by Megan Derr
Shanna threw herself out of bed, yanked on her boots, gathered up her cloak, and tossed her saddlebags over one shoulder. She ran for the bathing room, and the door closed behind her just as she heard soldiers bursting into the hall.
She sprinted across the bathing room to the door in the back, used to haul water in from the nearby well.
Outside, she slipped behind the temple and darted down the length of the opposite side.
Looking around the edge, she spied a single guard left to watch the dragons. Not giving herself too much time to think about it, Shanna drew the knife at her belt, crept up behind the man, grabbed him, and slammed the dagger into his throat.
Blinking away tears as she left him to bleed out, she swiftly cut the reins and saddles on all the dragons and sent them running off—save for one, which she took for herself, clambering up its slick, warm, and scaly side to rest in the high-backed saddle. Settling her bags and cloak in front of her, she heeled the dragon into motion.
She was just barely clear of the village when she heard angry shouting. Holding on tightly, she urged the dragon to an even faster pace. Snorting, its hot breath misting heavily in the air, the dragon obeyed. Moonlight gleamed on its dark scales, and it was impossible to tell if they were blue or green. With the size of the dragon, either color was possible, though by the ease with which it ran at top speed, she’d hazard green.
Despite everything, as she went farther and farther without hearing anyone behind her, Shanna drifted in and out of sleep as the dragon pressed on tirelessly.
Eventually, however, she was jerked wholly awake by a lack of movement, and noticed they had stopped at a stream. Toppling off the dragon, her bags and cloak coming after her, Shanna crawled to the stream and drank several mouthfuls of bitingly cold water.
Then she started crying, as fear and exhaustion and remorse finally got the better of her. She was tired. Of being afraid. Of being alone. Of being so desperate to secure her freedom she’d finally been forced to kill someone—and not even in a fight, but from behind and without the man ever having any warning.
That he’d been there to help drag her back to her stepfather was of little comfort. She couldn’t think of any other way she could have escaped, but that didn’t help either.
“Oh, Mama, I miss you,” Shanna sniffled to the river. Her mother would know what to do, how she should have done it. The right consort to have picked.
Shanna laughed bitterly. Or maybe not. As much as she loved and missed her mother, every now and then she was angry too, because it was her mother who had taken Mercen as a lover, her mother who had then decided Mercen would make a good consort. Her mother who had realized too late that Mercen was not the man she’d believed him to be.
But anger at her mother would get her nowhere, and she’d always been the first to say that even the smartest people made the most foolish mistakes. Even a queen could briefly fall in love with an evil, scheming bastard.
Shanna washed her face before finally turning to her saddlebags and pulling out proper clothing. Then she secured her cloak and went to take care of the saddlebags—only to see that the dragon already carried some. Heart trip-trapping, she quickly inspected them and could have cried all over again to see they were filled with food aplenty for her and the dragon. There was even a waterskin, a map, more coin, and emergency rations when the proper travel food ran out.
Shanna fed the dragon, then wolfed down some food herself. Once they were both fed and rested, she led the dragon into the stream and urged it onward. The dragon growled softly, playfully, its tail lashing before it sprang forward and began to wade upstream happily, dealing with the current and rocks and debris like they were nothing more than mild amusements.
By the time they stopped, the sun was high in the sky but mostly covered by clouds threatening more snow. Shanna got them fed and rested again, then resumed the journey, though this time she veered out of the stream and headed deeper into the dense, quiet woods.
The smell of smoke drew her from a light doze, the dragon rumbling inquisitively as it smelled the smoke too. She clicked the order to follow the trail, and with an eager rumble, the dragon obeyed. Not more than what seemed like an hour or so later, it broke from the trees into a clearing. Snow had begun to fall, thick and heavy, nearly obscuring the house at the far edge. There was a trio of buildings, likely the house itself, a stable, and a shed for storing food and wood to get through winter.
Shanna dismounted and led the dragon to the stable, where she wasn’t surprised to see two horses: a heavy draft horse and a mare for riding. The horses startled but calmed almost immediately, as dragons were no threat to horses. Working quickly, Shanna got the mare out of her stable and saddled. Then she tended the dragon, moved him into the mare’s stall, apologizing for the tight quarters. Once that was done, she crept out of the barn to the storage shed, where she replenished the supplies in her saddlebags, found an old, dusty knapsack and filled it with extra supplies, and left a pile of coins to make up for the theft as best she could.
After creeping back to the stable, she led the mare outside, mounted up, and rode off back into the dark woods. She immediately mourned the loss of the dragon, but for all it had speed and endurance, it also would draw attention as only the wealthy could afford to travel so.
Humming softly to keep herself awake, she pulled out a compass and found her course, snow swirling all around her.
It took another week of hard travel to reach and cross over the Blue Hills, most of that due to the foul weather. But snow was good, because while blue and green dragons handled snow well, soldiers were issued red dragons, and they would therefore have no choice but to do what the last group had done: wait for someone to inform them of her exact location and go to it.
