Claiming the Prince: Book One (37 page)

Sunlight flooded across her face, rousing her. A chilly breeze sent a shiver down her neck and she burrowed under the blanket. A soft susurration nearby called her back to sleep, until a crack, followed by a thud and a groan, brought her back to herself.

She pushed the blanket—no, Endreas’s coat—away, blinking against the slicing gold beams of dawn cresting over the grass-covered berm. Her skin broke out in goose bumps as the cool air wrapped around her. Hero stirred from under the coat and darted off into the grasses.

“Up,” Damion barked, backing away, lifting his sticks. “Again.”

Kaelan pushed himself off the ground, holding two sticks of his own, and took guard. In a shallow hole at the bottom of the dune, a fire ebbed, hissing as it licked through blackened curls of grasses, biting at a large log of driftwood. On the other side of the fire pit, Honey lay on her side, eyes open, face covered in scabbed slashes, staring into the fire.

Damion stuck out his leg and delivered a blow to his chest, knocking Kaelan onto the ground again.

“This is hopeless,” Kaelan said as Damion reached down to help him up.

“Practice every day,” Damion said. “Fighting is as much habit as skill. You are training your body, like a dog. You hear the whistle and you react, no thinking. When you think, you slow down. Your opponent will not be thinking. Train every day for the next year, and you will be better. For two years, and you might even be good.”

Kaelan grinned. “Good enough to beat you?”

“No,” Damion said, stepping back. “That will never happen.”

He and Kaelan chuckled.

“We will repeat . . .” Damion noticed Magda watching and lowered his makeshift wasters. “Oh, you’re finally awake.”

Magda ground the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Where are we?”

Damion pointed to the west with his sticks. “Spire that way.” He pointed towards the sunrise. “Water that way.”

“I’m cursing the day your mother took pity on your father and invited him into her bed,” she said, pushing up to her feet.

Kaelan’s gaze made the stiffness in her neck worse.

“What?” she asked. But before he could answer, she said, “You still look like you.”

“Yes,” Damion said, leaning lazily upon one of the sticks. “Have you decided what your new appearance should be?”

Kaelan dug one of his own wasters into the sand. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Well, now is the time,” she said, wiping the sand from her arm and the back of her pants. “And I have an idea.”

“Of course you do,” Damion said.

She stepped forward, catching sight of Honey again. “Is she—?”

“I can hear you,” the nymph said in a strangely melancholy voice.

“Good . . . I guess,” Magda said, frowning.

Honey certainly wasn’t the ebullient nymph she had been before they’d flown to the island. But Magda would worry about it later. First, she had to deal with Kaelan.

“You need to look like a Prince and you’ll need a convincing backstory to explain where you’ve come from.”

“You do seem to have a bit of a propensity for finding lost Princes, Mistress,” Damion remarked, flinging some sand over at Kaelan with the end of his stick. Kaelan swiped some back.

Magda ground her teeth. “Are you two done?”

They both straightened up, suppressing grins.

“Go on, Mistress,” Damion said, waving one of his sticks at her.

She marched over and grabbed it from him, breaking it in two.

“Someone woke up in a bad mood,” he said as she pitched the sticks away. “Are you always this cheerful in the morning?”

Actually, early mornings always left her grumpy, but she wasn’t about to admit it.

“Your aunt Flor, does she still live at the meadow by the gulch?” Magda asked him.

He lifted a shoulder. “Last I heard, but what do you want from that mad old lady? She has no pull in the family anymore. Ever since . . .” His eyes widened. “Oh.”

“That’s right,” she said, backing up and giving Kaelan a once over. “He’d be about the right age, wouldn’t he?”

“He’s a few years too young.” Damion cocked his head at Kaelan, swinging his stick up onto his shoulder.

Kaelan looked from her to Damion and back again. “What are you two talking about?”

“I had a cousin,” Damion said. “On my father’s side. A Prince. Caden. He was killed in an accident when he was fourteen.” Damion glanced over at Magda. “He liked to climb.”

Magda’s heart twisted. The image of Caden, body contorted and bloodied sprawled at the bottom of the cliff, rose up from the trenches of her memory. One more loss amongst many. Even though Caden had been six years older, he’d been one of the few people she’d ever considered a friend.

“But what if he didn’t?” Magda said to Damion. “What if . . . he’s been in hiding?”

Damion bounced the stick on his shoulder. “Why? How?”

“Everyone always knew my mother wanted me to claim Caden eventually, right? But the age difference made things difficult. He was going to come of age long before I would. So my mother decided that he needed to be hidden in the human world, but she never told anyone, except . . . Flor.”

Damion puttered. “I don’t know, Magda.”

“We have to convince her.”

“But he’s not Caden,” Damion said. “It would be cruel.”

“We won’t lie to her about that. But she’s the key. If she says it’s him, everyone else will believe.”

“Why would she do that? She’s been in mourning for thirteen years.”

“Flor was one of my mother’s closest confidantes. And she is your father’s sister. She’ll help us.”

“She and my father never got on very well,” he grumbled.

“It doesn’t matter how well they got on, they’re family.”

“So is Lavana,” Damion muttered.

She scowled. “It could work,” she pressed.

“So you want me to take the identity of a boy who died?” Kaelan asked.

She nodded. “But until then, you should still change your appearance. We can’t risk anyone recognizing you.”

“And what are we going to do about the money?” Damion asked.

“Do you still have the ichor-gold glove?” Magda asked Kaelan.

“I gave it to my mother,” he said. “We could go back.”

