The Heir and the Spare

by Kate Stradling

  Behind her, Neven shut the door and leaned against it for support. “Your Royal Highness, Princess Iona of Wessett has agreed to hear your petition.”

  The introduction, so unnecessary, made the encounter all the more surreal. Iona had fixed her attention on Jaoven from the moment she crossed the threshold. He, however, could barely meet her gaze, his eyes flitting from her face to her feet and every other point around her. Time had improved his looks from a beautiful, haughty boy to a handsome, polished man. He and her sister would make an exquisite, if not deadly, pair.

  And she was already breaking Lisenn’s one commandment by occupying the same room. “Be quick about it,” she said. “My time is too valuable to waste here.”

  In answer, his knees hit the floor, followed by his hands, the position a hallmark of abject humiliation. “Forgive me, Your Highness. I have wronged you, deeply in the past and again this very morning. I regret—” The word caught in his throat. His gaze remained fixed upon the patch of marble between his flattened palms as he sucked in a controlled inhale. “I regret the youth I once was and that my reaction to your presence today thrust this delegation into such a negative light. I take complete responsibility and beg your forgiveness. We have come in good faith.”

  His apology hung upon the air, with a dozen onlookers breathless for how its recipient might respond. Iona, having never imagined such a display even possible, stared slack-jawed. The moment stretched thin, and when Jaoven finally chanced an upward glance, she snapped her mouth shut.

  She had no words. In confusion she spun, determined to leave this room and its dangerous occupants behind. Neven even started to open the door.

  Jaoven scrambled up after her. “Wait! Please!” When she paused, leveling him an incredulous look, he wrung his hands. “Yan—Your Highness, we have come to treat with Wessett. Please, will you give us a chance?”

  “Give you a chance?” she echoed, half-wild to be gone. “Treat as you please. It has nothing to do with me.”

  Anxiety flashed across his face. “You won’t undermine our efforts?”

  There lay his true concern. She dismissed it on a short, derisive laugh. “Ha. No. Is that all you’re worried about? You could’ve saved your breath: I have nothing to do with diplomacy, and I have no intention of interfering.”

  His brows arched. Did he regret abasing himself to such an extent? Because she deeply regretted the exhibition. She would blast it from her memory if she only could.

  At her commanding look, Neven swung the door wide open. She swept into the hall without a backward glance, her feet treading almost faster than her thoughts could run.

  The apology was nothing more than a ruse, a moment of disgrace intended to curry her favor. And she, like a simple child, had walked right into it, had risked her neck to witness whether a man she despised would thus humiliate himself.

  Apparently this treaty meant more to Jaoven than his pride. Perhaps the newly fledged prince had other schemes up his sleeves than a simple marriage alliance.

  Well, but Lisenn would put him in check soon enough. Iona had only to sit back and watch the chaos unfold.

  “That went surprisingly well,” Riok said as soon as the door had shut.

  “Too well.” Jaoven, absently staring at the spot where Princess Iona had so recently stood, rubbed his lower lip. “She couldn’t wait to be out of our presence, and she dismissed my apology as an unnecessary overture.”

  Neven sank into the chair nearest him. “She said she didn’t want apologies, Jove. I think she only came to prove you wouldn’t offer one at all.”

  Denoela leaned forward where she sat on one ivory couch. “But she told us to treat with her father anyway.”

  “That’s what bothers me the most,” said the prince. “She must know we’re proposing a marriage alliance. By her reactions now and earlier today, I’m a villain in her eyes. So why allow me to pursue a marriage with her sister, into her own family?”

  Elouan pushed away from the wall and strode into the center of the room. “Maybe she doesn’t understand. Maybe she thinks if you marry Princess Lisenn, the throne of Wessett falls to her. Maybe the second-born has more ambitions than her art and music studies might indicate.”

  The allegation made sense. Countries were more likely to split than combine, and marriage treaties usually only brought kinship with a promise of peace, not a forged alliance under a shared crown.