Once she was through the Blue Hills, she could relax somewhat. There was nothing much out this way, only farmers who seldom had need to cross the mountains and largely counted themselves separate from the rest of the kingdom, and her destination: the Monastery of the Seven Bells of Auren.
Nobody, least of all her stepfather, would think to look for at a mostly forgotten monastery at the far edge of the kingdom, of interest only to monks and other persons who wanted to leave the rest of the world behind. Unlike other monasteries and temples, which served the towns, villages, farms, and cities in which they were built or located near, Seven Bells was exclusively for study and contemplation. Monks who joined it rarely left again, and much was the same for the small number of guests who boarded there. The only trade they had with the rest of the world was for the few goods they could not make themselves, mostly food and a handful of supplies.
It was where her grandmother had retired after she’d withdrawn from the throne and left it to Shanna’s mother. That was not common knowledge—far from it. Her grandmother had wanted to be left in peace, to live out her life in the solitude and calm she’d seldom enjoyed as queen, being the third child who’d never really been meant for the throne but had, in the wake of illness that had killed her siblings, been forced to take it.
And so a story had been contrived of the dowager queen going overseas to a nunnery to live out her days, a lie Shanna and her mother had maintained even after she’d passed away. The only other person who knew was Penli, because he’d been the one to handle correspondence between them to help maintain the ruse.
Hopefully he would be able to divert her stepfather’s attention, and by the time Mercen realized the lie, Penli would have managed an escape of his own.
Kallaar and Ahmla…well, no doubt once they’d heard she was gone and not to be found, they would have made their way home. If she was not at the castle, there was nothing for them to do, and whatever obligation they’d felt toward her mother likely did not extend to hunting down a runaway.
Her thoughts drifted to dancing with Kallaar, sneaking out of the castle with Ahmla, that wonderful, awful moment in the hallway when she’d seen them kiss. The sweet, hot thrill of declaring Kallaar her betrothed—doing so
had felt right, when so much else had felt wrong, or at least woefully inadequate.
But she had been only nonsense, and now the nonsense was over and done. She only hoped they had not entirely hated their brief time as her protectors, and could now go home to be happy together.
Would they miss her even a little? Tired of lying and hiding.
Probably not. How could they sound so sweet and true when they said things like my queen and here to serve you when secretly they wanted to be anywhere else in the world?
Did anyone at the castle miss her? What sort of future queen was she if no one cared she was gone? Was there ever going to be someone who wanted her? How long would she have to wait before finding that person?
Shanna pulled her hood farther up over her head, ducked down against the snow, and pressed onward toward the distant monastery and the two years of solitude waiting there for her.
It took a little over a month to reach the monastery, mostly due to increasingly miserable weather, though she’d also had to avoid other travelers and once had barely managed to evade thieves lying in wait in the forest.
Thankfully, aside from the thieves, and despite the fact the weather had seemed to skip autumn and gone straight to winter, her journey since crossing the Blue Hills was largely uneventful. Difficult, exhausting, and she had never missed her bed and bath more in her life, but mostly peaceful.
But the best part was that her journey was now officially over, even if she’d rather be home than more or less alone in the middle of nowhere.
The Monastery of the Seven Bells of Auren was a handsome, bright, and sprawling structure built in a lonesome valley just a few days’ travel from the mountains that formed a natural border between her kingdom and the one to which her stepfather wanted her marriage to tie them.
Reaching the courtyard, she tugged the hood of her heavy cloak farther so there was no chance of someone getting a clear look at her face. Dismounting, she waited for the pair of monks coming her way.
“Hail, stranger,” one of them said, voice only just carrying through the snow-laden night. “What brings you to the Seven Bells at so late an hour?”
“An urgent matter. I must speak with His Eminence at once, in the name of the queen.”
They gave her startled looks, but did not ask why she said queen instead of consort. Instead, one faded off to speak with the abbot and the other took her horse once Shanna had removed her belongings.
“Thank you.”
The monk nodded, and she hauled across the courtyard into the monastery, which was mercifully warm by comparison.
She set her belongings down and huddled in her cloak, tempted by the fire at the far end of the hall, but remaining where she was until she had been made welcome. Despite her cloak and the thick stone walls, she was still shivering by the time the first monk returned and escorted her to the abbot.
Only when the door was safely closed behind them, and the abbot gave an admonishment to the monk that they were not to be disturbed without knocking, did Shanna finally push back her hood.
“Dear girl,” the old abbot said softly, “whatever in the world are you doing here? My, you’ve grown since last I saw you. Come, sit, sit.” He ushered her to the fire and gently pushed back a strand of hair that had come loose from the braided knot at the back of her head. “You look just like your mother, but you have your father’s penchant for trouble, I fear.” He pressed a cup of warm spiced wine into her cold hands and took the seat opposite her. “So tell me how the queen-in-waiting comes to be all the way out here when she should be planning her wedding.”
Laughing shakily, too exhausted to do anymore crying, Shanna told him everything.
