Kass felt a twinge as they knelt on the rug before Jalaine. Her wedding day, and they were wearing guerrilla black! A petty quibble, she knew. What did it matter as long as she was marrying Tal? But someday, Kass promised herself, they’d find a way to fulfill K’kadi’s vision.