From Convent to Queen

Chapter One

THERE WERE BLUEBELLS as far as she could see. It was peaceful. So nothing. Nothing like she had ever experienced while growing up in the palace at Cape Blanco. Here, in the wilderness she knew peace. Here at the convent she finally felt like herself.

Fern.

Who felt so different than Fernanda Luisa Camila Esperanza Cortez, Princess of Cape Blanco, the small archipelago on the cusp of the Alboran Sea, crowded with her brothers and their aspirations of power.

They were all handsome and world-renowned for one thing or another.

Juan—a great politician and heir apparent.

Miguel—a financial genius, who was cold as ice.

Julio—an actor, of all things. Rafa—a writer who seemed to delight in his own tortured mind.

And Ricardo—who was perhaps the only brother who’d ever engaged her in conversation, but was a terrible rake, a model and a professional cad.

Fern was the youngest, and the only girl.

Her lone claim to value of any kind was the marriage contract drawn up by her father with the presumed leader of Asland.

The island nation, populated by Vikings hundreds of years ago, had been ruled by a monarchy ever since—until the royal family had been overthrown in a military coup that had promised greater freedom but had ushered in authoritarian rule.

Fern’s father had made a bargain with the president that Fern would marry his successor—who had been all but handpicked by the current president—when she was born. The union would ease trade between the countries and offer great military support.

Fern had been opposed. But it had also been a fact of her birth.

Like her green eyes, black hair and small stature.

Something she was born with. She might wish she was six feet tall, but she couldn’t change her height. Just as she’d always wished she wasn’t promised to be married off to a false president for the pursuit of yet more power.

But three years ago the authoritarian regime had fallen—a revolution led by the long-believed-deceased heir to the throne had upended everything, and restored balance and freedom to Asland.

King Ragnar was as formidable as he was dangerous—according to her father. And the agreement—should he choose to try and apply it under the present circumstances, could put them all in danger.

Which was when—at the age of eighteen—Fern had been sent off to the Isle of Skye to an isolated convent, where she felt like she had found herself for the first time.

Funny how she felt more…her in hiding than she ever had when living in the palace at Cape Blanco.

Or at the very least she felt connected to part of herself—her strength—that had never been allowed to blossom before. In the palace she’d learned diplomacy. Watching her brothers spar with one another had taught her well just what not to do.

What she had never been allowed to be was soft. It was far too dangerous. But here? Here she could embrace the quiet. The contemplation. The rhythms of nature. She had spent her life locked in quiet wars in the palace in Cape Blanco, and had never known who she was apart from that.

It had been an awful thing, her life in the palace. She’d had all those skills, and yet her word had never been respected. She was as smart and strong as any of her brothers, yet it didn’t matter. She was forced into a mold for self-preservation, and then it wasn’t even valued.

She despised men.

Men and their pursuit of power.

She had been steeped in it all her life. Her father and her five older brothers wanted nothing more than power. Her oldest brother—the heir to the throne—was as rigid and exacting as their father. And just as much of a liar.

Then there were the spares.

They were no better.

They spent their time in Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia, forging alliances and trying to jockey for power positions within their father’s administration by greasing palms the world over.

When you were a small nation, diplomacy was of utmost importance. At least, that’s what her father always said.

She didn’t feel they excelled at true diplomacy. They were simply very opportunistic, and very practiced liars.

As for her, her entire function had been to become a wife.

So she’d learned diplomacy of another kind—but while she’d been taking in her lessons she’d been learning other truths.

She had learned that as long as she seemed biddable, as long as she kept her voice soft and expression sympathetic, she could often manipulate a situation better than her father or any of her brothers.

They didn’t look for the strength inherent in women.

They didn’t look for the steel in the softness.

They were a pack of misogynists.

Her mother had never been considered a full human. She was an accessory to her father, and if she was unhappy with it she never betrayed it to Fern.

Fern often tried to look through her mother’s poise and impeccable manners to see if there was anything beneath them. To see if she was sad about the way she was sidelined, ignored and minimized.

Fern wondered if her mother had built a facade so thick and perfect that even she couldn’t break out of it now.

All Fern had ever seen ahead for herself was more of the same. She’d met the new president five years ago. A man in his forties with a charismatic demeanor that made Fern want to scream and run away and hide forever.

She’d been sixteen, facing down the prospect that in only two years she’d be marrying a man well old enough to be her father, but even worse—the same sort of man as her father.

She would never be free.

She would never have a life.

And all the things she’d learned—the ways she’d navigated her whole minefield-filled life—wouldn’t matter because she would just be playing power games from behind the bars of a cage.

It had been a low moment.

Then Ragnar had taken the throne back in Asland and those plans had fallen apart.

She’d never been so relieved.

This man, whom she’d never met, had saved her.

At least, that was what she’d imagined. Until her father told her that Ragnar intended to marry her still—as the leader of the nation and the rightful beneficiary of the agreement.

She’d been sure her father would bundle her right off and send her into marriage with a total stranger—after all, he’d never cared what she wanted before.

But she’d tried to resist. To protest. She’d always thought it a useless thing to do, but faced with what felt like a certain demise or the futile defiance of her father, she’d decided to raise her voice.

To her surprise, he’d listened. She understood that it was because he agreed—for some reason—with her concerns.

So now she was here. Hidden. Protected. Surrounded by other women, who found meaning in serving others and in sitting in silence. In serving the divine, not man.

It was a whole new way of being. One that Fern had never been exposed to before.

At first she’d missed her phone—she had it with her but it barely worked.

There was only wired internet available at the convent and only then in Mother Superior’s study, and only used to communicate with the diocese and to receive time-sensitive information.

She had missed sleeping in at first too.

At the convent they arose at five to spend time with God. Though Fern had been given license to spend it in whatever type of meditative state she chose.

