I eyed her. “There are few blows that sting more than having one’s own words flung back in one’s face.”
She smiled slightly, more a grimace of sympathy. “I know that well, as you do it to me all the time.”
I laughed a little, dry and without humor.
“That was a lot of pus I saw today,” she said.
I gazed back at her, and she refilled my wine cup, which I’d already emptied. Another bad sign. “Is this what you wanted to talk about—or is it whatever news Jepp and Kral brought?”
“Both, actually.” She had unhappy lines around her mouth. “They are … intertwined.”
I nodded, not understanding, but wondering. Kral needling me about Jenna after all this time hadn’t been a coincidence. In my experience, very little in life is a coincidence. I blame hlyti.
“I did cancel court this afternoon,” Ursula continued, “so you and I can sort all of this out. I can’t… I need to lock this part of my life down before I can deal with anything else.”
A profound failure on my part, a failure to the Elskastholrr that I caused her difficulty instead of being a solid foundation. “Which first, then—yours or mine?”
She regarded me calmly. “I’m sorry to force you into this, so your choice.”
Time to clean up my own mess, then we’d see if we had anything left in us to address whatever news Kral had brought that was dire enough for Ursula to cancel court.
“I was fourteen years old,” I told her, “and the youngest of my siblings.”
As I spoke, it seemed the formal chill of the Imperial Palace settled around us. The opulent carpets that muffled the bootsteps of the men and silenced the barefoot tread of the elegant women. The scent of jasmine and the delicate chime of jewelry as they drifted past, wreathed in colorful silk, gazes demurely averted. Mysterious and enticing.
“Six brothers,” Ursula prompted, bringing me out of the reverie.
“Yes, and three sisters. All of us born in four years to three wives.”
“Your father was a busy man—and his wives hard-worked.”
“Yes.” I splayed my hands on the table, so like my father’s. Big and blunt. The hands of a warrior, not a statesman. The hands of a brutally cruel and domineering man. “He became emperor later than he wished—having spent many years in various wars, adding to the empire for his father—and set to making heirs with due diligence.”
I lifted my gaze to hers, and raised a brow. “In Dasnaria, the emperor is not only divine, but expected to demonstrate his manly virility by producing as many children by as many women as possible.”
“Of course,” she replied softly, eyes a softer gray now with sympathy at whatever she saw in mine.
“Of course,” I echoed, wryly. “So, that number doesn’t include the multitudes of illegitimate half-siblings I have. I have no idea how many. Of the ten legitimate children born to his three wives, we are in order of birth: my eldest sister—whose name I’ve vowed never to speak aloud, but that you know—then Hestar, Kral, Inga, Ban, Helva, Mykal, Leo, Loke, and myself.”
“So many,” she murmured and picked up her wine, though she didn’t drink. “And which are your full siblings?”
“Hestar—now emperor—Helva, Leo and Loke. Those last two are identical twins.” I smiled despite my grim mood, remembering the trouble the golden twins of mischief had gotten into.
“You’re full brother to the Emperor of Dasnaria,” she mused, looking into her wine. “Does that mean anything significant?”
“It doesn’t change anything materially, no. For the most part, birth order decides the hierarchy, though the status of the mother does, too. My mother was second wife.”
“Was?”
“Died long ago.” I met Ursula’s intent gaze evenly. “My mother was named Jilliya. She was never in good health, not as long as I can remember.”
“She bore five children in four years. Even with two of them twins, that would be enough to ruin the health of any woman,” Ursula pointed out.
“True. And Hulda, first wife, had a deft hand with poison.”
Ursula’s mouth parted slightly, but she took that in, drinking a good draught of her wine. She drank less now than when I met her, which I liked to think I’d influenced, if only by helping her find other ways to unwind enough to sleep. I didn’t begrudge her the choice this afternoon. Didn’t begrudge either of us.
“So much you’ve never told me,” she commented.
I laced my fingers together into one fist, steadying it on the table. “I’m sorry for that. I’m telling you now. Everything I can speak aloud. Whatever you want to know.”
