Ebba’s heart pounded in her ears. She forced the words out. “What are ye sayin’?”
If only she were a little stupider, she would’ve listened to the sudden clenching of her gut and not asked. Pretending was a fine balance, after all.
Cosmo dipped his head in a regal nod. “Prince Caspian, heir to the throne of Exosia and son of King Forge Montcroix.” He arched a brow. “At your service, Mistress Fairisles.”
Thank You For Reading
I hope you loved Stolen Princess! Pillars of Six (book three) releases soon. Pick up your copy of book there HERE.
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Acknowledgments
I’ve always wondered if my New Zealand upbringing would work its way into a book and how exactly it would come through. Now we know. In this book, I’ve offered a munched-up version of some Maori legends and cultures. Most of these aren’t accurate. Some are. When I put these through my brain filter, that was just how they came out. Anyway, thanks New Zealand for being choice. Tu Meke.
To my husband for thinking he’s the basis for every love interest in my novels. Bless. I mean, of course.
A shout out to my supports: my friends, my family, Raye Wagner, my vets, and my assistants, Courtney and Lola. I was lucky enough to meet a bunch of my author friends recently (and Courtney). What a wonderful feeling to have such friends scattered far and wide. And then to meet them and know the term ‘friend’ is totally warranted. Such special memories.
Next, to my swashbuckling manuscript team:
Beta Readers
Jill, Kate, Phillipa, and Jennifer
Editor One
Melissa Scott
Editor Two
Robin Schroffel
Proofreaders
Patti Geesey and Dawn Yacovetta
Map Illustrator
Laura Diehl
Cover Designer & Illustrator
Amalia Chitulescu
As always, a tip of the hat to my readers, specifically Kelly St Clare’s Barracks and the #inthewild Treasure Hunt groups on Facebook. You guys are big crazy heads and I enjoy your antics a LOT.
And to everyone, I offer a Maori phrase that has helped me a lot during the painful times in my life. They were offered by Aroha and Pancake-tutu to Ebba as well.
Kia Kaha (KEE-ah KAH-hah): stand strong.
Happy Reading,
Kelly
About Kelly St. Clare
When Kelly is not reading or writing, she is lost in her latest reverie.
Books have always been magical and mysterious to her. One day she decided to unravel this mystery and began writing.
The Tainted Accords was her debut series. Her other works include The After Trilogy, The Darkest Drae, and Pirates of Felicity.
A New Zealander in origin and in heart, Kelly currently resides in Australia with her ginger-haired husband, a great group of friends, and some huntsman spiders who love to come inside when it rains. Their love is not returned.
Also By Kelly St. Clare
The Tainted Accords:
Fantasy of Frost
Fantasy of Flight
Fantasy of Fire
Fantasy of Freedom
The Tainted Accords Novellas:
Sin
Olandon
Rhone
Shard (2019)
The After Trilogy:
The Retreat
The Return
The Reprisal
The Darkest Drae (Trilogy) Co-written with Raye Wagner
Blood Oath
Shadow Wings
Black Crown
Pirates of Felicity:
Immortal Plunder
Stolen Princess
Pillars of Six
Fantasy of Frost
Fantasy of Frost
(The Tainted Accords: Book One)
I know many things. What I am capable of, what I will change, what I will become. But there is one thing I will never know.
The veil I’ve worn from birth carries with it a terrible loneliness; a suppression I cannot imagine ever being free of.
Some things never change…
My mother will always hate me. Her court will always shun me.
…Until they do.
When the peace delegation arrives from the savage world of Glacium, my life is shoved wildly out of control by the handsome Prince Kedrick, who for unfathomable reasons shows me kindness.
And the harshest lessons are learned.
Sometimes it takes the world bringing you to your knees to find that spark you thought forever lost.
Sometimes it takes death to show you how to live.
