by Amy Little
She did not voice her thoughts, however. Keeping her thoughts to herself has become her nature, over the years.
She rode on, filled with the certainty of what she wanted to achieve.
Zak, leaning in closely, saw that her cheeks were ruddy now, flushed from the ride. Her lips parted open, as though caught in the throes of passion. Her hair had come loose from under the hood of her mantle and flowed in the biting cold wind. Her scent when he caught it… he could not describe it. He breathed deeply, then again. He wanted to taste it; he needed to. That was the only way he could be have his fill of it.
“You are beautiful,” he said to her again.
She looked at him with an expression that seemed to him both guarded, concerned, and pleased.
He reached out and brushed a lock of her hair.
She pulled back. She felt her heart racing. She had to remind herself, and him, that he was not to be trusted. “I still recall what the girls had said about you, Zak. I was too young to understand then. Not so now.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“They said that all you have on your mind is whatever pretty girl takes your fancy, until you succeed, at which point you move on.”
“What fancy? What success? What moving on?” Zak seemed genuinely baffled.
“I wasn’t keen enough to learn the details then, and I don’t wish to find out now,” she retorted. She admitted to herself that what she said was only partially true. It did not do to dwell on which part was which. She spurred the horse again.
The steed gathered pace, letting Annika ride ahead and chose the narrower passages, where Annika hoped that Zak would struggle to stay abreast.
He caught up to her after a few twists in the road. If anything, they rode closer together now.
She pressed the horse harder with her knees, then gave it a little kick, but the animal did not move any quicker.
“Looking forward to seeing your family?” he asked.
She found his casual tone infuriating. The anger made it easier to tell him the truth. “No. Only to put some distance between us.”
“Have I displeased you, my princess?”
Annika ground her teeth. “I owe you no response.”
As they rode in silence, Zak could not take his eyes off the firm line of her mouth, her proud neck. Her chin and cheeks and lips, he thought, were made for kissing. Her shoulders, and the round curve of her back, for caressing.
He had until now avoided entanglements with other Houses. The women that he cavorted with beyond the palaces were simple, happy, without convoluted expectations. But they were not her.
He wondered what she would do if he swept her off the horse onto his, turned her towards him and kissed her mouth, her neck, her chest…. He frowned, telling himself that there were less complicated diversions to be had.
Annika rode almost in a trance. Each time when their legs brushed one another in the press of the streets, she felt her heart quicken and her skin heat up.
She had been alone for so long.
She wondered what it would be like to feel his hard arms around her, to yield to his embrace, to feel his lips on hers.
It was a constant struggle to push the thought away. The inner struggle was only relieved by the sight of her family’s castle before them, as it reared up suddenly after another turn around a block of the surrounding merchants’ townhouses.
The castle, in which she had spent her childhood, was surrounded by a dry moat and walls ten meters high. It had a central tower, to the height of some fifty meters, with a statue of the tiger atop it. Beside the central tower, were two other, shorter, towers. The wooden bridge was lowered. A steady flow of merchants, laborers, and soldiers clanged along and shook the bridge’s brown planks.
Annika suddenly remembered that inside were her father and sister. Her mouth went dry. The anger that she had felt for much of her exile and during the journey to Karrum had ebbed. Now, she found herself jittery with the prospect of an imminent reunion.
Zak rode beside her with a preoccupied frown on his handsome face.
The sight of his knitted brow fleetingly reminded her of her fantasy. It would have been such a relief to find shelter in his strong arms. She waved the fantasy away: it was make-belief; it was something that could never be. She hopped off the horse next to the stable, her weary limbs seemingly re-energized by the return.
A small group of servants surrounded them, appearing suddenly like a flock of polite, black-clad birds.
Annika did not recall any of them. This deepened her sense of jittery, anxious foreboding.
The servants took their horses and the luggage from the Memory Beasts, and then melted into the castle’s gloom.
Annika looked around with a sense of disbelief. There seemed to be more people there than she had seen in her entire five years in the river valleys. She made herself focus on the immediate tasks, thanking and saying good bye to the captain and then each soldier in her escort individually. She was pleased to see them walk away tall and proud at her complimentary words.
A real princess, Zak thought watching her. Not one of the provincial noblemen’s daughters, whose noble birth seemed to reach no further than preening at a ball in a tacky, gauzy tunic and a tiara. Zak had known more than enough of those. No, although rusty, she was a natural in knowing how to act, what to say and to whom; when to extend her hand and when not to. And underlying it, was a sense of goodness and wildness, an undercurrent that he sensed was as heady as it was deep, and one that she tried to suppress.
Zak said to himself that he had to be careful.
That undercurrent, unlikely as it was, seemed strong enough to sweep him away -- something that he had tried his hardest all those years to not allow.
The castellan’s assistant, a young, awkward man, showed the way inside. They walked quickly through the rush-strewn great hall, with its thick walls of sandstone, and then up the winding steps. A long, dark corridor followed. It branched off in different directions every few dozen steps, and the castellan’s assistant paused each at each branching as though to consider the way.