Eventually she stopped missing the fast pace of the internet and the constant relentless news cycle. Eventually she stopped seeking quick hits of shallow satisfaction from mindlessly browsing online. She started to look forward to the mornings. To the time alone with her thoughts.

She had friends now. She did chores. She took long walks. She read. She didn’t perform, because the sisters had taught her that it didn’t matter what a person pretended to be; it mattered who they were in their heart.

Here, she felt like her insides finally matched her outsides.

She didn’t have to wear makeup or designer clothing to project her father’s wealth and importance.

She wore linen dresses and aprons. She had one simple pair of boots and a simple pair of flat shoes.

She didn’t add highlights to her hair or put ruthless straightening products on it anymore. Her curls were dark and wild.

She was wild too.

Perhaps part of the sweetness of the wild was knowing that it could be taken. If her father decided to come and fetch her.

If Ragnar found her.

Freedom was tenuous, and not truly hers, as ever.

If she thought about it too much it filled her with rage. But she was here. In the sun and the quiet and the glory, so she chose not to think of it.

She chose to be at peace, because she had otherwise never been permitted peace.

And in the three years she’d been here her disdain for her father had only grown. What had been a feeling—that he was wrong about most things—had become clear, fully formed thoughts now.

His manners weren’t good. They were repulsive because they were lies.

He was rotten inside, and that was what mattered.

A person’s heart was what counted, not their appearance.

Maybe he would forget about her here. She often fantasized about that. No one had been to see her in all the time she’d been in Scotland.

She was okay with that.

“Sister Fernanda.” She turned at the sound of Mother Superior’s voice behind her.

She wasn’t a sister, but Mother Superior called her that to reinforce her place here, and the equality of all of them.

“Yes?” She squinted slightly, the sun shining in her face.

“Would you mind going and checking the bees and collecting some honey for supper?”

“Oh, I would love to.”

Fern loved the bees. She’d found that she was very interested in all manner of farming practices, but cultivating honey was one of her favorite past times.

She went to the barn and gathered the beekeeping gear and a large jar from the shelf by the beekeeping suit, and walked across the expansive field toward the beehives.

At first, she’d been afraid of the bees. But she just hadn’t understood them. She hadn’t understood so many things.

She’d had perfect table manners but she hadn’t been connected to the land, to the way that it fed humanity as long as humanity fed it back.

Now she knew.

She used her smoke to clear the bees away as she got into the hive and began to collect honeycomb and put it in the jar.

Then she walked back to the barn and took the beekeeper’s suit off, holding the jar close to her chest as she walked back toward the convent.

Her stomach growled when she thought about the dinner they’d be able to have. They would have vegetables from the garden—potatoes, carrots and leeks. And there would likely be bread and butter, and now honey.

Though they were not entirely vegetarian at the convent, they ate very little meat, due both to the cost and to Mother Superior’s general discomfort with taking life in any form, even if it was animal life.

Fern was so unaccustomed to that level of consideration and compassion. She’d been shocked by it at first.

Now she tried to cultivate it. To bring it into her own heart.

This deep caring about others.

This peace.

Silence had been all around, nothing but the wind through the flowers and grass, and then suddenly, the silence was broken by a rhythmic pounding.

She turned sharply behind her and saw a black horse with a large figure on the back of it, riding toward her at full speed.

She had never seen anything like this out here before. Had never seen one of the farmers from a neighboring property out riding like he was being chased by an enemy army.

She took a breath. And then began to run.

Without thinking. Without pausing.

Away from him or whatever might be after him. She felt like she’d fallen down into an alternate world—or maybe out of time, though that wasn’t an uncommon feeling out here in the wild Highlands.

But this was uncommon.

This fear.

Everything here had always been peace and now she was running.

Why was she running?

And it hit her then, with each beat of her feet pounding the ground. She was running because she’d been sent here to hide.

Because if there was something to run from there was a high chance that the danger was there for her.

So she ran like she would die if she was caught, because perhaps she would be.

She ran like her freedom depended on it, because perhaps it did.

But she wasn’t faster than a horse.

She could hear the hoofbeats getting closer and closer, and it confirmed that he was here for her. He was here for her.

Ragnar.

King Ragnar Gunnarson. Once deposed heir of Asland, now the king.

She didn’t look back; it would only slow her down.

So when she found herself being lifted up off the ground midstride it was a shock.

She flailed and tried to escape the ironclad hold she found herself in, as she was positioned on the horse in front of its rider, one muscular arm holding her fast against a rock-hard chest.

He smelled good.

That was the dizzying, nonsensical thought that crowded out all the other ones as she sat there, entirely trapped. He smelled like the forest. Like the sea. Like the wilderness itself.

Whoever this man was, he was a warrior.

Her father and her brothers smelled of expensive colognes.

Not of the wild.

And then it was like whatever haze had fallen over her suddenly lifted. What was she doing, pondering the strength and scent of him and not trying to escape?

Without overthinking it, so that she didn’t give her next move away, she arched backward and created space between herself and the rider, and then used that moment, that split second where he loosened his hold, to roll sideways off the horse.

She hit the ground hard, rolling to the side, and then stood up and began to run again. She no longer heard footsteps. She just had to get to the convent.

She just had to—

And then she was being lifted up again, this time, not onto the horse, but simply into the unseated rider’s arms.

She looked up at him and her heart leaped into her throat.

He looked like a Viking from the old world. He had long blond hair, and a full beard. His nose was straight and angular, his expression fierce.

This wasn’t an agent of Ragnar, King of Asland.

This was the king himself.

His eyes caught hers and held.

Blue.

Shockingly blue.

And then it was all she could see, as her world narrowed and fear and exhaustion rolled over her, claiming her consciousness.