Princess of Death

by Cortney Pearson

  Copyright © 2019 Cortney Pearson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, printing, recording, or otherwise—without the prior permission of the author, except for use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, incidents, or events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copy Edited by Cynthia Shepp

  Proofread by Cynthia Shepp

  Cover Design by Rebecca Frank Art

  Map Drawn by Chad Hurd

  Author Photo by Clayton Photo + Design

  www.cortneypearson.com

  Created with Vellum

  For Duane

  All that glitters is not gold.

  -William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act II, scene vii

  Contents

  Map of Zara

  Prologue

  After

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Invitation to Review!

  Also by Cortney Pearson

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Map of Zara

  Pirate: n., one who acts without authority, who attacks and robs ships at sea. Scoundrel. Crook. Thief. Murderer.

  Princess: n., one who is the daughter of a monarch. Precise. Educated. Flawless. A servant of her people.

  Prologue

  Three years and three-hundred sixty-four days before.

  The rain fell lightly at first, like teardrops into puddles, until it stabbed faster, sharper, harder. Cali wasn’t sure if the agitated sea had made the raindrops grow fingernails or if it was Undine’s doing, but either way, she felt each bead of crystal rain on her exposed hands and neck. Despite the parasol she fought against to block the weather’s reach, it matted her hair to her temples and plastered her skirts to her legs.

  “Are you sure you won’t go belowdecks?” Darren called over the urgent wind. His usually sandy hair was matted brown against his temples, and his face was mashed into deep concern. The ship tossed at each swell of water, the waves hungrily gulping at the descending heavenly drops.

  “I’m sure,” Cali called in response, holding her parasol with both hands and staggering her feet for balance. Her father had ordered her belowdecks when the rain first began its percussive tune against the wood, but one of the privileges of being the princess meant she could ignore the king’s orders. “We’re so close now, Darren. I don’t want to miss it.”

  “The boundary will still be there whether you see it right away or not,” he said, raising a hand to shade his gaze from the downpour. Rain dripped from his eyelashes, his lips, and his chin. “You’ll feel more comfortable in your quarters.”

  Cali doubted that. The toss of the robust, sturdy keel upon the waves had an undeniably unpleasant effect on her stomach, regardless of the weather. She’d spent as much time as she could with her face to the wind, and a storm was no exception.

  Now that she’d turned fourteen, her father had been easing her into an understanding of her duties as princess of Zara. And one was overseeing the homage that was paid to the boundary slicing through the center of the Impius Sea, cleaving it into east and west, dividing Zara from the other lands of the world.

  The boundary was said to be a forest right there on the sea, entrapped like a caged dream of branches and leaves and magic. Not an island but a marker, signifying where one half of her world ended, keeping her from where the other half began.

  The drum of raindrops against her wind-rocked parasol slowed, the wind hushing along with the sudden stillness. Lowering the handheld canopy, she blinked wetness from her lashes. A solemn silence stroked the top of the crests, smoothing them out, luring them into stillness. Darren wiped his face as well, pushing a lock hair out of his eyes.

  “I’ve never seen the boundary, Darren,” she said, staring past the stern toward the direction they headed. Her hair stuck to her neck. The heavy starch of her muslin dress dragged against her body, but she managed to walk her weighted skirts farther down along the railing. “I won’t miss its first appearance for anything.”

  Darren kept pace with her, not watching the Impius Sea West as much as he was her. Her cheeks scalded with the heat from that expression, from the sensation of it, from everything he was. It drew her to the darkness of belowdecks, the cold metal and shadowed space between cannons where he’d asked her to meet him the night before. She pulsed under the memory of his bass-drum voice admitting he cared more for her than he ought to.

  She hadn’t known what to say. Two years her senior, Darren had been her friend, her playmate, and the boy from the servant’s quarters, the healer’s son. He’d told her he knew there was little chance of anything between them, especially since she was only fourteen. But she’d always been older, whether her age wanted her to admit it or not. Credit it to her station as princess, her upbringing with countless tutors and poise instructors, to the expectation she acted as a princess should even from a small age, but a certain air of maturity had always accompanied her wherever she went.

  “We shouldn’t be talking about this,” she’d said with a plea in her whispered voice. “I’m here for my father. For my people. It will be up to me to maintain the homage we pay to Undine Daray.” The sea witch.

  “Do you always think of being a princess?” he’d asked, sitting on the floor with one leg bent and hugged to his chest. “Don’t you ever see yourself as just a girl?”

  “But I’m not just a girl.”

  His lip had quirked up. He’d scooted in just a little bit closer. The light flickering from the lantern he’d brought with him had shimmered in his eyes. “You are a girl, Cali. Right now, right this moment. And right now, I’m just a boy, looking at a girl, wanting to kiss her.”