Annika felt her heart quicken on passing a turn-off that led to her old bedroom. Her sister’s quarters used to be there also.
A fleeting image flickered, of the days and nights her sister and she spent playing, racing along the hall and the corridors, stealing into the basement pantry for jam and bread late at night, and climbing up the stairs in the great tower that punctured the sky.
Thinking of her sister in like this, for the first time in years, a sense of familial warmth flooded her.
Her father’s solar at the end of the corridor had four large, glazed windows that overlooked the square courtyard below. There was a bench along one wall.
Annika recalled how often she had sat on that bench with her father and sister. She paced the room, flush with a mixture of tentative happiness and overwhelming anxiety. For the first time since leaving the river lands, she smiled widely, then her smile vanished. And for the first time since reaching the city gates, she almost forgot about Zak.
Zak frowned at her from near the doorway.
His frown prickled at her. “You’ve delivered me safely,” she said. “I thank you, again. Now, with the task accomplished, will you leave.”
“I like it here, princess,” he said, leaning against the door frame with no more insouciance than usual.
His words made her temper flare: “Surely, a tavern wench somewhere awaits you, my prince!”
“A wench?”
“Yes. Or a wife.”
“Mine or another man’s?” he parried.
She was lost for words.
“Either way, it matters not. Others’ wives don’t interest me. And as for mine, I’ve not yet met anyone that would suit.”
His words left a deep, open silence inside her.
“If it pleases you, I will leave, however,” he continued. “Once I hand you over.”
“A chattel, I am not!” she spluttered, finding
her voice again.
He sat down at the long bench and looked at her. His open, calm face looked strikingly attractive in repose.
Once more she found herself suppressing the pull she felt towards him. “Go, I tell you.”
“I tell you, princess, I am comfortable here.”
“This is my father’s castle!”
“So it is.” He smiled.
His smile was the most handsome she had ever seen. She blinked, trying not to be flustered. She did not need him to throw her off balance more than she already was. She walked to the window.
The window was set in thick, limestone bricks. The glazing was new. Glass was exorbitantly expensive in the Empire and, for years, she remembered, her father held off on the expense. Only two rooms in the castle had been glazed – her and Cara’s. It seemed the House’s finances have improved in years since.
In the courtyard below, a dozen carts with provisions were being unloaded by a large group of men. Each of the men was armed.
Annika recalled that everyone she had met, all of the servants, seemed to carry either knives or swords.
When she turned, Zak was beside her.
Annika stepped back, startled by his noiseless movements.
“Annika.” There was urgency in his voice.
She looked up at him in alarm.
He whispered, “Beware. Not all is as it seems,” and backtracked to the bench as the large wooden door at the other end of the room swung open and a young woman a couple of years older than Annika stepped in.
The young woman wore a gold coronet with a large blue stone fixed in the middle. The coronet pressed down her long, blonde hair. She was dressed in a tight fitting black robe that set off her alabaster skin. She had green eyes, set in a cold, thin face that was ethereal in its beauty.
It took Annika a few moments to recognize her sister. She was more beautiful, more tired, and seemed much older now than Annika had remembered her. Forgetting all the interim years and hurts, Anika ran to her sister, opening her arms for an embrace.
The woman stopped Annika short by extending one hand forward.
Annika looked at the proffered hand in confusion.
The expression on the woman’s face did not change and her hand remained between them.
This must have been her sister, Annika thought. She glanced at Zak, who was at the bench by the wall.
Zak’s face was impassive.
It had to be, Annika said to herself. She could not have been mistaken. “Cara?”
“It is First Princess Cara. Have you forgotten the royal protocol?”
Cara’s tone stung Annika more than the words. “Have you forgotten I am your sister?”
“I am the first born. Will you not greet me as such?”
She could play along, Annika said to herself. She took the hand and pressed her lips to it.
The hand had a familiar smell. “You still wash your hands with almond water,” she said.
Cara walked to the barren fireplace and stood with her back to Annika. “Many things have changed, my sister.”
The sliver of joy Annika had felt and the anticipation of the meeting had all melted away. All that was left was a feeling of bewildered emptiness. Annika looked at Cara mutely.
Cara addressed herself to the fireplace, her voice high and strong: “We do what we must to defend the Empire. Our roles are foreordained. We must take heed of the evil that surrounds our lands. Our guidance comes from the Council and we perform our duties in the way we are instructed. There is no higher duty than filial and familial obeisance. Do not make me tell you that again, Second Princess Annika.”
Annika had to fight her urge to turn around and leave the room. Was this really her sister?
Cara looked to Zak. “Fifth Prince Zak.”
“At your pleasure,” he said, without standing up from the bench. His tone was neutral.
“My pleasure would be for you to pass my and my father’s gratitude to your House.”
“It will be done.”
