Prisoner of the Crown

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Rodolf. The name sang through me with a thrill of triumph. My mother had done it. Wealthy. Valiant. A warrior to the core. Ambitious. His kingdom of Arynherk held preeminence over all within the empire, as the largest and richest—and also the most recently acquired by Emperor Einarr. And his lands bordered the Elskadyr homeland, Pyrna. With me as queen of Arynherk, we could combine forces with Elskadyr and overthrow the emperor. Hestar would never sit the throne; my son would.

  So excited I almost couldn’t keep my modest posture, I nearly popped my eyes out of their sockets, straining to catch the first glimpse of my husband without overtly scanning.

  A movement to the side of the throne, and a man stepped forward. King Rodolf’s representative? No. The man himself, with that iron crown upon his bald head. A thin strip of gray hair bordered the bottom of it, merging into a long beard that covered his copious jowls. He wore matte dark armor over broad shoulders, so I couldn’t see his body, but his face was lined with age, eyes burning coal-dark in deep sockets surrounded by sagging tissue.

  Fixed on me, his lust crawling over me, puffy lips damp with it. “Oh yes, Your Imperial Majesty,” he replied in a voice accustomed to shouting. “The only thing that could please me more is our wedding night, when young Jenna will dance for my private pleasure.”

  ~ 6 ~

  Despite my earlier uncharitable thoughts, I fervently wished for a moment with Inga. She always had a way of seeing the good in things, rarely allowing disappointment to slow her stride. Rodolf might not be that bad. I’d simply built up an image in my head of what my husband would be like. A silly girl weaving fantasies from painted images—and those of other men, not even him.

  Of course he wouldn’t be young. For the power and influence we needed, my husband would have to be a man of mature years.

  But I hadn’t expected old.

  “Your Imperial Highness Princess Jenna.” Rodolf bowed before me. Court had adjourned, the attendees streaming out to the ballroom. Hestar remained at my side, but Kral had led Inga off.

  “Your Highness King Rodolf,” I murmured, desperately grateful I didn’t have to look him in the eye. His boots looked handsome and fine, though the steel tips on them gave me pause. What purpose did they serve? Not only for decoration, as they were not shiny, but dark. And sharp.

  “You are everything I could have wished for and more,” he informed me. His voice throbbed with repressed excitement. “His Imperial Majesty favors me greatly with such a pearl and I shall treasure you for all the days of your life.”

  All as I’d dreamed my betrothed would say to me on our meeting. And yet, all wrong. I didn’t want these words from him. With a bolt of terror that made my bladder want to void, I realized I didn’t want to marry this man.

  And I had no choice.

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” I managed to say. The captive bird, knowing a few words to speak.

  “Now, now—we’re to be husband and wife. No sense with long titles between us. You may call me ‘sir.’”

  “Yes… sir.” It didn’t seem right that I, an imperial princess, should address a lesser king as ‘sir,’ but he was to be my husband, which made me subject to him in all things. Mother had said I was to obey him. Something that had sounded much easier when I’d imagined him as something…other than this.

  “A paragon, you are. I have a gift for you.”

  Though I’d been prepared for this, too, I flinched when he took my hand. Far from being angry, however, Rodolf smiled. “So sensitive,” he murmured, for my ears alone. “I relish that in you, my bride.” Holding my right hand in a firm grasp, he slid a ring onto my middle finger. The Arynherk diamond. Long, with pointed ends like blades, it fit perfectly. I’d been measured for it, after all. “The Arynherk diamonds go well with Elskadyr pearls, don’t you think?” He admired the ring on my hand, turning it this way and that. “Your wedding bracelets will be equally lovely on you. I can’t wait to see them.”

  I murmured a vague assent. Plenty to appease him.

  “Come my pretty thing,” he said, offering me his arm, “let us go observe the dancing. If His Imperial Highness Prince Hestar allows?”

  “I’m to keep her in sight at all times,” Hestar agreed in good cheer, “but I doubt even you, Rodolf, could divest lovely Jenna of her virginity in view of all the court.”