When she was done, he clucked his tongue and refilled her cup. “This is certainly an excellent place to hide for a little while, but two years is a long time to sit around waiting. You will need an army to take your throne, and obviously you will not have your own. So rest here for a few months, but after that… Have you given any thought as to where you might go to forge an alliance?”
“I haven’t had time to work that out,” Shanna said, unwilling to admit she hadn’t thought about it at all. Escape had been the only thing on her mind. But now he’d laid the words out, she was forced to finally think about them. Of course she simply couldn’t wait here, then go blazing home all on her own. But imagining herself with a borrowed army, with allies, was even more ridiculous. She couldn’t even rally her own people; her stepfather was that intimidating. How in the world would she get another kingdom to support her when she couldn’t get her own to do so?
Thoughts of Kallaar and Ahmla rose, but she shoved them back down. They’d done enough, and whatever friendship had existed between their parents, that didn’t mean they owed Shanna anything. She would not continue to be a burden and source of unhappiness; Kallaar and Ahmla deserved better than that. “If I had stayed, people would have been killed and tortured. I have every faith my stepfather intended me to join my mother at some point. It’s better I’m away from there, even if my only option was to go into hiding. Where I will go next, I don’t know yet, but I have a little time to figure it out. That is, if you are willing to have me here for a time, Eminence. I would not bring the possibility of trouble to your door if I felt I had anywhere else to go.”
His eyes sparkled, mouth curving faintly. “The women of your family are always welcome here, my dear. As to where you should go next, we will work that out, though I think you already know where you want to go.”
She shook her head, from exhaustion rather than denial. It didn’t matter how badly she wished Kallaar and Ahmla were there. The door to that dream was firmly closed.
The abbot made a soft noise and patted her hands. “Rest a few days, my dear, and we’ll speak again.” A knock came at the door. “Ah, and I believe your accommodations are ready. You’ll be staying in the rooms your grandmother used. I ordered some of her belongings out of storage to make the place more comfortable. No one save I and the two monks who will be tending you—the two you met tonight—knows your real identity. Everyone else will be told you’re a noblewoman.”
“Of course. I’m eternally grateful for your kindness and generosity.”
“The throne and Seven Bells have always helped each other.” He tugged her to her feet, kissed both her cheeks, and embraced her. He called for the knocker to enter and shooed her toward the two monks waiting. “Go along, then, Highness, and get settled.”
She thanked him again, and followed the monks in silence through the quiet halls, up several flights of stairs and along a long, narrow, and open walkway to a section almost entirely cut off from the rest of the monastery, connected only by the walkway and the sprawling gardens beneath.
They showed her into a set of three rooms, though all three could have fit into her old suite with plenty of room to spare. “Thank you.”
After rambling about food, facilities, and what to do should she need something, they faded off and left her.
Shanna swallowed at the stark silence. Outside, the wind howled, snow whipped against the building and the few trees, but the perpetual noise of the castle wasn’t there. No clattering and murmuring of guards, no cats and chickens and dogs, no distant rumble of the dragons. No worthless bodyguards, and worst of all, she could not hear the crash of the waves or smell the sea.
Her throat felt scraped raw, and her eyes stung, but she was too exhausted and wrung out to cry again. She had made her choice, and despite going over the whole fiasco a thousand times while she traveled, still she had not found a better solution. She would remain here for as long as possible and then see if some distant ally might be willing to lend her the forces she would need to take back her rightful place.
Chapter Six
“Highness.”
Shanna looked up from the book she’d been trying to read for the last hour, but being confined to a set of three rooms and a tiny patio and garden all day, everyday, was wearing on her even more than she’d feared. She smiled
at Barth, one of the monks who tended her. “Yes?”
He held out the robe he was carrying. “His Eminence thought you might like to leave your rooms for a little while. He says as long as you stay in the robes, keep the hood up, and do not speak to anyone, you should be fine. Many monks here take vows of silence and hide their faces, for various reasons, so you won’t stand out. He suggested you might like to help me. I’m in charge of the herb gardens. Would you like to assist me today?”
“That would be marvelous, thank you.” She took the robe and hastened into the bedroom to change.
Several minutes later, she was in the garden happily pulling weeds and picking herbs, hauling the full baskets to the shed where they’d be bundled and hung to dry.
Over the next couple of weeks, she helped with the herbs and various other gardens. The two weeks after that, she assisted Rori, the other monk who tended her, with the stables. Mostly the monks used horses for their excursions, but the enormous barrels of mead, wine, and brandy they produced could be hauled only by dragons, and so a dozen of them were kept on the premises as well. When she was no longer needed in the gardens or stables, the abbot gave her work in the library, where she spent her days switching between dusting and shelving, and translating and transcribing.
She’d been there a little over two months, with winter heavily settled over the country, when her solitude was shattered.
A low cough made Shanna startle and jerk her pen, ruining the line she’d just finished. Scowling, stifling a sigh, she replaced the pen in its stand and looked at Rori. “Yes?”
“You have a visitor.”