Annika searched Cara’s face, which gave nothing away.
Zak asked, “Will you not ask me what my pleasure will consist of?”
“It is of no consequence,” said Cara.
“Even so, my pleasure would be for you to treat your sister with greater civility,” he said.
Annika stared at him, overwhelmed by a flash of gratitude.
“She gets all that she is entitled to by her station. No less, and – no more,” said Cara.
Annika felt tears rise up as though she had been slapped in the face. She suppressed her tears by going over to the window so that they would not see their distress. Why could she not fight back herself? She had always been powerless against her elder sister.
“Do not press your games too far, Princess Cara,” said Zak.
“Your cautions have no weight here.”
Zak joined Annika at the window.
Annika felt his presence beside her. She felt his strength, the unexplainable power that drew her to him. She wanted to throw herself on to his chest, to bury her face in it, and to cry. She dug her fingernails into her palm, turned around slowly so that she would not lose composure, and walked towards the door. She thought she had enough strength to at least make it to the corridor.
Before she had reached it, the door swung open. A gaunt, elderly man in a black robe entered. The man had deep black bags under his eyes and bluish lips. He looked like a walking corpse.
“Father!” Annika exhaled. The realization shook her. She took a few steps towards him. Then, remembering Cara’s reaction, she stopped.
Her father’s face twitched. Before Annika could approach him, he extended his hand towards her.
Annika spent what seemed to be the last of her willpower to stop herself from bursting into tears. She kissed his hand. “Father.”
“Councilor of the Empire, my daughter.”
She nodded. She could not bring herself to speak.
“Was everything on your trip satisfactory?”
“Yes… Councilor.”
“We will provide you accommodation within the castle’s guest wing. Will that be acceptable?”
Annika recoiled at the words. No even her old childhood room… “I will find my own lodgings outside the castle, if I may.”
“You may not.”
“I can’t be forced to live where I don’t want to, again!” Annika felt anger flare, then quickly die in the vacuum inside her. The sadness that she had felt on Cara’s and her father’s welcome seemed to suffocate all other feelings.
“The Council wishes for you to be safe, Second Princess,” said her father. “There is no safer place for you than here. You must stay.”
“What does the Council care for me?”
“These are not safe times,” said Zak.
His words for some reason provoked a stronger response within her. Annika seized on that anger and said, vehemently, “Why he is here! Why does he have to witness this… meeting!”
“No one was better suited to see you safely here than a former Imperial Army general,” said her sister, patiently. It was the same patient voice that one would use with a child.
Annika felt her ears burn.
“I did not return to be lectured,” she said. “I have things I wish to do. I… don’t want to stay in this castle.”
Silence met her words.
She repeated, “No,” softer this time.
“First Princess Cara is correct,” said her father. “Such are the Council’s wishes.” He looked sad now, worn out and stooped. “Fifth Prince Zak or First Princess Cara will show you to your quarters.”
Cara nodded to Zak and followed her father out.
Annika remained standing in the center of the room long after her sister and father had left.
Zak sprung from the bench once their footsteps receded. He looked out in the corridor both ways, and then stood by the door, clearly giving her time to recover.
His patience grated. “I don’t nee
d you here,” she said, barely audibly and in a voice that was weaker than she would have liked. “I know the way!”
“Then lead.”
Her steps echoed down the corridors. She clutched the travel bag in both hands in front of her. All of the turns looked the same. She had been away from her family castle for too long, she realized. Some of the passages seemed to have been re-built. The strain of the journey and the reunion sapped her strength, making it more difficult to focus. The walls were beginning to blur and close in on her.
Zak, who had silently followed behind, gently took her under the arm.
She let him, lest she fall to the ground, all the while hating both herself and him for the weakness.
The stairs that rose up at the end of the passage seemed to wind around endlessly.
Annika’s thoughts kept returning to the meeting with her father and sister. She had hoped to be reunited with her family. Instead, she had been spurned again. She pushed the insistent images away and promised herself that she would not cry, at least, not until she was alone.
Her room was at the end of the corridor in the guest wing. The door was painted grey and had a small horseshoe for a knocker. The door swung open with a creak as Zak stepped inside.
She remained at the entrance.
Zak looked around and she involuntarily followed his gaze. There was one window, its shutters wide open and letting in gusts of cold wind. Against one wall stood a low table with a mirror and a basin. Against another stood a large, unlit fireplace that looked as though it had been cold for innumerable years. Off to one side was a four-poster bed with a crimson, patchwork cover.
Annika felt as though she had a tight, icy lump in her stomach. At times, it was as though the lump would stop her from breathing. She shivered and closed her eyes. Then she heard the window shutters slam. “Leave me,” she said.
It seemed as though only seconds had passed, but when she opened her eyes again Zak had already closed the windows and lit the fireplace.
Despite, or maybe because of the radiating heat, Annika could feel herself tremble.
Zak placed his hand around her and guided her to the fire.