“All right.” She inclined her head. “So Jenna was your half-sister and—does it hurt you for me to speak her name? You flinched just then.”
I blew out a breath, aware it came out shaky. “No. It’s… just shocking. To hear it. So is the past tense.”
“I apologize. That was thoughtless of me. She is your half-sister.”
“Yes. My half-sister. Kral’s full sister, both of them born to Hulda. And past tense is likely accurate. She almost certainly died two decades ago. It’s a… reality I’ve never quite grappled with.” A headache throbbed behind my eyes and I squeezed the bridge of my nose between thumb and knuckled forefinger, aware of the moisture there. Soon I’d be sobbing like a toddler.
“Harlan.” Ursula sounded broken, as she so rarely did. She stood beside me and her hand covered mine. I opened my arms to her and she slipped onto my lap, all delicate bones and yielding softness. She leaned into me and I buried my face against her silky hair that looked like blood and fire, but tasted of grace. “You’re the one who’s good at this,” she finally said. “Do you want to stop or keep going?”
“The wound is open,” I replied with grim determination, “so let’s continue purging the pus.”
“All right then. So, as eldest child born to the first wife, Jenna would’ve been heir, had she been a boy.”
I smiled, brushing my lips against her forehead. The sharpest of minds—and practiced at keeping track of royal politics, much as she groused about it. “Correct. So Hestar was heir, with Kral in second place—though a close one, with his mother being the Empress. I didn’t understand much of this back then. I was a boy, the baby, and I was entirely caught up in training to fight well enough that my brothers couldn’t beat me into letting them run my life—and with the enticing prospect of bedding my first woman on my upcoming birthday.”
She laughed, sweet against me. “I can only imagine your devotion to that particular threshold.”
“Yes.” I tipped her chin up and kissed her, needing it. To my great relief, she returned the kiss, opening her mouth to me and winding her long arms around my neck. I sank into her, savoring her intensity and passion. So rarely did I have her undivided attention. She smiled at me, caressing my cheek with her rough fingers, all womanly softness for the moment, all mine. For the moment.
“I was a callow youth,” I continued, thinking back to my past self. “Self-absorbed as adolescents are, terribly spoiled as the baby of the family. When it came time for my eldest sister to be married, I was filled with excitement. There would be parties and I would get to see her, Inga, and Helva again for the first time in seven years.”
“Why so long?” Ursula interrupted with a frown. “Didn’t you all live in the Imperial Palace?”
“Yes, but the Imperial Princesses all remained in the seraglio. I spent my early years in there with them, the other wives and ladies, and my mother. Around age seven, though, the boys leave the seraglio to begin to learn to be men, and the girls stay behind.” I smoothed the line between her brows with my thumb. “It’s a strange practice, I know—and one I can’t abide now—but back then I was actually jealous of my sisters that they got to stay. The seraglio of the Imperial Palace is still one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. An enclosed world, lush and tropical, with lagoons and palm trees. We played all day and were indulged in every way. Leaving it…
well, that was a cold awakening to what felt like a much harsher world. I would cry myself to sleep at night—silently, so my brothers wouldn’t hear and use it against me—missing my mother and my sisters. I felt sorry for myself.” I laughed, a bitter edge to it, for my selfishness.
“Of course you grieved,” Ursula replied, still frowning. “Ripping a child that age from everything he’s known would be terribly traumatic.”
“And yet, I was a privileged idiot because I didn’t understand that I was the lucky one. I still had no idea when seven years later my eldest sister turned eighteen and her marriage was arranged to one of our father’s favored subject kings, Rodolf of Arynherk. I was more excited for that wedding—for all my siblings to be together—than I’d been for anything in my life.” The jubilation of my younger self shamed me now. “Until I began to listen to the talk in the training yard, the way the other men snickered about Rodolf, speculating about what he’d done to his other wives, four of them, all dead young. They called him Bloody Rodolf, and the things they said about him, dark things, sexual things…” I had to stop, unable to say them aloud, especially not to Ursula, who’d suffered at the hands of a monster, too.