“Yes, and we could take her back too,” Damion said, gesturing to Honey.

The nymph sat up. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’ll only slow us down,” Damion said.

She stood, shaking the sand from her gown. “I can help you. I have helped you. I don’t want to go back to the forest.”

The unnatural fog haunting Honey’s eyes sent a chill through Magda.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Magda asked.

Honey frowned, touching her scratched arm, wincing. “The ghouls . . . those ghosts. They were all so sad. They didn’t mean to hurt me. They wanted help. I can still hear them.” Tears trembled in her eyes. “It’s like they’re a part of me now.”

“Well, that’s definitely something we need,” Damion said. “First, her soul gets eaten, and now, she’s filled with ghosts.”

“Shut up,” Magda snapped.

Magda waited for Kaelan to comfort Honey, or at least to voice his opinion about whether or not the nymph should continue with them. But he stared off over the grasses, away from them, seemingly lost in thought. None of his emotions reached her, not that she tried to sense them. Since he appeared to be oblivious, Magda went to Honey’s side, resting a gentle hand on the nymph’s slight shoulder.

“I’m sorry for all that’s happened to you,” she said, “which is why it might be better if you went home.”

Honey’s quivering chin firmed. “I don’t know if I could go back now. My sisters might not want me . . . I’ve changed so much . . .” Her brow knitted as if she were only beginning to grasp what had happened to her. Perhaps she was.

“You have been a tremendous help to us,” Magda said, squeezing her shoulder. “You and Anqa both. I’m only sorry that you’ve suffered so much.”

“I’m not suffering,” Honey said, looking up at Magda with eyes that had shifted from bright and deep, to glassy and flat, and now, churning and murky. “I’m only . . . struggling.”

Magda wrapped her arm around Honey’s shoulders, though she had never been a hugger.

“We could still use your help,” Magda said, “if you’re willing. You know the risks.”

Honey nodded. “I would like that.”

Magda stepped away from Honey.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said. “Kaelan, change yourself”—she pointed at Damion—“into him.”

Kaelan and Damion looked at each other.

“Excuse me?” Damion said.

“Damion, you and Honey are going to find Flor. Tell her what’s going on, explain to her as best as you can, try to convince her. Kaelan and I are going to take care of the money problem. Then we’ll meet you at Flor’s cottage. Assuming that we can enlist her assistance, we’ll travel to the Spire from there.”

“Wait. Where are you going exactly?” Damion asked.

“None of your business,” she said. “Honey, call Anqa. Where’s Gur?”

At the mention of his name, the semargl rose from where he’d been hidden among the grasses, slashing his tail across the tops of them, sending dust and pollen into the air.

“You want me to look like Damion?” Kaelan asked uncertainly.

“If we’re spotted, he’s the most logical person for me to be seen with,” she said.

“I don’t think logic applies to anything that’s happening here,” Damion said.

Magda folded her arms. “Kaelan?”

He sighed, studying Damion for a moment, and then closed his eyes.

A warping lens fell over him. He shortened, but grew broader across the chest. His hair turned long and dark, plaited back from his face, which paled. The white crisscross of scars slashed his broad cheeks, around his full lips, along his strong flat nose. Finally, the distortion dissolved.

A second Damion stood beside the first.

Damion’s brow dropped. His chest seemed to expand. The sticks in his hands sliced down through the air, poised on guard at his sides.

Kaelan, as Damion, edged away, like he feared those sticks might be aimed at him.

“There I am,” Damion said darkly.

Magda inspected Kaelan and then Damion, except for the clothes, the two were identical. Yet the hostility in Damion’s look suggested he felt otherwise.

Honey drifted closer to Damion, inspecting Kaelan. “No. He does not bear himself like a warrior. That makes all the difference.”

Damion’s shoulders fell, the hardness of his face, softening. “Yes, well, he is still more an imp than a Prince, and not a warrior.”

“Clearly,” Honey said. “Any knowledgeable person would see him as an impostor right away.”

Damion’s sticks dropped into the sand and he nodded.

Magda felt an inexplicable urge to hug Honey again. Kaelan, on the other hand, was scowling.

“With any luck, he won’t need to fool anyone,” Magda said, charging over and snagging Kaelan’s arm, dragging him away. “We’ll meet you at the meadow, sunset tomorrow.”

“And if not?” Damion asked.

“We will,” she said.

Hero raced out of the grasses, bounded up her leg and back, and then settled onto her shoulder.

Gur strutted closer. Magda gave Kaelan a bit of a shove towards the semargl.

“Oh, your coat,” Honey said, hurrying forward, grabbing up Endreas’s coat, and holding it out to Kaelan.

He frowned at it and her.

Magda took it. “Thank you, Honey. We’ll see you soon.”

“W
HAT ARE WE DOING BACK HERE?”
Kaelan asked that afternoon, when Gur once more bore them into the very same cave they had camped in nights before.

“You’ll see,” she said, slipping down from Gur. She gave the semargl a scratch behind the ear. “By nightfall,” she told him.

He
ywarled
in response.

Hero clamored down and vanished into the caves.

Kaelan leapt down too.

All day, she’d been trying to fix on his emotions, but they escaped her. Every once in a while, a vague sense would surface—frustration, anger, fear, hunger—but all too fleeting for her to grasp, like flitting shadows through a fog.

“Do I have to stay like this?” he asked, holding open Damion’s bulging arms, which strained against Kaelan’s clothes.

“Does it bother you?” she asked.