CHAPTER SEVEN

Kate sat on the deck of the ship as it scythed through the water, exhaustion preventing her from doing much more. Even with the time that had passed since she’d healed Sophia’s wound, it felt as though she hadn’t fully recovered from the effort.

From time to time, the sailors checked on her as they passed. The captain, Borkar, was especially attentive, running by with a frequency and deference that would have seemed amusing if he hadn’t been so completely sincere about it.

“Are you all right, my lady?” he asked, for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Do you require anything?”

“I’m fine,” Kate assured him. “And I’m not anyone’s lady. I’m just Kate. Why do you keep calling me that?”

“It’s not my place to say, my… Kate,” the captain insisted.

It wasn’t just him. All the sailors seemed to be walking around Kate with a level of deference that verged on the obsequious. She wasn’t used to it. Her life had consisted of the brutality of the House of the Unclaimed, followed by the camaraderie of Lord Cranston’s men. And there had been Will, of course…

She hoped that Will was safe. When she’d left, she hadn’t been able to say goodbye, because Lord Cranston would never have let her go if she had. She would have given anything to be able to say it properly, or better yet, to bring Will with her. He would probably have laughed at the men who bowed to her, knowing how much that unwarranted politeness would annoy her.

Maybe it was something Sophia had done. After all, she’d played the part of a noble girl before. Maybe she would explain it all once she woke up. If she woke up. No, Kate couldn’t think like that. She had to hope, even if it had been more than two days now since she’d closed the wound in Sophia’s side.

Kate went through to the cabin. Sophia’s forest cat raised its head as Kate entered, looking up protectively from where it lay across Sophia’s feet like some furry blanket. To Kate’s surprise, the cat had barely moved from Sophia’s side in all the time the ship had been traveling. It let Kate ruffle its ears as she moved to her sister’s bedside.

“We’re both just hoping that she’ll wake up, aren’t we?” she said.

She sat beside her sister, watching her sleep. Sophia looked so peaceful now, no longer marred by the stiletto wound in her side, no longer gray with the pallor of death. She could have been asleep, except that she’d been asleep like this for so long that Kate was starting to worry she might die of thirst or hunger before she woke.

Then Kate saw the faint flicker of Sophia’s eyelids, the barest movement of her hands against the bedclothes. She stared at her sister, daring to hope.

Sophia’s eyes opened, staring straight at her, and Kate couldn’t help herself. She threw herself forward, hugging her sister, holding her close.

“You’re alive. Sophia, you’re alive.”

“I’m alive,” Sophia reassured her, holding on as Kate helped her to sit up. Even the forest cat seemed happy about it, moving forward to lick both of their faces with a tongue like a blacksmith’s rasp.

“Easy, Sienne,” Sophia said. “I’m all right.”

“Sienne?” Kate asked. “That’s her name?”

She saw Sophia nod. “I found her on the road to Monthys. It’s a long story.”

Kate suspected that there were a lot of stories to be told. She moved back from Sophia, wanting to hear all of it, and Sophia all but fell back to the bed.

“Sophia!”

“It’s all right,” Sophia said. “I’m all right. At least, I think I am. I’m just tired. I could do with a drink too.”

Kate passed her a water skin, watching Sophia drink deeply. She called out for the sailors, and to her surprise, Captain Borkar himself came running.

“What do you need, my lady?” he asked, then stared at Sophia. To Kate’s shock, he fell to one knee. “Your highness, you’re awake. We were all so worried about you. You must be starving. I’ll fetch food at once!”

He hurried off, and Kate could feel the joy coming off him like smoke. She had at least one other concern, though.

“Your highness?” she said, staring over at Sophia. “The sailors have been treating me oddly ever since they realized I was your sister, but this? You’re telling them that you’re royalty?”

It sounded like a dangerous game to play, pretending to be royal. Was Sophia playing on her engagement to Sebastian, or pretending to be some foreign royal, or was it something else?

“It’s nothing like that,” Sophia said. “I’m not pretending anything.” She took hold of Kate’s arm. “Kate, I found out who our parents are!”

That was one thing that Sophia wouldn’t joke about. Kate stared at her, barely able to believe the implications of it. She sat down on the edge of the bed, wanting to understand it all.

“Tell me,” she said, unable to contain her shock. “You really think… you think that our parents were some kind of royalty?”

Sophia started to sit up. When she struggled with it, Kate helped her.

“Our parents were named Alfred and Christina Danse,” Sophia said. “They lived, we lived, in an estate in Monthys. Our family used to be the kings and queens before the Dowager’s family pushed them aside. The person who explained this said that they had a kind of… connection to the land. They didn’t just rule it; they were part of it.”

Kate froze as she heard that. She’d felt that connection. She’d felt the country spread out before her. She’d reached for the power in it. It had been how she’d been able to heal Sophia.

“And this is real?” she said. “This isn’t some kind of story? I’m not going mad?”

“I wouldn’t make this up,” Sophia reassured her. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Kate.”