  Still, Princess Iona’s words rang in his mind. “I don’t think that’s it. She said she has nothing to do with diplomacy. There’s some other power at play here, some influence we haven’t encountered yet, for all our official and non-official inquiries.”

  “Maybe she hates her sister,” said a quiet voice in the corner. All eyes turned to the youngest member of their delegation, Clervie of Trevilis. She sat, arms folded, her dark hair loose in waves around her face and her black eyes keen upon the prince.

  He stepped closer. “What makes you think that?”

  “She was a year ahead of me. Say what you will about art students—no offense, Neven—but she was clever. All three years I participated in the Hunt, she was the very last one caught.”

  “I remember,” Elouan said with a bitter grunt. “It took us off-guard that first time, because the year before she hadn’t lasted an hour. We thought she’d be easy to pick off, and when we tallied the prey and she was still missing, the older boys threw a fit.”

  Clervie nodded. “To go from among the very first caught to the very last in only a year means she must have spent the interim forming strategies for how to survive. But she never gave even the slightest hint, just as she never hinted at her true rank. And she repeated her success for two more years, which means she wasn’t using the same hiding places from one Hunt to the next. She works in the shadows, Jove, where no one pays her any heed.”

  “And what does that have to do with her hating her sister?” he asked, intrigued by this insight to a character he had never been able to pin.

  “If she’s conspiring against the crown princess, our proposed alliance may have no effect on plans already in play. It may even work to her favor. If she sees you as a villain, why would she care if you take her hated sister away?”

  Jaoven arched one brow. “You think she’s plotting to usurp the throne?”

  “I think someone might be. All our inquiries here have returned reports that the people of Wessett are favorable to this treaty. No country is that unified. That means someone’s tapped into our line of spies and they’re tampering with our communications. Imagine, if you will, that the people themselves don’t want this alliance, that they want to remain separate and distinct. It’s entirely possible. Wessett and Capria were at war for a hundred years after Wessett split off, in words if not in actual battles. If King Gawen announces a treaty that joins us again, it will create unrest in the broader countryside, and those in positions of power who oppose the union can use that momentum to start a revolution against the crown.”

  “And you think Princess Iona’s involved in such a plot?”

  Clervie spread her fingers wide. “I’m only speculating on patterns I can see. We’re all aware of how a second-born can rebel against the titled heir.”

  Uneasiness seeped across the room, delegates exchanging cagey glances.

  “We’re not to speak of it,” Jaoven said, a thorn of iron in his voice. “If such a plot does exist on these shores, I’m not convinced that Iona would be involved. She is clever, as you say, but she only used that cleverness to survive, never to topple us from our perch.”

  “Still, it bears looking into, Your Highness,” said Riok with utmost care.

  The prince contemplated this advice and ultimately nodded. “Stay on alert, then, for any rumors of unrest in the castle and the city beyond.”

  “And what of Iona?” Elouan asked.

  A muscle rippled along Jaoven’s jawline. “I’ll keep an eye on her myself, and see what I can glean from her sister as well. I’m in prime position to have
access to them both, after all.”

  Chapter 4

  Bina almost pounced the moment Iona passed through her bedroom door. “Where have you been? There’s a state dinner, and your father—”

  “I know.” Iona slipped from her maid’s grasping hands to deposit her sketchbook on a desk in the corner. She should have detoured to her studio to stow it where it belonged, but a specter of anxiety sat upon her. Had Lisenn or one of her informants witnessed the younger princess coming and going from the diplomatic corridor? Would her own parents misconstrue such a report?

  Normally, she kept away from state business and state functions by design, eager not to present any form of rivalry for the nation’s future queen. That her father commanded her presence tonight could only bode ill to come.

  “There’s very little time,” Bina said, “and your hair’s going to take up most of it.” She ushered her to the vanity, chattering about possible styles and ornaments.

  Iona cut her off before she could propose anything decorative. “No flowers and no jewels.”