But she lay soft against me still, calm and understanding. “For a boy who had yet to lie with a woman that had to be shocking to hear.”
“Yes.” I wrapped my arms around her, as if I could protect her from her past, protect Jenna from the terrible things I had been powerless to prevent. “I’d had a boy’s ideals about women and sex, that it would be all about soft skin and perfume and gentle delights.”
“Like the seraglio had been in your childhood,” she murmured.
“Ah.” That hadn’t occurred to me. “I suppose so.” I tucked that idea away to examine later. “So when Inga and my eldest sister emerged from the seraglio for the first time in their lives… I learned so much that night.”
About beauty and power.
And betrayal.
~ 9 ~
“They were both astonishingly beautiful,” I remembered. “As elegant and polished as the wealth of an empire could create. My eldest sister had inherited her mother’s beauty—and Empress Hulda was famous for her ivory hair and extraordinary deep blue eyes. On top of that, my eldest sister had lived all her life indoors, with only magical light, away from the sun, so her skin was fair and unblemished, her hair only shades darker. And they’d dressed her in white silk, diamonds and pearls. She took my breath away.” I frowned. “I don’t mean that to sound…”
“It doesn’t,” Ursula murmured. “She was dazzling. Your beloved sister and the epitome of feminine beauty. You probably worshipped her.”
“I did, yes.” I rubbed my hand along her back, grateful she understood. “I was in awe of her and I wanted to save her. I warned her about Rodolf, told her she should break off the engagement. But she wouldn’t listen. I figured it was because I was only a boy and not worth paying attention to.
“She married him, and they stayed in the Imperial Palace for a week. She was always either with him”—my voice shook, and I had to steady it—“or in the seraglio where I couldn’t go. Everyone was so happy, celebrating the royal wedding. When I asked about her, everyone told me not to worry, that she was fine.
“But we had a reception for her that last night before she left on her wedding journey to travel with him to his kingdom—a party for her that she actually got to attend—a party. And, oh, Essla…” I had to pause to catch my breath. “She was so changed. He’d broken her. They’d covered her pretty skin with makeup, but I could see the bruises beneath. And her klút—her gown—covered more of her, and they’d given her gloves to wear under her wedding bracelets, but I could tell by the way she flinched, how she hunched into herself that the cur had hurt her in terrible ways.”
Ursula made a sound, and I stopped, fully aware of the parallels, how Ursula had submitted to whatever her own father expected of her. “Is this too difficult for you to hear, given what Uorsin did to you?”
“It’s not easy,” she admitted, still not looking at me. “I want to say I’m over that and it’s in the past, but we both know that would be a lie. And what happened to me was nothing like this. I want you to keep going. I begin to understand, though, how you could see so much in me, so easily.”
Not easily. Nothing about Ursula had been easy. I squeezed her reassuringly, then relaxed my hold. “I asked her if he’d hit her and she laughed. Laughed in my face, and I realized that what she’d been through was so much worse than that. I wanted her to appeal to our father, her mother, to Hestar, heir apparent. I begged her to tell them, to show them her injuries.”
“She told you they knew and it wouldn’t matter anyway,” Ursula guessed.
“How did you know?”
She shrugged a little, her cheek against my chest. “You were a sexually innocent boy of fourteen. If you could see it, imagine how much better the adults could recognize the signs. If you’d heard the gossip, then everyone knew about Bloody Rodolf. Jenna probably understood far better than you did how little recourse she had.”
“What you and my sister saw so clearly came as an astonishing blow to me. I spoke to our father, to Hestar, to Kral, and my other brothers about the situation and… they didn’t care. She was an Imperial Princess and must do her duty to the family and the empire. We all served the Konyngrr fist; a woman’s lot fell to her. She accepted it—why couldn’t I?”