  Rodolf laughed, phlegm in it. “Her beauty begs a man to attempt it.” He patted my hand, then pinched the skin of my forearm hard enough to make me gasp. “But I can wait two nights for this prize.”

  They fell into talking as we walked, exchanging hunting stories, of all things, ones that quickly turned gruesome. I concentrated on walking, as Rodolf strode much too quickly. One of my long toenails snagged on the carpet, snapping off, and I stumbled slightly.

  “What’s this?” Rodolf demanded. “Clumsy girl.”

  “I apologize, sir.”

  “That’s all right, my sweetmeat.” He caressed my arm again in that way that made me want to snatch away and run. “You’re young yet and will learn. Once you’re safely ensconced in my seraglio, you’ll never have to walk again. I’ll have you carried to my bed on the richest of litters!”

  I eked out a smile. Enough to satisfy him. My mother’s training at work. She’d taught me how to smile through the cruelest of insults, and now I understood why.

  All too well.

  * * * *

  The evening dragged on. Endless and grinding. I’d long since passed the point of overload and feeling any emotion at all. I felt simply exhausted. Inga, two chairs down from me, looked no better. Rodolf and Kral sat between us, preventing any conversation, and Hestar sat on my other side, conversing over my head with them both. I watched the dancing, not even enjoying the sight, much as I’d longed to see it, to hear music played on instruments, rather than chanted by women’s throats.

  Mostly the men danced, bold displays of strength and athleticism, shouting each other on to greater feats, urging the musicians to play faster until some men dropped off the dance, hands raised in surrender, others collapsing on the floor in laughter. Occasionally, a dance would call for male and female partners—a much smaller crowd, with so few women present, and even fewer allowed to participate. Which meant I spotted Princessa Adaladja easily. Her full skirts flared as she spun in the dance and she danced the complicated steps with enthusiastic speed, clapping with perfect tempo, and laughing up at her husband.

  Though still far older than I, Prince Frederick would have been far easier to stomach than my own betrothed. Envy made me feel ill, that Adaladja should have so much—a handsome husband, talking birds, windows to the outside, dances!—when I, firstborn daughter to the first wife of the emperor himself should have none of that.

  The diamond weighed heavy on my hand and I longed to throw it across the room.

  “Mother wants you to know you’re performing beautifully,” Kral said, leaning over the chair Rodolf had vacated. He and Hestar had gone off on some quest to have another man settle some argument between them, leaving Kral to chaperone both Inga and me. As the pair of them had grown increasingly loud and belligerent with mjed, I’d breathed a sigh of relief at their departure.

  Now I glanced at Kral from the corner of my eye. He nodded at me. Beyond him, Inga spoke with another prince, her voice so soft I couldn’t make out what she said.

  “You’re doing the Elskadyr family great honor,” Kral said meaningfully, raising his brows over icy blue eyes. He’d be Inga’s age, just as Hestar was mine—but somehow they both seemed so much older and harder. The way of men and women, I supposed, for them to be like the swords they carried and we the silk-swathed sheaths they rested in.

  “How fare you, sister?” Kral asked, a slight line between his brows. “You seem tired.”

  “I am tired,” I confessed. “And thirsty.” I also needed desperately to empty my bladder, but I had no idea how to convey tha
t need to my brother. Would I have to travel all the way to the seraglio and back?

  Kral raised his brows in surprise, as if noticing my empty hands for the first time. “Why have you no refreshments?”

  “Mjed is not appropriate for a woman,” I pointed out.

  He laughed, sounding exasperated. “There are other beverages. Hestar is an ass,” he added, in a lowered voice. “Come with me. No need for you to sit here with Rodolf off arguing who bagged the biggest buck in last autumn’s hunt. Inga, would you like something to drink?”

  Inga glanced over sideways, relief evident on her face. “Sól bless you, I would.”

  Kral raised his eyes, as if looking to Sól. “Save me from meek females who won’t ask for what they need.” He stood, crooking out both elbows for us, escorting us off the dais. He, too, seemed to know to measure his stride. Happily, for I’d been hard-pressed enough to hide my broken toenail under a fold of my klút. I could hardly hide another.