COMPLETE SERIES NOW AVAILABLE
Bonus Chapter
Pillars of Six
Ebba sat across the bay, watching as her fathers readied Felicity for sailing. It was early morning, but she hadn’t slept.
Her fathers had argued all night as she lay wide awake in her hut. Eventually, she got sick of listening and had walked around the inlet of their hidden Zol sanctuary to sit in silence. Tears dripped onto her knees, and Sally, her companion through the night, made a sad whirring sound, hugging her face.
“Why does he have to leave, Sal?” she asked, sniffing hard.
Sally hugged her harder. Slightly too hard if the honest truth be told. The wind sprite was fiercely strong. Her strength didn’t really make sense with her being so tiny, but she also glowed, so the why behind her super strength had been thrown into the pile labeled magic, along with all the other strange things Ebba had encountered.
Somewhere in the midst of all those strange encounters, their crew had made a promise to Cosmo. And a promise was a promise. That was why the pirates of Felicity didn’t make them very often. They’d offered to drop Cosmo at Kentro so he could make his way back to the mainland. Yesterday, the Exosian took them up on the offer.
Cosmo leaving didn’t feel right; he belonged here. “Sal, am I only thinkin’ o’ myself?” Ebba asked. Sally knew Cosmo’s father was King Montcroix. Ebba had to tell someone after the truth was revealed, or her guts would’ve burst out.
“I just think he’ll be happier here,” Ebba continued. “King Montcroix be evil; everyone’s knowin’ that. He won’t help Cosmo, but I can help Cosmo get used to havin’ one arm. I just need more time.”
Sally pulled back and shrugged. The glowing wind sprite flew over to her bottle of brandy and took a swig. The magical creature had started on grog but recently moved to stronger stuff. Sally lowered the bottle and shrugged again, pouting her lips.
Ebba screwed up her face, trying to decipher the message. There was a bit of a language barrier between them. Which was why Ebba had told her the truth about Cosmo.
“Ebba,” someone called softly.
She jumped, but recognizing Cosmo’s voice, remained staring across the turquoise inlet at Felicity.
“We’ll be leaving soon. Your fathers sent me to get you.”
She didn’t budge. “I ain’t goin’. Tell them I’ll wait here. The voyage be foolish. Malice is after the purgium and the dynami. Ye’re puttin’ everyone in danger.” Ebba latched on to Locks’ argument from the night before.
Truthfully, Ebba didn’t even really care about the healing and power cylinders falling into the hands of Malice’s crew, but she did care about losing her innards in a forced exchange.
Cosmo neared her, hovering a few paces away. “If it wasn’t so important to me, I wouldn’t ask. You know I wouldn’t.”
“Aye, well I thought I knew ye, Prince Caspian, but I didn’t. So how do I know what ye would and wouldn’t do?”
Sally took another swig of brandy, eyes darting between them.
He scratched his jaw, saying quietly, “I deserved that.”
The mainlander had changed since losing his arm.
He didn’t ask so many questions anymore. He went off by himself for long walks around Zol,
the cliff-bordered inlet that was their secret sanctuary. Some days he just slept, and sometimes a whole three days passed without him looking at her with that intense look he used to always hold in his amber eyes.
She missed her friend even if he was a prince friend.
Ebba didn’t know what the rules on being friends with a prince were. She’d been raised by pirates and lived with pirates. Despite being of tribal descent, Ebba might still be a pirate herself. She didn’t know what to do with his royal confession. On one hand, she had to be nice to him because he’d lost an arm. On the other hand, he’d lied to their crew about being the son of their enemy, King Montcroix—hunter of pirates and sovereign of the navy that patrolled the Caspian Sea.
Ebba supposed their crew probably would’ve marooned Cosmo if he’d admitted it from the start. . . .
The result of all this thinking—which was far more thinking than she liked to do as a rule—was that she still didn’t know what to do with the information. So, she’d kept calling him Cosmo and decided to pretend he wasn’t the prince of Exosia and that half of the ocean wasn’t renamed at his birth. Her fathers would kill him if they found out, and Ebba couldn’t trust herself to keep saying Cosmo if she started thinking of him as Caspian in her skull.