“Because you’ve never had it in you to accept injustice of any kind,” Ursula replied. “One of the many things I love about you.”
I breathed in her scent and the reassurance that she could still speak so easily of loving me. So surreal to be telling this story after all the years of silence, but I couldn’t imagine anyone else I’d rather tell. Could have told, for that matter. “My sister—she told me to forget her. And she said…” The anguish knotted my throat. “She told me goodbye, and said that if I want to do something for her, to treat the women in my life well in her memory.”
“And you have,” Ursula said softly. She must have been weeping because my shirt had gone damp under her cheek. “You are the best of men, Harlan. She’d be so proud.”
I kissed her forehead, beyond grateful for those words. “But the story doesn’t end there.”
“Of course not,” she said, her voice dry now. “Because you’re you.”
I chuckled, relieved to feel my chest relax. “Well, and I was an impetuous young man with more ideals than sense. But I also was an Imperial Prince, and I used that status to bully the Arynherk guards into allowing me to join their entourage. I stayed out of Rodolf’s sight, not that he’d pay much attention to a minor princeling like me, and kept to the middle-ranking officers—intimidating them with liberal use of my father’s name and probable wrath, avoiding anyone with enough rank to know I shouldn’t be there.”
“Nicely played.” Ursula’s admiration did excellent things for my ego, even for something I’d done long ago.
“I’m surprised in retrospect that I pulled it off.”
“Youthful bravado goes a long way.”
“Very true. My sister, when she saw I’d come along, very nearly gave it all away in her panic. She wanted to protect me, begged me to go back before I was found out.”
“I can understand that,” Ursula commented.
Of course she would, being the eldest sister, always taking care of the others. “But my mind was made up and I refused.”
“Stubborn, even then.”
I let that go as true enough. “The farther we traveled from the Imperial Palace, the laxer the seraglio rules were in the noble households where Rodolf planned to overnight. In the smaller manors and keeps, it’s simply not practical or healthy for the women to live in a closed set of rooms all day, every day. That openness would work in our favor. I also knew once we reached Arynherk, I’d be dealing with people loyal to Rodolf, so if I was going to help my sister escape, then it had to be before then.”
Ursula sat up and looked at me
. “You helped her to escape?”
“Of course.” I frowned, puzzled. “That was my plan all along.”
“Oh, thank Danu,” she breathed and framed my face with her warrior’s hands, kissing me deeply. “I can’t stand suspense. Tell me she escaped with you.”
“She escaped with me.”
Ursula let out a long breath. “Unreal. You are a remarkable man.”
I smoothed a wayward lock of her hair back from her temple. “Thank you, but I was mostly insanely lucky. When I look back at all the ways my plan could’ve failed…” I shook off the specter of those nightmare scenarios, some that still visited me in harrowing dreams.
“I broke her out in the middle of the night and we traveled through… a cold climate.” I hedged my way judiciously through the details I’d sworn not to reveal. “And made for a… place where we could travel out of the empire.”
Ursula settled back against me. “This is like a riddle. I’m guessing you went through remote countryside, probably crossing mountains if it was so much colder, to a coastal city where you could sail elsewhere. Smart plan.”
“Not so much. As with all plans, but especially those contrived by inexperienced fools, it went awry.” I sighed heavily. “I need to move.”
She obligingly stood, uncoiling herself with grace and a hint of the speed from her shapeshifter heritage. Taking the opportunity, she refilled our wine goblets and met me by the window with them. Handing me mine, she touched hers to it in grave salute. “To an idealistic boy who did what no one else had the courage to attempt.”
I smiled slightly, mostly to please her, and sipped, steeling myself for the next part. “We couldn’t travel as swiftly as I’d assumed. My experience had been with other men, ones properly dressed for bitter weather and skilled at riding. My sister… she had never even sat a horse before. Though I’d found outdoor gear for her, it had all been designed for men.” I swallowed some wine, grateful for the way it blurred the sharp edges of those desperate memories.
The Dragons of Summer Page 6