  “Sisters, dear.” Kral spoke quietly. “Would you perhaps also like a moment of privacy to adjust the folds of your klúts?”

  I glanced down at my klút in puzzlement, then noted the direction of his subtly pointed finger—a door through which several rekjabrel emerged. “Oh yes, please. Thank you, brother!” I averred.

  Inga frowned. “Your klút looks lovely, Jenna, I don’t—”

  I raised my brows at her. “Privacy,” I emphasized. “To attend to womanly… appearances.”

  Understanding dawned. “Oh… Oh! More blessings on you Kral.”

  He grinned, pleased to have pleased us. “One moment.” He stopped one of the rekjabrel. “Check that it’s all clear within for the imperial princesses.”

  She bowed deeply and scurried to comply, returning immediately and holding the curtains open for us, bent nearly in half in her obeisance. “Your Imperial Highnesses.”

  “I’ll wait for you here.” Kral said, and turned his back to the door, arms folded, clearly intending to stand guard. We hastened in, as best we could and still maintain a stately glide.

  “I thought I was going to burst,” Inga whispered.

  “Me, too.” And we both giggled, sighing in relief. “I thought we’d have to walk all the way back to the seraglio,” I confessed.

  “Same. And I doubted I could make it. I imagined myself as a wee one, piddling on the carpet of one of those long hallways.”

  We finished, washing our hands side by side in basins of warm water with floating lemon slices, just as in the seraglio.

  “Jenna,” Inga said quietly, hesitation in her voice. “How are you—”

  “Not here. Later.” If I’d learned nothing else from my mother, I knew that even an apparently empty room could hold listening ears. “How does my klút look?”

  “Perfectly folded.” She met my eyes, sympathy softening hers. I hated her a little for it.

  “Now we know how to ask,” I said briskly, moving past her.

  She touched my arm, where a bruise formed already, then picked up my hand with the ring. “It’s very beautiful,” she said.

  “Yes. A great honor to marry such a wealthy king. Come—our brother promised us refreshments.”

  She followed after, saying nothing more.

  * * * *

  The honeyed juice Kral found for us soothed and refreshed my throat. He also settled us into a semi-private corner with a small grouping of low couches and pillows, surrounded by curtains on three sides.

  “The rest of our brothers are looking forward to saying hello, if you ladies are willing,” Kral said.

  “Then they are here.” Inga brightened.

  Kral rolled his eyes at us. “Where else would they be? Except for Ban, of course,” he noted. “He’s off training with the infantry.”

  Of course. Kral seemed to have no concept how little we knew. “We hadn’t seen them yet, is all,” I explained, though I hadn’t been sure of it. None of these men looked like the little brothers I recalled.

  “I’ll wait for one of them to circle by, then get him to send for the others. We hoped that as the evening wore on, we’d have this opportunity to talk amongst ourselves, since we can’t come to you. Leo, Loke, and Mykal are all nearby, keeping an eye on this nook.”

  “And Harlan?” Inga asked.

  Kral made a face. “Who knows where that rabbit has got to. Cowering with the other bunnies, I imagine, baby that he is.”

  “Barely younger than the twins,” I reminded him, finding that rhythm again. Once Kral had been the boy I forced to wait on me, tasking him to get Leo and Loke to wheedle treats and jewels out of the other ladies.

  Kral grinned, maybe remembering, too. “But they are all only half-brothers to you, whereas I’m your full brother, thus far superior.”

  “Oh gracious.” Inga waved her hands at us. “We’re not reunited two hours and already we’re squabbling over who is half and full? We’re all children of His Imperial Majesty.”

  “True, true,” Kral agreed amiably, but slid me a look that communicated the opposite. “Loke! There you are. Get the others.” He glanced at Inga. “Harlan, too,” he added, somewhat grudgingly. “And bring some mjed.”

  Within moments, two identical young men with bronze hair stepped in and bowed. When they straightened, they both grinned at us. “Sisters!” the one holding a flask of mjed exclaimed.