  Cali’s mouth had gone dry. Suddenly, it hadn’t been the sea making the boat rock beneath her. It’d been the warm, eager glint of flame in his glance. Why had he done this now? He’d known they could never be anything more than princess and healer.

  Still, she hadn’t moved as he’d knelt onto both knees, cupped her face in his hands, and pressed his lips softly to hers.

  Her heart had sparked like a lit cannon in her chest, but she’d kept her eyes open. All she could do was think. About the soft pressure of his mouth. About his fingertips. About the way his eyelids were fringed with such dark lashes and how tenderly and unquestionably they’d closed. She hadn’t been sure how a kiss should feel. Was this what one did? Should she touch him back? Why did people close their eyes when they kissed anyway?

  He’d held the kiss a few lingering, pleasant seconds before pulling away. His eyes had been questioning, quivering, delighted.

  “I’ve wanted to do that for a while now,” he’d said. “But I wanted you to be old enough first.”

  “And I’m old enough now?”
<
br />   He’d pursed his lips. “Yesterday was your birthday,” he’d said with a shrug. “I know it’s not possible, but I wanted to ask anyway. Before I leave. Do you think if you weren’t being groomed as a princess that you could…well…”

  “What do you mean, before you leave?”

  Footsteps had trodden past before she could answer. Darren had been obliged to stand and join them, leaving Cali to tiptoe back to her own quarters.

  She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question again now, partly because she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer, and partly because she wasn’t sure what any of it meant. The kiss, his glance, any of it.

  So she kept her attention on the horizon. Gray clouds clustered with gentle gloom across the leftover sky. A glow settled below them, bestowing a hush to the pacified sea below.

  “Why are we slowing?” Cali asked. Unease coiled through her rib cage. She’d never felt such a dense, beautiful dread before.

  “A ship, sire!”

  Cali and Darren raised their heads simultaneously to the lookout in his position on the yardarm. No older than Darren, the boy clung to the main mast and stared toward to the upper deck where Cali’s father, King Marek, stood beside the captain. Her father descended hastily down the ladder before taking the spy glass the first mate offered him.

  Cali lifted her wet skirts and scurried over, eager for a closer view as well. She squinted across the calmed sea, the sun reaching through a break in the clouds, and barely made out the speck of another ship in the distance behind them.

  “Whose ship is that?” she asked.

  Her father passed her the spy glass. Through its small glass scope, she perceived a majestic vessel with a black flag heralding the image of a closed hand. “See the black flag, the white insignia? That indicates it’s Merritt Drachen’s vessel.”

  “Merritt Drachen? The pirate king?” Cali’s heart thundered, out of fear or excitement she couldn’t tell. She’d heard stories of the pirates who careened across the sea, claiming no land as their own but preferring to plunder everything they could from that land nonetheless.

  “Aye, my girl, but he is only the captain of the Iron Fist. The ship itself belongs to someone else.”

  “To you, Father?” she asked.

  Darren chuckled beside her. She hadn’t realized he’d accompanied her across the deck to the starboard side.

  “No, Caliana. Even my ships don’t truly belong to me.”

  “I don’t understand. You’re the king. All of Zara belongs to you, including its sectors and property. You commissioned the Vigorous’s construction. You oversee its sailors. Our naval captains answer to you.” As they one day would to her.

  “I am the king, which means Zara, its citizens, and lands are under my stewardship. But just as I rule Zara, there is one who rules the sea. And the rules of the sea are different from those of the land.”

  She recognized his careful, patient tone. It was the tone of a teacher now, explaining vital facts to his pupil.

  “They’re Undine’s rules,” she said solemnly.

  “Every drop you see around us is Undine’s domain, Caliana,” her father said, staring out at the increasingly blue sky. It was shedding its gray skirts for those of a lighter shade. “It’s why we’re on this venture.”

  “The homage,” she said. “The solstice offering.”

  “Exactly. The sea—and everything it touches, including our shores—belongs to her. Those who don’t acknowledge it pay a heavy price.”

  “Like the pirates?” she asked.

  Her father lowered the spy glass. “What you need to know for this voyage, Caliana, is we’re paying homage of all new birth during the past year. Our best crops. The feathery hair trimmed from newborns in our kingdom, the first cloth that enwrapped them and offered them protection from the cold. Ribbons cut from the bouquets of brides at the commencement of their marriages. These things keep Undine satisfied. It keeps her from seeking them out.”

  His words slathered a chill across her arms. She thought of the melancholy lullaby her nursemaid used to sing as she aired out sheets and stoked fires.

