by Lisa Daniels
What else can possibly go wrong today?
Instead of acknowledging the princess, and thereby making my current predicament that much worse, I let her think that I hadn’t seen her. A spoilt, demanding little brat, I loathed every moment that I had to be in her presence. It was almost as if she didn’t have a name. I simply thought of her as the entitled brat or the selfish princess. Whatever she was doing, the princess was her father’s problem, not mine. If he wanted her tracked, the king would have to ask for it. I believed in instilling fear and respect into my men, but making any of them stay with that little wretch was a type of torture that I wished only on the worst of them.
The rest of the morning was filled with all of the usual problems that were fairly easy to manage despite my new responsibility. I only had the bandwidth to deal with the former at the moment, and left the poor young woman to stand and observe. If she was as useful as Mrs. Teasdon said, she would start to pick up just by watching the interactions. That was how I had learned all those years ago.
Then the next wrench in the day arose as one of my men rushed into the room.
“Our guest has a visitor, and he is currently trapped in the courtyard.”
“Is it one you recognize?”
“No, sir. Definitely memorable, though.” I noticed the guard’s eyes move to the young woman and notice her for the first time. But he knew better than to say anything, particularly given the current situation. “Kind of like that.”
It was subtle, but told me what I needed to know. Shifters were always good-looking, but this one must have been really attractive if one of my guards was making a slight comparison to the woman I was having to protect. I rose and headed to the door. Turning to see if she was following, I noticed her standing there, uncertain of what to do.
“Well?” I asked, the annoyance obvious.
She looked at me in complete confusion, “Sir?”
”Don’t just stand there. I may have use for a runner.” It definitely wasn’t true, but for her sake, I wanted her to feel like she had a chance to contribute. From the way she had been fidgeting all morning, it was clear she did not like feeling idle. She began to follow me, but at too slow a pace.
If it came to protecting her or stopping a shifter, I knew which situation was more serious. If something happened to her, it would be unfortunate, but she was only one person. A shifter, on the other hand—it had been centuries since anyone had been able to kill one, but they could easily kill an entire contingent of my men. Having one of them freely roaming the city could be catastrophic. I ran toward the courtyard, trying to prepare myself for the encounter. We had been expecting something like this, and there were things set around the courtyard to take any intruder down. We knew that killing him would be nearly impossible, but all we needed to do was knock him out so that we could lock him up for a little while. At least until I could figure out what he really wanted. Shifters would periodically enter the city and take women, though on the rare occasion something worse would happen. As if women in this city needed it any worse. I wanted to find out why they did this, but the current shifter we had was proving to be just as difficult as I had heard they were. Cocky, condescending, and conniving, I was always on edge talking to him. I couldn’t say I hated it. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was nice to have someone so competent to talk to—the problem was that we definitely were on different sides. Despite being a prisoner, it always felt like he was actually the one in charge.
I pulled my sword out of its sheath as soon as I reached the courtyard. A few of my men were already around the shifter, their swords drawn, but he looked about as concerned as I felt in front of the young woman whom I had left so far behind.
“Why did you come here, shifter?” My voice echoed around us as I stepped in front of my men. Looking at him, I was incredibly glad for the warning because the man’s appearance was awe-inspiring. I had little doubt that his appearance had momentarily confused most of my men, and I would have been even more susceptible had I not been warned. None of us had ever seen anyone who looked like that.
His eyes bore into mine for a moment, then a strange grin spread across his face. “I wonder…” the shifter seemed to be thinking aloud as his eyes took me in, and for a second I flinched under that gaze. To those around us, it must have seemed like his answer to my question, but I knew what he was thinking, and for a second I felt entirely exposed and afraid. He tilted his head to the side, as if he understood what I was thinking, then he laughed and shook his head. But instead of addressing his thoughts, he held out his hands, a smirk on his face as he finally answered my question, “For the warm reception, of course. Oh, look at how you fawn over me. Please, go back to your daily routine, I promise not to be a bother.”
Though his appearance was stunning, his tone was all too familiar, and it helped me shake off any remaining shock. “You have already broken that promise. Now my men and I shall have to prepare another cell for you and incur a lot of extra work around this encounter.”
“Certainly not. All you need to do is turn and march off to your happy little pretend world, and everything will be good.”
I adjusted my stance ever so slightly, just enough to make my point. “You are not going to leave here based on whatever plan you have. And you certainly will not be leaving here with anyone currently in our prison.”
He gave a shrug, nothing about his posture suggesting that he felt any kind of trepidation. “You will soon learn that luck is always on my side.”
I took a few more steps toward him, and my men followed suit.