  The woman swallowed and managed a feeble nod, although regret glimmered in her eyes. Only five years Iona’s senior, she’d cared for the princess since the girl was eight years old—a gap-toothed eight, waiting for her age to catch up with her sister’s malicious handiwork. When Lisenn lost her first upper tooth, she yanked three from Iona’s mouth as well. When she lost the second, out came three more. The king and queen sent their younger child to a country estate at that point, her mouth an eyesore, and there Bina had joined her roughly eighteen months into that solitary sojourn.

  The maid and the princess had been together ever since. Bina, plain of face and keen of wit, gave the affection-starved child a safe haven her own family couldn’t. Caprian by birth, she had proved the perfect companion to escort the young princess across the channel into a second life. She had witnessed every injury, and she understood exactly why Iona never wrote home.

  And she should have been a first line of defense against this morning’s foreign delegation.

  “You knew there were Caprians coming,” Iona said, observing her maid’s reflection in the mirror.

  Bina froze, her wary eyes wide. She blinked but did not deny the charge. “It’s been all over the servants’ quarters for a week. I didn’t want you to worry. You’re grown up now, and poised, and so beautiful—”

  “You should have warned me. This whole day has caught me off my guard.”

  Reluctantly she nodded. “I’m sorry, little dove. You so rarely deal with state matters. I hoped it could be settled and done, and you never the wiser.”

  “And yet you dressed my hair so nicely.”

  She accepted the implied rebuke, somberness settling upon her. “I should have warned you. I’m sorry.” She fixed her attention on the workings of a small braid then, as though it were the most interesting, engrossing process. In a light, curious tone she asked, “Did you recognize any of them?”

  Iona huffed a bitter laugh. “Five of them were students from the college. Jaoven of Deraval is their new crown prince.” Awareness flickered across her maid’s face, and the princess’s blood pressure spiked. “You knew?”

  The woman stooped to envelope her, quick to repent of the hurt she had caused. “Oh, Yanna,” she whispered in her charge’s ear, the nickname a gift that had once been a secret between them. “I’m so sorry. I wanted him to see you at your lovely, unbroken best. I wanted him to writhe, to sense his own mortality, that he once dared torment a princess of Wessett and now comes begging her family’s favor. You couldn’t set him in his place back then, and you suffered because of it. But you can slay that dragon now and never lose a wink of sleep.”

  Iona accepted the speech in silence, and for a long breath afterward said nothing. Then, quietly, she spoke. “He apologized.”

  Her maid drew back, brown eyes huge. “He did?”

  “Yes. Sort of. It wasn’t sincere. They’re worried I might interfere with their precious treaty.”

  “Will you?” Bina asked, an odd expression chasing across her face. Belatedly Iona recalled that although she and her parents had emigrated across the channel, the woman yet had family on the mainland, family that had fought and suffered in the bloody Caprian war.

  “No. Why should I?”

  Wistful disappointment pulled at the woman’s mouth. Iona leaned toward the mirror, engaging with her maid’s reflection rather than the flesh-and-blood human at her back.

  “It’s a marriage alliance, Bina: Jaoven of Deraval and my sister. What more poetic combination could exist? And if he takes her away with him to Capria, I might have years of reprieve before she returns.”

  But Bina only shook her head. “It’s bad enough that she’ll rule this island one day. If you put her on the throne of Capria too, she’s that much more powerful. How many thousands of people will she torture? Oh, I’ll admit that their new crown prince deserves every ill she might visit upon him, and she deserves what punishments he might mete. They might be a pestilence upon each other. But Iona—” Her voice caught. She shook her head and regrouped, her words dropping so low that her charge had to strain to hear them. “What if they get along? What if they combine their evil ways into a reign of terror? Both Capria and Wessett will suffer under such an alliance as that.”

  Iona’s skin crawled at the vision this ominous speech invoked. She assumed that Lisenn and Jaoven would persecute each other, not that they would combine forces. But Lisenn obviously wanted this union. Perhaps she sensed in Jaoven a kindred spirit rather than a fresh victim and a path to greater power.

  Futility set into the younger sister’s bones. “There’s nothing I can do. She already told me to keep out of it. If I meddle, the whole of Wessett isn’t broad enough to hide me from her wrath.”