“You said that our parents were these people,” Kate said. “Are they… did they die?”

She did her best to hide the pain that went through her with that thought. She could remember the fire. She could remember running. She couldn’t remember what had happened to her parents.

“I don’t know,” Sophia said. “No one seems to know what happened to them after that. All of this… the plan was to head to our uncle, Lars Skyddar, and hope that he knows something.”

“Lars Skyddar?” Kate had heard that name. Lord Cranston had talked about the lands of Ishjemme, and how they’d managed to keep out invaders using a combination of cunning tactics and the natural defenses of their icy fjords. “He’s our uncle?”

It was too much to take in. Just like that, Kate had gone from having no family beyond her sister to having a family who had been kings and queens, who did rule in at least one far-off land. It was too much, too quickly.

On instinct, Kate found herself reaching for the locket that she wore around her neck. She took it out, looking down at the image of the woman within. She had a name for that woman now: Christina Danse. Her mother. That made her Kate Danse.

Kate smiled. She liked the sound of that. She liked the idea of having a family name that she knew, rather than just being Unclaimed, marked by the tattoo on her calf.

“What’s that?” Sophia asked, and Kate realized that she wasn’t looking at the locket, but at the ring she’d placed on the same chain for safekeeping. There was no doubt that Sophia recognized it. Of course she would, when it had been her engagement ring. “Where did you get that?”

There was no point in trying to hide it now.

“Sebastian gave it to me to give to you,” she said. “But Sophia, you need to stay away from him.”

“I love him,” Sophia said, “and if he loves me – ”

“He stabbed you,” Kate insisted, feeling an echo of the anger that had been there when she’d first seen Sophia lying there near death. “He tried to murder you!”

Even given that, Sophia still shook her head. “That wasn’t him.”

“Because that’s not how he really is?” Kate guessed. It sounded like the kind of excuse some farmer’s wife might make when her husband got drunk and beat her. “Because he loves you really?”

“No,” Sophia said. “I mean that it wasn’t him. A noblewoman called Milady d’Angelica stabbed me, not Sebastian.”

Kate hadn’t met this noblewoman, but she hadn’t been the one kneeling over Sophia’s body.

“He was here,” Kate insisted. “He had the knife in his hand. He was covered in your blood!”

“Maybe he was trying to save me,” Sophia insisted.

“And maybe you’re just reaching for anything you can find to defend him,” Kate shot back. “Maybe you even really believe that this woman was here, rather than Sebastian, but I know what I saw.”

“It was Angelica,” Sophia insisted. “She stabbed me, and Sienne tore a piece out of her back as she ran. Please, Kate, I just want you to believe me. Sebastian wasn’t the one who did this.”

“He’s done plenty of other things,” Kate pointed out. “He was the one who sent you away so that you ended up in this mess in the first place. He said he wanted to find you, but as far as I can see all he did was lead half the royal army to hunt you. Even if he didn’t stab you, he did nothing to try to save you.”

“You can’t blame him for not having the magic to heal me,” Sophia said. She reached up for Kate, pulling her close. “I don’t want to fight, Kate. You saved my life, and we’re traveling together now to find our family. I love Sebastian. Can’t you just accept that?”

Kate wished she could, but as far as she could see, loving Sebastian had brought her sister nothing but pain. She took the ring from the chain around her neck, pressing it into Sophia’s hand with bad grace.

“You should have this,” she said. “If it were me, I’d take it and throw it into the ocean, or sell it for extra coin, but you’ll probably take it as a promise.”

Kate saw Sophia nod, and knew that her sister was thinking in those terms. She really thought that the prince whose hands had been covered in her blood would come to her and be the perfect husband. Kate saw her slip it onto her little finger, holding it there almost reverently.

“Why do you want him so much?” Kate demanded. “Why is it so important that things work out with him? You have a whole life ahead of you. You’ve just told me that we have a chance to find our family. You’ve told me that… goddess, I’m a princess, aren’t I?”

“You’re a princess,” Sophia said with a faint smile, “and you will have to wear pretty ball gowns from now on.”

“Not in a million years,” Kate said. “And you’re avoiding the point. You’re not some Indentured girl anymore. You could have any man you wanted. So why him? And don’t just tell me that you love him.”

“Is love so stupid?” Sophia asked.

Kate found herself thinking about Will, but didn’t say anything. If this was the way love made people think, then it was stupid.

“Kate, I need him,” Sophia said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m pregnant with his child,” Sophia said.

Kate stared at her. “You’re pregnant?”

She hugged her sister again then.

“Of course, you realize what this means?” Sophia asked. “You’re not just going to be a princess, Kate. You’re going to be an aunt.”

Kate hadn’t thought of it like that, and just the thought of it was mildly terrifying. There were other, bigger, fears though. The two of them were heading off to a place Kate had never been to find a man they didn’t know, all while her home was in the middle of an invasion.

She didn’t know what their trip to Ishjemme would involve, but she suspected that it wouldn’t be easy.