Still he remained unimpressed and totally calm. It was like we were little more than toys and he was playing with us, though I couldn’t imagine why he had wandered out in the open. I knew just how stealthy shifters could be; the last one had not been easy to capture. And I still wasn’t sure exactly what the king had planned for him. At that moment, though, all of my focus was on the shifter immediately before me. For some reason, he had made his presence known, which meant that he was likely working as a distraction. My eyes met those of my second-in-command, Jacob, and he understood what I wasn’t saying. The shifter was focused on me and the men immediately around me, so he did not notice how Jacob signaled for a few guards to head down to make sure our other shifter prisoner didn’t go anywhere. If there was a shifter in the courtyard, I was willing to bet that there were others nearby. This was a distraction. I would have bet my life on it.
And in a way I did.
Then, to the shock of everyone in the courtyard, a woman came stumbling in, her eyes looking up at the sky as if she were completely insane. My first impression was that she was a simpleton who had escaped her guardians. Then I narrowed my eyes as I began to suspect that she was in some way a part of the distraction.
This suspicion was quickly erased when my eyes moved to the shifter whose expression was one of the same surprise as mine. The woman walked almost right into him. It had been like a strange nightmare where I had watched people blindly walk into danger that swallowed them whole. Now it was happening right in front of my eyes.
The shifter moved with impossible speed, pulling the woman to him, using her as a shield between us and him. Too late, I thought to try to get her to safety. Cursing myself for having been shocked into inaction, I adjusted my sword and glared at her and the shifter.
The smile on the shifter’s face was infuriating. “As I said, luck is always on my side. If you don’t want to be responsible for her death, let him go.”
I gritted my teeth so hard, I half expected to hear one of them crack. The woman’s eyes were wide, and the fear was obvious as she began to realize the trouble she was in. A part of me wondered if she could possibly understand how desperate her situation really was. This I quickly shook off because there was no way she could have known. Even if her feeble mind could understand the swords pointed at her, she would have no idea that the real danger was currently at her back.
Hoping that the shifter would be merciful, I g
rowled, “Let the girl go. Clearly she is a simpleton who can’t even recognize danger. Even a lowlife such as yourself would not harm someone with the mind of a child.” As I spoke, my eyes bore into the woman who had interrupted what I had hoped to do. The only option left now was the one that I had hoped to avoid. With a stupid yet innocent woman now involved, I definitely did not want to have to resort to this last option. She had ruined what little control I had over the situation.
To my horror, the shifter tightened his grip on the woman as he responded to me, “A lowlife such as myself would be more than happy to sacrifice someone for his own safety. That is why the burden is all on you to call them off and let us go. Including your prized prisoner.”
Something about his movements suggested that he was now protecting her. Shaking that idea from my head, I knew that I was going to have to proceed. If the choice was mine, I couldn’t afford to let either of the shifters go, not knowing what they were capable of in the city. It was more important to find a way to contain them than to save one woman who seemed to have no survival instincts. That made two women that morning that I was willing to sacrifice for the protection of the city. Resigned to do something that made me sick to my stomach, I stole myself to give the order I dreaded. “I have no time to go saving every fool who ambles into danger. My job is to capture criminals like you.”
The next series of events happened in rapid succession.
As if the shifter wasn’t enough for me to contend with, an unwelcome voice shrilly yelled out at me. “Don’t you dare, Falmen. Don’t you dare! If you go through with it, I swear it will be the last thing you do as captain!”
Having avoided her once that day, I had hoped to not see the princess again. But there she was, witnessing the entire business. Why she would care what was happening was beyond me. Unless she was just desirous of further making my life miserable, which I suspected was her reason for interrupting now. She just couldn’t stand not being the center of attention.
Ignoring her cries, I glanced up to give my men the sign to proceed. As they began to push a gargoyle from its position, the shifter looked at me and again adjusted his body around the woman, a gesture I could not understand. What was he doing? Then he laughed before he turned his attention to me, his words catching me off-guard, “Ah, sweetheart, just what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into?”
Unlike the princess’s words, what the shifter said caused me to freeze. I knew he was addressing me, and those words were the most terrifying threat I had ever heard. If this didn’t kill him—and I was certain it wouldn’t—I now had to fear what would happen when he woke. I knew that he wasn’t here to make my life miserable. But those words alone were like the threat of a future that was worse than death.
Then the gargoyle struck him. And I realized that he had moved his body to take almost all of the force of the blow. The woman had been injured, but I knew that she would live. Another horrible realization began to creep in—he had intentionally protected the fool who had stumbled into the courtyard. Either he had been a surprisingly good actor when he had seen her, or he had found one more way to mess with me. Having protected her from death, the woman’s life would now be his.
I had essentially given him a woman to take away from the city, and I had little doubt that her life would be made far worse for it.
Very aware that I didn’t have long before the princess emerged and started trying to take control of the situation, I hurried to get the shifter and the woman out of the courtyard.
“Take him to the dungeons. Make sure he is kept far away from his leader in case this was some bizarre attempt to break him out.”
Then yet another wrench was thrown into what was already a horrible situation. The woman whom I had left so far behind had not only finally caught up, she had decided that there was a task she could complete. Now she was interfering with my job.
