Claiming the Prince: Book One (41 page)

“I want you to watch Honey,” she said to him softly.

“
Why?
”

“I don’t know. Just . . . make sure she’s all right.”

A musty, soured milk odor spoiled the air inside.

Once the house had been an elegant retreat for Flor’s noble family, but in the grieving years, it had been given over to the spiders and the mice. The front door opened into a foyer where the main staircase wound up to the second floor.

Magda ran her fingers over the balustrade, remembering all the times she’d seen Cae bound down the stairs, smiling in that wicked way of his. Dust collected on her fingertips, thick and sticky. The foyer opened into a hallway and beyond, two ornate doors. Flor heaved them open with a strained grunt.

Bustling ahead into the dining hall, she skirted the long shrouded table and pulled aside the heavy curtain. Storms of dust billowed around her.

“Don’t just stand there, help an old woman,” she barked back at them, pushing open the windows.

Damion plunked the saddlebags down on the table and assisted her, drawing aside the curtains from the tall mullioned windows, forcing open old hinges that groaned and resisted.

Fresh air swept through the house, swirling through the thick motes of dust.

“That’s him,” Honey said, gesturing to a portrait above the credenza just beside the entry doors.

“Yes,” Flor said, blowing aside a tress of grizzled hair that dangled over her face. “My Caden.”

Kaelan stepped around Magda to join Honey in inspecting the portrait. Magda’s gaze drifted over to the doors leading into the library, losing herself to the memories.

Flor plucked at Magda’s chin. “You and I have both been in exile.” She put her arm through Magda’s and steered her around, forcing her before the portrait.

Tears pricked Magda’s eyes. It had been so long since she’d seen Caden’s face. Those downturned silver eyes gleamed under his black-hooded brow. The slight smile on his pouty lips suggested he was thinking of something wildly inappropriate, plotting. The thick waves of his black hair were bound back, but in life, they’d always been coming loose, the traditional braids and clips unable to restrain them.

“He was fourteen. We had one done every year for his birthday,” Flor said, voice choking. “He hated it, all that sitting.” Flor laughed, covering her mouth with slightly trembling fingers as she gazed up at Caden’s last portrait.

“The trick for you,” Flor said to Kaelan, shaking back her own unrestrained locks, “will be to age him. He would be twenty-nine now.”

An image flashed in Magda’s head of a twenty-nine-year-old Caden. How darkly beautiful and seductive he would’ve been, how broad-shouldered and well-muscled. While all Princes underwent some degree of training, both of Caden’s parents had been warriors and had raised him more as a warrior than a Prince. He would’ve been like his father, but leaner and taller.

“He’s shown you,” Honey said, startling Magda from her reverie.

“Did my Cae say something?” Flor asked.

“He’s shown Magda what he looks like,” Honey said to Flor. “Those who have crossed to the Godlands continue to age if they are young, or return to their prime, if they were old. Those who choose to remain that is.”

Magda was about to question Honey further, but Flor stepped before her.

“Did you see him?”

Kaelan and Damion eyed her as if worried she’d caught the same ghoul-curse as Honey.

“I saw . . . something,” Magda admitted. “I was just imagining what he would look like now.”

“No, he showed you,” Honey insisted.

Flor beamed, clasping Magda’s face in her hands. “He wants you to succeed. If he had been there with you that day against Alanna, you would not have lost. You would not have been exiled. You would have been Radiant all these years, just as your mother and I always intended.”

“What do we need to do?” Magda said to her.

Flor tapped her softly on the cheek. “Too much. And we have too little time.” She raised an eyebrow at Hero, as if only just noticing him. Her cheeks sucked in, but whatever she was thinking, she didn’t share it. Instead, she turned to Damion.

“I need you to go to your uncle’s up on the bluff.” She reached into the pocket of her long coat, cut away at her waist to show the fitted trousers of a warrior. Holding out a letter to Damion, she said, “Give him this and tell him if he does not follow my instructions to the letter I will sneak up on him like I used to when we were children. Only this time I won’t pour cold water down the back of his pants, I’ll slit his throat.”

Damion took the letter. “Now? Do you have a horse?”

“There are some very large mice in the stables, perhaps you could ride one of them, you lazy pisspot,” Flor barked. “Is this what they call a warrior in your generation?”

“I can take you on Anqa,” Honey offered.

Flor sputtered. “But . . . we’ll need you here.”

Honey shook her head. “Cae says you have enough work. And if we fly, we’ll return well before nightfall.”

Flor frowned. “I suppose then . . .”

Honey started towards the door.

“Um, Honey, would you take Hero with you?” Magda asked, lifting Hero off of her shoulder.

“If you wish,” the nymph said, “but why?”

Magda scraped her lip with her teeth.
Why don’t you ask Cae?
she thought.

“He’s grown quite fond of flying,” she lied.

Hero much preferred to have his paws on the ground and the little black glare she received reminded her as much, but she knew he would do this for her.

“Happily,” Honey said, holding out her hands.

Magda handed Hero to the nymph. He clambered up onto her much narrower shoulder.

Damion grumbled as he followed Honey.