  Be wary the tale of the pirates, me lad,

  Be wary the tale of the sea.

  In its depths there be monsters,

  Grave dangers be had;

  If ye speak ‘em, ye’ll bring danger on ye.

  Such tales better kept in the silence, me lad,

  Such tales should ne’er be utter’d.

  For once words escape lips

  They can ne’er be withdrawn

  And to Undine your soul will be fetter’d.

  Why did speaking of such things bring down the sea witch’s wrath? Did her father believe in such superstition? Cali had heard of the homage every year, at the fall solstice. It was the celebration of the harvest, of one year ending and another beginning. She’d seen new mothers drop wrappings of their children’s hair, their fingernails—anything expendable that could be offered in supplication—at the palace steps.

  “The pirates pay no such homage,” Darren said. Cali startled. She’d forgotten he was standing beside her. He was watching her. Again. “They sail her seas and take without giving.”

  Cali glanced at Drachen’s vessel. The Iron Fist was a speck on the horizon, sailing in a perpendicular direction from their current course. “Then how is it they can sail at all?”

  “I won’t speak of it here.” Her father growled the statement.

  “Cursed,” she mumbled in wonder.

  “It’s why they’re always on the move,” Darren whispered in her ear with an unwarranted kind of familiarity, as though speaking a great secret. “They never stop long enough for her to catch them.”

  The captain signaled Cali’s father, removing his tricorn momentarily from his graying hair to wave it toward the king. He replaced his hat and stroked his beard, waiting for her father to stalk toward him and return to the upper deck. She wondered what they spoke of.

  “You aren’t scared, are you?” Darren leaned in, warming her body with his proximity.

  “Of pirates? Never.” A sour swell burbled in the pit of her stomach. She prayed the lie didn’t show on her face. Drachen was a name and a curse all on its own. It was far more fearsome to her than speaking of Undine Daray. “They’re vagrants and scoundrels. If Undine has cursed the pirates, it’s nothing they don’t deserve.”

  “I know,” Darren said, anticipation clear in his voice. “I can’t wait to see one up close.”

  Cali’s chest seized. She stole a peek over his shoulder, to the speck of the Iron Fist sailing away. Certainly too far for them to encounter on this voyage. “What does that mean? Why would you ever do that?”

  He angled toward her. “I wanted to tell you last night. After we—”

  Cali’s mouth dropped. “Was that why you kissed me? You were saying goodbye?”

  “I’m joining your father’s navy. It’s why I was allowed on this venture—to see if I’d be seaworthy.”

  A different kind of fear struck her. Men in the navy were gone for years at a time, sailing to the edge of the sea, attempting to find a way beyond the boundary or searching out pirates to be brought to justice. Storms were a risk, as were the pirates themselves. She’d heard stories of young sailors being lost at sea.

  Certainly Darren was seaworthy. He was tall and painfully handsome. His body was lean and strong. Arms muscled from days of hard labor and mind quick and active from studying herbs and chemicals under his father’s tutelage. She stared at his chiseled cheekbones in shock.

  “You can’t!” Darren was only sixteen. He couldn’t be serious.

  “I want to see the world, Cali. I’m tired of the servants’ quarters.”

  “Tired of my palace, you mean.”

  “You heard your mother the other day when she as good as banned me from your family’s wing. She made it quite clear I wasn’t good enough for you.”

  The reprimand had rung in Cali’s ears too many times to count. Darren had touched Ca
li’s arm as they’d stood outside the door to her bedchamber. Cali wasn’t sure what her mother thought they’d been up to, but he’d come up to bring her a book, nothing more.

  The most embarrassing part was her mother scolding him in front of Cali. Mother had treated Darren exactly as one might a scavenging dog on the hunt for denigrating scraps when he’d come at Cali’s request for company while she awaited her tailor’s arrival.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Cali said. “You heard what my father said about Undine and the pirates.”

  “I don’t care.” Darren rested his elbows on the railing behind him. The wind tossed his drying hair, swooping it over his brow. He appeared older in that moment. Handsomer, somehow, with his brown eyes and brows stitched in determination. She pictured him older, wind-worn, and tanned when he finally returned to her from one of his ventures.

  If he returned at all.

  “The legends are real, Darren. Why do you think we’re out here sailing at all, risking our necks to pay the homage the sea witch requires from our shores?”

  “I don’t belong at your palace, Cali.” A muscle in his neck quivered, and he released a humorless laugh. “I shouldn’t even be calling you that. Your Highness.”

  “Don’t,” she said. She wanted to touch him but thought better of it, gripping the railing instead. “When I’m crowned princess, the kingdom will be mine. I can change the laws.”