“I hope you’ll reconsider, Mistress Fairisles.” Cosmo finally broke the silence again. “I’d like to spend as much time with you as possible before we dock at Kentro.”
Guilt stirred her insides. The trip to Kentro was eight days with a good wind. If she was honest with herself, which Ebba didn’t want to be, the thought of taking a small trip out of this inlet was appealing. It would be a distraction.
Deep down, she wanted to see as much of Cosmo as she could, too.
“Why are ye leavin’?” she asked, silently adding me on the end.
He heard it anyway. Cosmo sucked in a breath. “You think I’m leaving you?” He closed the gap and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. His hold was light, but warmth seeped into her skin. After what they’d been through on Pleo, the action felt natural.
“It’s because of you that I don’t wish to leave,” he said. “What made you think that?”
She shrugged.
“Is it the . . . situation with your fathers?”
‘Situation’ was a polite way of saying her fathers had lied to her for nearly eighteen years about their merciless pasts and her origins. “Aye, I be supposin’ so. Things’ve been strange-like since that all happened. I don’t want to forget and pretend it away this time. I ain’t even sure I could. Everythin’ feels off-kilter.”
Ebba scowled at the water lapping gently onto the white sand shore.
Caspian nodded. “If it helps, I know your fathers are struggling too. I caught Barrels reading a book yesterday with the title, How to Raise a Child at Sea.”
She scrunched her nose and pushed back her black dreadlock. “Why do they need that? They already raised me.”
A smile softened his face. Russet curls framed his high forehead and square jaw, and in that moment, a hint of boyishness entered the quirk of his lips, and a familiar light sparked in his amber eyes. Ebba’s heart squeezed. She didn’t know how to make him like he used to be—alive, interested, and passionate. Peg-leg said trying was pointless and that Cosmo was changed now but that he’d get better in time. Ebba didn’t like the thought of Cosmo changing if that change was for the worse. Though maybe not altering was impossible with everything he’d gone through.
What she’d put him through.
Ebba was the one who’d held the purgium over the black taint spreading to his heart. The purgium had demanded a sacrifice. Cosmo didn’t have an arm, and it was her fault. Her fault he so rarely smiled anymore.
He watched her, the quirk on his lips fading. “I believe, Mistress Fairisles, it’s because you’ve never given your fathers trouble before.”
“I hid a wind sprite in the hold because I wanted a pet.”
“Yes, but that’s normal. Kind of. Well, if the pet was a kitten and not an alcoholic. Your fathers’ struggle has more to do with what happened on Pleo. I guess the same struggle as yours: how do you move forward from here?”
“Aye, ye’re likely right.” Caspian was soft and pretty distant of late, but he had a whole bunch of mangoes in his skull-basket. Ebba did want to move forward.
From her first memories, life had been just her and her six fathers. Seven pirates sailing the navy-free part of the Caspian Sea in their ship, Felicity. She’d assumed one of them was her real father, but asking which one had always seemed pointless because Ebba loved them all the same.
The issue wasn’t just that they’d lied to her for over seventeen years about who they had been and who she was. The issue was that Ebba had always been a pirate. She’d thought that she’d always be a pirate—that she’d die a pirate. Now, her place on Felicity didn’t seem as secure. The sense that everything before the revelation was a pretty lie kept nagging at her.
Ebba was born to the tribe but raised as a pirate. What did that make her?
She certainly hadn’t belonged with the Pai Marie tribe. They were wise and all, but they had a warped idea of how to survive. Things weren’t simple any longer. That wouldn’t bother Ebba so much if she could handle it in the normal way, by pretending. The inability to pretend made her feel even less like a pirate because a pirate wasn’t supposed to care about the why.