  Bina dropped an impulsive kiss upon her head. “Poor dove, you’re right. Let’s hope he carries her away from here, then, and pray she dies in childbirth before a year has passed.”

  “Bina!”

  The maid met her startled gaze in the mirror. “I won’t apologize. Plenty of good and wholesome women succumb to that fate. She has the same chance as anyone else.”

  “But to pray for it—!”

  “Shush. I pray for justice, on your behalf and for anyone else she might have injured. It’s not wrong to hope her influence never extends as far as her ambitions. Now let’s get you dressed so you won’t draw your father’s wrath on top of that harpy’s.”

  The maid, well aware of her charge’s boundaries for the night, selected two evening gowns from Iona’s wardrobe: one blue-gray and the other russet brown. Iona chose the second, much to Bina’s dismay.

  “At least the tailoring is fine,” she said with a sigh. True enough, despite its dreary color, the fabric and cut were otherwise second to none.

  “I like my neutral palette,” Iona said, checking her reflection in a long mirror. Only a small strand of pearls adorned her neck, and that because Lisenn despised the delicate gem. The elder princess always wore sunbursts of diamonds and rubies, priceless settings pulled from the royal family’s cache of crown jewels, but Iona contented herself with pearls alone, a string her mother gave her in welcome when she returned to Wessett’s shores. Bina glanced wistfully at the necklace, but before she could speak any regrets, a knock rapped upon the door.

  Aedan stood in the hall. Dressed in his finest evening wear, he peered past the maid to Iona and bowed with a deep flourish. “I’ve come to collect you for the feast, milady.”

  “Worried I might have a mishap along the way?” Iona asked.

  “Worried you might hare off into the night and leave me to suffer it alone,” he replied with a lop-sided grin.

  She kissed her maid on the cheek. Bina squeezed her hand and whispered in her ear, “Be careful, dove.”

  “I will, I promise.” She gathered a russet shawl at her elbows and left the room.

  “Was it a masquerade tonight?” Aedan asked as they fell in step beside each other. “You
forgot the leaves in your hair.” To Iona’s questioning stare he added, “You are dressed as a tree, are you not? Maybe it’s a tree in winter, with no leaves at all.”

  She swatted his arm but otherwise ignored the provocation. “Did you settle things with Besseta? Was she very upset?”

  “I’m to go straight to her from here and croon my lamentations beneath her balcony,” he said.

  Iona snorted an ungraceful laugh.

  A smile tugged at the corners of her cousin’s mouth. “I’m serious, though. She might have been joking when she said it, but I have every intention of following the command, and seeing how deeply I can make her blush.”

  “Ugh. You two are insufferable.”

  Their branch of corridor intersected with a wider hallway. As they emerged, they almost collided with the Caprian delegation heading the same direction. Both parties stopped short, and the smile slipped from Iona’s face. She met Prince Jaoven’s gaze.

  He stepped slightly backward and motioned her to proceed. Aedan didn’t second-guess the gesture, sweeping Iona ahead of the foreigners with a grim set to his jaw. She resisted the impulse to glance back over her shoulder, but her ears fixed on the footfalls that echoed her own. If she entered the gathering hall with the Caprians almost at her heels, Lisenn would assume they came together. Self-consciously she increased her pace.

  Aedan matched her stride with a worried glance. The footsteps behind her actually slowed. When she rounded the corner with the gathering room doors wide open before her, the second party was far enough behind that she could breathe a sigh of relief.

  She and Aedan crossed the threshold with little fanfare, into a crowd of court officials who mingled in their finest clothing. Lisenn’s keen eyes homed in on her from afar. Resplendent in ruby red, she sparkled with diamonds at her throat and the tiara that marked her as the next in line for the throne. For all this refined beauty, a dangerous atmosphere shimmered around her.

  Did she know about her sister’s brief meeting with the Caprians? Would she somehow exact her revenge tonight? Iona practically bolted for the corner farthest from her, eager to put as many people between them as she could.