Her voice was meek as she asked, “What of the woman?”
I knew the woman wasn’t dead, but I had hoped that no one else would notice. If I had been able to get Jacob to remove her from the courtyard, we could have taken her somewhere else and sought her guardians. She could have returned to her life as if the events in the courtyard had not happened. Now even that plan was impossible because this supposed helper was declaring that the woman was not dead.
Praying that she might be smart enough to understand my intentions, I tried to hint at what the outcome should be. “I imagine the idiot can be chucked into the next mass grave.”
We had no mass graves, and hadn’t in nearly a century. It was a signal to step back and pretend the woman was dead.
But this woman was not from the city, and my hope was entirely dashed when she said loud enough for people nearby to hear, “Um… she’s still alive.”
Cursing the stupidity of the women in the city, for one angry moment, I could almost believe that they deserved the horrible fates that befell them. Almost.
Closing my eyes, I counted to ten to ensure that I didn’t completely lose my composure. “If he really did spare her life, the laws are very clear that she belongs to him.” I then looked at the woman as if to dare her to contradict me. “It would be far best if she were dead, and it would not take much to make sure she did not breathe long enough to become his plaything.”
My time was up. The shrill voice I had been trying to avoid was now at my back. “No! Absolutely not!” Though I knew how my guards felt about her, I did not expect one of them to actually reach out and try to stop her. Yet the foolish man did, further incensing the princess. “Unhand me! Falmen, is this how you train your men to deal with the princess?”
The one good thing about the princess’s arrival was that I knew exactly how to keep myself under control in front of her. “No, your majesty. I will have him punished.” I waved a hand and my men escorted the offender away.
The princess folded her arms across her chest, “How dare you, after everything? This is unacceptable.”
Seething from the events of the morning, I pushed my luck with my response, “Which part, my lady? The part where I apprehended a known criminal? Or did you mean the part where I disregarded your soft heart, which allowed him to get this close to the royal family?”
“I shall tell my father about this, and there will be consequences.”
Fighting back the urge to smile, I tried to make her feel the full weight of our positions. It was true she was the princess, but she and her father were no longer on good terms. I, on the other hand, was essential to him for as long as I remained alive. There wasn’t much she could do to hurt me. “Of that, I have no doubt.” It was a sarcastic remark that lacked the sarcastic tone. I watched with a small bit of pleasure as she glared at me. She had been angered into silence.
As she moved in her indignation, I noticed how the skirt of her dress moved in a very unnatural way. For a moment I looked at her with my usual contempt, but internally I was taking in the strange outlines that were barely visible in her dress. The princess was concealing weapons. But why? Mentally, I sighed because it was one more thing I didn’t have time to deal with.
And I did not believe that this was my problem.
Turning from her, I realized that the woman who had been foisted on me that morning could not understand what I wanted and was going to persist in whatever she was doing. Realizing that there was no way to save the fool who had stumbled into the courtyard, I resigned her to the life that awaited her as a toy of the shifter. “It appears that the fate of the foolish girl has been decided. She will need to be deposited wherever the prisoner goes. Then I have a different assignment for you as you clearly do not understand the gravity of what you have done.”
I could not look at my “ideal helper” because I knew that from that point on, she was going to be an outcast. Her interference had directly led to the shifter getting a slave. In less than 15 minutes, two women had found themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time, and now they were condemned for the rest of their lives.
Pushing down the pity I felt for them, I resumed the tasks that needed to be done to clean up the unexpected and disastrous morning. There would be repercussions. The question was on which should I focus?
And in that moment, as I ordered the women to be taken down into the dungeon, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would be dragged down there myself. There were too many variables, too many things that had gone wrong. And I knew that the likelihood that my secret would be exposed was all but guaranteed.
With two shifters in the palace who knew what I was, it was only a matter of time before they revealed what I had kept hidden for almost my entire life. The question was how they would do it.
I would soon realize that it wasn’t the shifters whom I should have worried about, but the princess.
Chapter 1
Fallout from the Princess’s Rash Actions
Of all the consequences that I had thought would likely result from that morning, I did not anticipate the one that happened first. And because of the choices made after the events of the courtyard, the problem that ended up being the most detrimental was the one that I had ignored. While I was overseeing the different types of cleanup from the shifter encounter, the princess had marched off to talk to her father. Her skirts full of weapons, which she had to know was a risk not worth taking, the headstrong young woman had marched off to the men’s breakfast. Her father was negotiating her marriage, working it from a couple of different angles to see which would be the most beneficial. She knew what his temper was like and had to know that the gamble was just as likely to do her harm as it would me.
Yet still the princess interrupted his discussion with a room full of powerful men by announcing that she was going to wed the Prince of Evinough. Not only did she blow up her father’s attempts to weasel a better deal out of one of the lords, apparently she had given a timeline of a week for the wedding.