Ebba sighed heavily, realizing her anger at Cosmo for leaving was really not about the prince at all. When it came to the prince, all she felt was sadness that he’d soon be gone and that she’d lose her only friend. And sadness that he was still hurting in his heart after losing his arm.
Cosmo had changed. The pirate of Felicity had changed. Seemed like they’d both need to deal with that.
“Tell me why ye’re leavin’, Caspi— Cosmopian? I mean, Cosmo,” she blurted.
“Exactly what I said, Mistress Fairisles. I have things I need to fix. Life as a pirate, illuminating as it has proven to be, has also been fraught with danger, and I worry that if I do not see my father now, I may not get a chance.” He let his right arm fall, staring vacantly at the limb.
“I also mean to inform my father of Malice’s presence in these waters. Pockmark attacked a navy ship, and I must seek retribution for the crew and their families.” He paused. “I also hoped to make it safe for your crew to travel once again. Pockmark will hound Felicity until the purgium and dynami is in his hands. I want to make the sea safe for you again.”
She turned to look at him for the first time. How had she never noticed the slight dimple by his mouth before? “Why would ye be doin’ that?”
He smiled at her. “When your crew took me in after Neos, I was saved from a terrible fate, Mistress Fairisles. I am certain the Malice crew would have recognized me. Jagger certainly did. And then there are the dangers your crew recently went through to save me from my tainted wound. I would have been a slave to darkness if not for your actions.”
Yet he’d still lost an arm. Ebba startled, though. “Ye think that’s why Jagger hates ye? Because he recognized ye?” Jagger had hated Cosmo from the first time he’d seen him.
Cosmo shrugged his right shoulder. “I imagine so. I’m son to the man who is renowned for hunting pirates. That’s ample enough reason for hatred. I thank the powers-that-be daily I fell into the hands of your crew and not theirs. It is a debt I can never fully repay, but I’m going to try.” He squared his shoulders. “I’m a prince, and I’m in a position to ensure justice is served. Malice cannot fight the entire navy,” Cosmo said, intensity returning to his amber eyes. “I won’t sit back and do nothing after seeing the things I have.”
“I thought ye said yer friends wouldn’t be believin’ ye about the magic.”
His jaw tightened. “No, I don’t expect they will. I don’t plan to tell them any of that. My father hates pirates; he’ll need no more excuse to engage in war with Malice after I tell him of what they did to his navy ship and his son.”
Nope, no idea what that meant.
Ebba slid off the rock and tilted her head to look up at the prince. He smelled like sandalwood and shoe polish. “Do ye really need to do this, Cosmo? I wish ye would stay. I don’t know what I’ll do without ye.”
He took her hand and laid a gentle kiss on the back of it. “What ye always do.” He mocked her with a soft smile. “Barge through life in your vibrant and unique way.”
That’s how he saw her? “Even if I’m pretendin’ everything be okay?” she asked, blinking away the burning in her eyes.
A wrinkle appeared between his brows. “Mistress Fairisles, I can see each of your fathers in you. You’ve picked up traits from them all. You also cope in the only way you know how. You certainly aren’t the only person here pretending.”
She stared at him with wide eyes, not trusting herself to speak.
“Everything will work out, Mistress Fairisles. You love your fathers, and they love you. You’ll reach an understanding simply because you each want to.” He kissed her hand again. On the same spot.
Heat filled her cheeks. How long had they been holding hands? She pulled away, resisting the temptation to rub at the spot. Flustered, Ebba said, “We have a week until we reach Kentro, Caspian. There be no need for goodbyes just yet.”
“No,” he agreed, adding, “but we will need to say goodbye.”
She sniffed hard, leading the way back around the inlet to Felicity. “Aye, Cosmo. I know. And if ye need to do this for yerself, I’ll try not to be fussin’.”
Ebba-Viva Fairisles: Stolen Princess (Pirates of Felicity Book 2) Page 26