"Is she asleep yet?"
Princess Kyrenia "Ren" of Acanthus put a finger to her lips as Eloise poked her head through the bedchamber door. After shooting her lady in waiting a warning look, she glanced back at her maid, Ina, who lay sprawled out on her favorite chair, her rheumy eyes closed and her embroidery limp on her lap. Had she truly been rendered unconscious this time? Or was she merely resting her eyes? Ina was old, which sometimes made it difficult to tell.
Most nights it took only a single draught of the physicians' poppy to put her maid into a deep, dreamless slumber. But tonight Ren had been forced to slip nearly two vials of the foul potion into her drink before Ina had even started to yawn. Tonight—of all nights! When she and her ladies had somewhere to be.
Pursing her lips, she dared to wave a cautious hand in front of Ina's face, ready to tell her that the fire in the hearth had gone out if, by chance, she was still awake. But Ina's eyes remained closed. And instead of waking, she rolled to her side, letting out a rather unlady-like grunt as the embroidery slipped to the floor. Soon the sound of snoring filled the room.
Ren looked up at Eloise, who still hung expectantly in the doorway. She shot her friend a triumphant smile. Success. Eloise grinned back at her, doing a silent little dance of victory.
Rising to her feet, Ren crossed the bedchamber to the wardrobe at the back of her room, shedding her rich, silk dressing gown as she went, and replacing it with the floor-length, royal blue cloak, trimmed in white fur that hung inside. She was thankful now, for Eloise's suggestion to put her dressing gown over her party clothes to allow her a quicker exit when it came time to make their escape. She'd even kept her long, red hair tied up in its day braids around her head, making it easier to tuck under the cloak's generous hood and hide it from view. Ren was well known in the capital city for her fiery crimson curls. And she couldn't allow anyone to recognize her tonight.
As she tiptoed back across the room, she moved to close the velvet curtains around her canopy bed, tying them tightly to the bedposts as she went. This way if Ina did wake in the night, she would assume Ren was simply sound asleep inside and would have no cause for alarm.
To be fair, Ren did feel a bit guilty about drugging her maid. But she knew Ina would not have approved of tonight's mission. And Ren couldn't risk the possibility of her going to her parents and informing them what their daughter was up to. Standing at not quite five foot tall, Ina had always been a force to be reckoned with, which was likely why they'd put Ren under her care in the first place. Some even believed she was descended from the fey folk themselves, though Ren's mother had always scoffed at such an idea when Ren would bring it up as a child.
The Fey slipped through the curtains of mist to the other world long ago, Kyrenia, she would assure her daughter. Without the promise of magic, there is no place for them here.
She said it almost wistfully. As if there were more to the story than that. But try as Ren might to press her, it was all she'd ever say. Nor would Ina herself ever confirm or deny her rumored heritage, saying only that she was dropped as a baby on the front steps of the Chancel of the Great Mother and knew nothing of the family who left her there.
When she reached the door, Eloise pulled it open wide. The hinges groaned, prompting the two girls to wince, glancing nervously back at Ina. But the maid slept on, a splotch of drool now firmly affixed to the corner of her mouth. Ren nodded, satisfied. A rampaging dragon would not be able to wake her now.
She slipped out the door, closing it behind her. Then she and Eloise headed down the long, unlit castle passageway, feeling their way through the darkness, fingers dancing against stone, their eyes locked on the single flicker of light at the far end of the hall. When they reached it, they discovered Krea waiting for them, a small beeswax candle cupped in her hand. She grinned wickedly, her dark eyes flashing in the candlelight.
"Finally," she declared in a scolding whisper. "I thought I was going to have to send out the guards."
"Where are my guards anyway?" Ren asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow in Krea's direction. "I was quite certain I had two stationed outside my chamber earlier this evening."
"Oh you did, your majesty," Krea agreed breezily. "But the poor boys were so dreadfully thirsty by the time we arrived. I simply suggested they go fetch the wine I had stashed in my bedchamber."
Ren rolled her eyes. "And let me guess—they jumped at the opportunity abandon their posts."
"And who could blame them? Guarding a princess is such dry work, you know." Eloise tossed her long black hair over her shoulders with a dramatic flair. "What was more surprising," she added, "was that they did not immediately return."
"I do wonder if my dreadful door is sticking again," pondered Krea, tapping her finger to her forehead. "'Twould would be a shame if they had somehow locked themselves in. After all, my room is so far from the others in the castle. And the walls are so thick. You would barely hear it if someone were to, say, scream for help."
"We thought about checking on them, of course," Eloise added. "But we swore on our lives that we'd guard you ourselves until they came back."
"Which, I see, we must continue to do," Krea concluded, her eyes twinkling mischievously. "If that is agreeable to your majesty, of course."
Ren snorted. "I suppose I shall find some way to endure you." She grinned. "Now come! This party will not celebrate itself."
They took the left fork, continuing down the hall toward one of the abandoned guest chambers they used to play in when they were children. They'd found the secret passageway back then completely by accident, during a wild game of hide and go seek. Located at the back of a long unused fireplace, it opened to a series of twisty tunnels and crumbling stone stairs, one of which led out of the castle altogether.
They'd accessed this passageway many times since then for all sorts of secret missions. To sneak down to the village to acquire salty breads from the town baker. For a quick swim in the rock-strewn shallows of Ocean Black on a sweltering summer day. For Ren, it was usually to meet Gareth, for lessons in swordplay and horseback riding. All outings that would have most likely been permitted anyway, had they bothered to ask their elders. But the idea of sneaking off, of being as free as the barefoot children of Bogsbottom, had a certain appeal.
But sadly that freedom had come to an end for Ren a summer ago. When the crown prince Richard, Ren's older brother, had fallen from his horse. Had broken his neck. Had died the next day. And since the king and queen were too old to hope for another male heir, suddenly there was only one person in line for the great throne of Acanthus. One girl left to rule the realm. The very reluctant Princess Kyrenia.
Ren did not blame her brother for dying. If he'd had any choice in the matter, she was quite certain he would have chosen to stay alive. To take the crown. To sit on the throne. Fulfill the role he'd been born into.
But he had died, and, in a way, he'd gone and taken her own life with him. For all at once the trips to the village, the lessons in swordplay, the school she'd attended with her friends were all stripped away, as she was now too valuable to risk. Instead, she was told, she must stay in the castle. Learn to be a lady. Or, more precisely, a queen.
And it was only about to get worse. In one moon cycle, on the first day of her seventeenth summer, they planned to marry her off to the dullest man she had ever met. A pockmark-faced lord twenty summers her senior from the western border who had won her father's approval, but smelled like onions and sweaty undergarments. (Evidently good hygiene was not mandatory, these days, for ruling a nation. At least not if you were a man.)