  “You look just the same, only prettier,” said the other.

  “You don’t,” I told them. “You’ve grown up so.”

  “I bet I still know which is which, however,” Inga said, sounding mischievous.

  “Guess then,” said the one without the mjed.

  “I don’t have to guess,” I inserted. “You are Leo.”

  “And you are Loke,” Inga agreed.

  They both looked surprised. “Most people can’t tell us apart.”

  “We’re your sisters,” I informed them, exchanging looks with Inga. “We always could.” We shared a secret smile. We’d never divulge our long-ago system for identifying which was which, no matter how they’d tried to fool us.

  Two other younger men arrived. One looked enough like the boy he’d been to make me feel a little less bewildered. Harlan trailed behind the older young man who must be Mykal by a few steps, carrying two tall glasses of juice, both of them stopping to bow to us. Mykal looked like a younger version of Kral, with the same icy blue eyes, though a bit of softness kept him from having the same shark leanness. Harlan had the broader build of our father and Hestar, already taller than Mykal and the twins. Like Helva, he took after Jilliya in his expression, a gentleness to his gray eyes. “Helva isn’t here then?” he asked.

  Kral cuffed him on the side of the head. “You were at the assembly. You know she’s not. And what are you—a handmaiden to fetch and carry refreshments?”

  Harlan, who hadn’t spilled a drop of the juice despite the blow, handed the glasses to us and rubbed his ear. “I thought she might be able to come later,” he explained. “A reunion of sorts, for all of us. I haven’t seen her in seven years.”

  “She’s too young,” Kral dismissed. “We’re lucky they let Inga out.” He grinned wickedly. “Now tell us all the gossip of the seraglio. The rekjabrel have naked girl-on-girl orgies in the little lagoon, don’t they? Tell us the truth.”

  Mykal blushed bright red, goggling at us. “They do? I don’t remember that.”

  “Of course they don’t!” I admonished Kral, but Inga had dissolved into giggles.

  “Do you remember,” she said to Kral, “how we used to sneak about and spy on the little lagoon, hoping to catch the rekjabrel kissing each other?”

  He laughed and sat beside her. “Of course! We made that hiding spot and put old palm fronds on it so they couldn’t see us.”

  They fell into conversation, reminiscing over the old games, and I felt a pang that Hestar hadn�
��t come along to do the same with me. No one needed to tell me, however, that we wouldn’t be having this cozy little family party with Hestar present. He’d grown and changed beyond all of us, harder and with his gaze firmly focused on the throne. I wouldn’t mind so much, depriving him of it, having spent time again in his presence.

  Still, some part of me mourned my childhood friend.

  “So,” Loke said, “in two days you’ll marry Bloody Rodolf.”

  Leo elbowed him hard. “Don’t call him that.”

  The four of them sat in a ring around me, leaving Kral and Inga to their conversation.

  Loke looked blank. “Why not? You call him that. We all do.”

  “Because he’ll be Jenna’s husband,” Harlan inserted, sounded grave beyond his years. “You’ll frighten her.”

  I nearly laughed at that, as if they could frighten me more than being actually married to the man would. “Why do you call him Bloody?” I asked. Mother had said he was a fierce warrior—hard to believe, seeing him tonight, but clearly he’d aged.

  They exchanged glances, Loke clearly realizing his error. “No reason,” he muttered.

  “Tell me,” I commanded in my best big-sister voice. “I might as well know what I’m getting into.”

  None of them would meet my eye. Finally Mykal, scratching his head, still red-faced, said, “You’re his fifth wife. Or will be, rather.”

  “Fifth?” Indignation rose in me. Also a surge of hope. I could break the engagement on those grounds. I’d been promised first wife and nothing less. “I was told I’ll be his first wife.”

  “Oh, you will be.” Loke actually snickered, then flinched when Leo elbowed him harder, punching him in the shoulder.

  “Cut it out,” Harlan ordered and they subsided, though Loke sneered at him. Harlan didn’t notice, his calm gray eyes on me. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Jenna—his other wives are all dead.”