“Cae is right, of course,” Flor said, looking over Kaelan and then Magda, her expression suggesting she was none-too-impressed with what she saw. “First thing, food. You are too thin by far. That armor is rattling around you like a pot full of stock bones. Take it off. You start cleaning and mending it while I take this one with me to the garden. My cousins come by a few times a month to look in on me. They haven’t let the kitchen go to seed the way the rest of this place has, but that’s not their doing. It’s all mine. The training shed has been shut up all these years, but you should find what you need there. Go now. You”—she twitched her finger at Kaelan—“come with me. If you’re going to impersonate my boy, you have too much to learn and no time to do so. What is your name again?”

“Kaelan,” he said.

Flor tilted her head. “That should make it easier for you then. Caden doesn’t sound too different. Starting now, we’ll call you Caden or Cae. Still, you must train yourself to respond to it, understood? My Cae has assured me that you are an honorable young Prince, but is it true that you have been hidden all these years? You have no experience with the ways of our kind?”

“Very little,” Kaelan said.

“At least you were born a Prince. That’s half the battle, I suppose,” Flor said, pucker lines digging in around her lips. She waved him after her, striding out of the dining hall. “We’ll start at the beginning. You were named Caden after my great-great grandfather, warrior-son of the Rae Selene of Twisted-Branch-over-Knollstem, who, as the younger sister of the Radiant, was entitled to . . .”

Kaelan gave Magda a pleading look, but she merely smiled, waving as he trailed after Flor.

She looked back up at Caden’s portrait. “See you soon.”

T
HE TRAINING SHED,
a tumble-down stone outbuilding behind the house, stood alongside a weedy patch that bore the scars of thousands of sparrings over the centuries. Dirt had seeped in through a broken window, coating the tools arrayed on the walls and lying thick upon the workbench. The busted pane had also allowed sparrows to nest inside. Their splattered mess had built up over the years of grime and neglect.

Propping the wooden doors open, Magda pulled out an old form, swiping at the dust with a fallen branch from a nearby pine tree. She removed her armor and inspected it in the sunlight. The lacing that bound the plates together was worn down to little more than threads.

After some digging in the trunks, she found Pixie-cloth cord coiled under some spare plates. Pulling a stool from the shed out into the sunlight, she began the arduous process of repairing the lacing.

Sometime later, she moved on to polishing the plates. Luckily, the old polish kit she’d found under the workbench was serviceable. Soon, the bronze began to glow a warm saffron-hue in the afternoon light. She lost herself in the work of cleaning, buffing, and polishing.

“Magda.”

She flinched, almost dropping the buffing rag.

“Sorry,” Kaelan said, coming closer. “Mother would like to see you on the garden terrace.”

She stifled a laugh as she packed up the polish kit. “What have you and your
mother
been doing all afternoon?”

“Salvaging what’s left of the garden, attempting to scare off the spiders from the bedrooms, opening every window in this damned place, and recounting Cae’s entire life story from his conception to his tragic demise.” He rubbed his temples. “I’m starting to think that bringing him back from the dead would be easier than attempting to assume his identity.”

She left her armor where it was and strode up to him, wiping her hands clean on a rag. She patted his chest. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

She started back through the overgrown gnomeberry bushes towards the house.

“She wants to talk about your hair,” Kaelan said, trailing her.

She stopped and turned back, reaching up to touch the back of her head. “What about it?”

“She says it’s scandalous for a Rae to have short hair.”

“In the human world, they call this a pixie-cut,” she said, grinning. But he only gazed at her dully. Her grin faded.

“It’s not like I can grow it back . . . She doesn’t have a means of growing it back, does she?”

“No, she has a better idea,” he said, pushing aside the bushes, grinning almost as devilishly as Cae used to. “Just wait.”

Flor had laid out a bounty of food upon the pitted stone table situated in the middle of the paved terrace overlooking the lily-choked pond and overgrown gardens.

“Sit,” she ordered Magda, pointing to a wooden chair that appeared to have been brought out from the dining room. Its cherry finish still gleamed under the dust of disuse. “Eat.” She loaded Magda’s plate with huge slices of tomatoes and pears and apples. “I apologize for not having any cheese or bread,” she said. “I did have, but it’s all gone over.”

Kaelan dropped into another chair, his eyes half-open.

Magda shoveled the food into her mouth, suddenly famished in a way that she hadn’t been in weeks.

“Good,” Flor said, leaning back in her chair. “I’m glad to see you have an appetite. Now about your hair.”

Magda swallowed down the slightly overripe tomato. “I like my hair.”

“I like it too,” Flor said.

A piece of apple lodged in Magda’s throat. She coughed it loose.

“You do?” Kaelan asked the question Magda couldn’t.

“Yes. Don’t you?” Flor snapped at him, arching an eyebrow in a manner that suggested his answer should be yes.

“You said it was scandalous,” he replied.

“It is. No Rae cuts her hair short,” Flor said. “It’s just not done.”

After a long drink of water, Magda’s throat cleared. She ran her hand over the soft scruff on the back of her scalp. It had grown shaggy.

“Well, I’m not going to take some potion to make it grow,” she said.

“I said, I like it,” Flor stated. “In fact, I want you to cut mine in the same style.”

Magda stared. “You’re not serious.”

Flor pulled a pair of silver scissors from her coat pocket and set them down on the table. “I’m quite serious. It will be our statement. Your return will be shocking enough. Add to that Caden and . . .” Flor leaned forward, fixing Magda with her steely stare, sharper than the gleaming scissors. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten how it is at the Spire, Magdalena. But you are about to create one of the greatest upheavals in the history of the court. Regardless of the outcome, what you’re setting out to do will be talked about for . . . centuries.”