Chapter 3
A s it turned out, information on the girl was difficult to come by.
“She came with Elk, but other than that, no one knows anything about her. Though I have heard from one of their guards that she was found in a compromising position with the younger Korhonan,” Kirill murmured, sinking onto a log in my tent.
Well, that wasn’t surprising, considering her slip with his name and his general possessiveness.
“I still doubt it’s a coincidence that she’s here,” I mused aloud. “Unless Iiro invented a reason for a Summit just to rub it in all of our faces. But Lochlann won’t even trade with us, let alone allow one of their own to marry here.”
And that was assuming she was a noblewoman. She was certainly entitled enough, but she didn’t appear to have been trained on any decorum.
Kirill nodded thoughtfully.
Of all the men at the Summit, he was the one I trusted the most. My only closer right-hand man was back at Bear, managing things in my absence.
“Is there anything else?” I asked.
He lifted a dubious shoulder.
“They also claim she fought off several of the Unclanned herself.”
I scoffed, then reconsidered. She was small, but we trained boys as young as fourteen for the military here, and some of them weren’t much bigger than she was. She had followed the fight with a practiced eye, so I supposed it wasn’t entirely impossible. Still, she didn’t look like she could lift a sword, let alone wield it.
And why would she have to?
“The real question is why there were enough Unclanned attacking that she would need to help fend them off with Iiro, Theodore, the footmen and the guards all there,” I told him, getting to my feet. “See what you can find out about that attack. I’m sure I’ll know more after this meeting. Anything else of note?”
Kirill sighed. “Just that Elk and Ram are still in talks over an alliance, but they haven’t made any progress on a betrothal agreement.”
I raised my eyebrows.
That was interesting, indeed. Especially considering the way he had looked at the Lochlannian.
Sure enough, by the time I made it to the yawning black tent that would host the Summit meetings, the Duke of Elk already presided over the table with a smug expression, like he’d won a game none of us even knew we were playing.
He was wearing the ceremonial robes of the dukes, only his were navy, and most of the Clan leaders at our table weren’t dressed nearly so ornately.
The rest of us primarily wore uniforms in our clan’s colors, a veritable rainbow of reds and oranges, greens and yellow. Mine was black for Clan Bear, a deep onyx a shade darker than the tent cloth.
I mentally steeled myself for whatever powder keg Iiro was about to ignite as Iiro focused his attention on me.
“Lord Stenvall,” his tone was as arrogant as his posture. “I am so pleased that you could join us.”
The miniscule twitch below his left eye gave away the lie, not that I needed an obvious tell. As the two biggest contenders for the fallen crown, Bear and Elk had been rivals for as long as I could remember. That might have changed when Theodore and I took up positions as Dukes of our respective clans, that is until he proved himself to be as untrustworthy as his brother, but with half the spine.
“Thank you again for the invitation, Sir Iiro,” I greeted back, taking my seat at the table. “My father was more than a little aggrieved not to attend, but surely you can imagine the strain he is under being the leader of such a large clan.”
While Elk was the second largest clan in the kingdom, next to mine, it wasn’t nearly as populated or as well off—something that continued to disappoint him. Perhaps it was a petty thing to remind him of, this stick measuring contest, as it were. But I couldn’t find it in me to regret getting my digs in where I could with any of the Korhonans.
Arès—Duke of Lynx—and one of the few men at the table who wasn’t an outright aalio let out a small sigh and shook his head at me in response.
“If you don’t mind, Sir Iiro,” he said, with more respect than the duke deserved, “we are all eager to know why you called this meeting.”
There were murmurs among the dukes, from curious to disgruntled. Only Mikhail from Clan Ram looked entirely unfazed…like someone who already knew exactly why we were all here.
Fascinating .
“And I am eager to impart that reason to you,” Iiro responded.
I could have sworn Arès suppressed an eyeroll, raising my opinion of him further.
Before anyone could respond, though, Korhonan Junior stepped through the entrance, followed by the petite frame of the Lochlannian.
What in the storms-damned-hell were they playing at?
The expression on my former friend’s face as he led her farther into the tent looked pained—like it was physically hurting him to drag her before the other clans. Like he wanted nothing more than to use his body as a human shield to keep them from noticing her.
Like he was terrified of what they would do when they did notice her.
It was a far cry from the bravado he’d put on after his match earlier, and somehow it only served to make me even more curious.
Then the girl’s jade eyes locked onto mine.
The expression on her face almost made sitting in this odious tent full of some of my least favorite people more tolerable. Full, rosy lips parted in shock before dark eyebrows furrowed in a bitter sort of resignation as she realized the man she had chastised earlier that day was part of this Summit.
Briefly, I wondered if all Lochlannians let every single one of their emotions show in real time. The only one I had ever met didn’t have any feelings, so she was hardly an accurate comparison.
My lips twisted bitterly at the thought of this woman having anything at all in common with my repulsive stepmother.
Then Iiro was telling a story that sounded entirely implausible: A girl smuggling vodka with her guard. A tunnel that happened to collapse the moment she was inside. A perfectly timed patrol, and the reveal that she was, coincidentally, a princess of Lochlann.
I blinked once. Twice.
Where did I even begin to unravel this idiocy?
Was he lying, or was she? More likely, they were scheming together.
Though it was well known that Lochlannians were far more lax than Socairans, I still sincerely doubted they were producing princesses who watched brawls and smuggled vodka and traveled alone with a single guard of the opposite sex.
And though she had appeared to be cautious when she entered the tent, she certainly didn’t look afraid now. So she was in on it, then.
Or merely oblivious to the danger? But surely no one could be that stupid.
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than she instructed the men to gird their loins , and I was forced to reconsider whether someone could, in fact, be that stupid.
I blinked again, slowly, resisting the urge to massage my temples to placate the migraine already creeping its way into my skull.
Delicate fingers reached up to remove her veiled Socairan hat and out tumbled more hair than I had ever seen on a single person. Wild, scarlet curls cascaded down to her waist, causing the entire room to hold its collective breath.
Ever since the war with Lochlann, when their fire-haired king took down the mountains between our kingdoms, my people had an unnatural aversion to red hair, like they didn’t realize that cruelty came in so many packages.
I had more reason than most to despise crimson-colored hair, but Mairi was far from the only monster I knew.
“This proves nothing,” the Duke of Bison declared.
I studied the girl while the men argued, noting that she was at least making some effort to mask her expression now. Slightly more composed, she almost did look like a princess, albeit a particularly feral one.
Her stubborn chin was tilted upward, her bowed lips pursed and her telltale green eyes assessing the scene the same way she had watched the fight. Her hair stood out like a flame against the black backdrop of the tent fabric, which was appropriate since she, too, seemed inordinately destructive for something so small, considering the chaos she had already wrought with her mere presence.
Royalty or not, she was like nothing I had ever seen.
At a signal from Iiro, the Lochlannian reluctantly pulled a solid gold chain from around her neck, a heavy ring weighing down the center. She handed it to him, and he passed it around. The clan leaders looked it over, holding it up to the beam of sunlight streaming in through the top of the tent, or handing it off like it was just as cursed as the princess’s hair.
When it was finally my turn, I took my time examining it.
It was a signet ring, small enough for a slim finger, but with a boxy face to accommodate the imprint of the symbol of Lochlann intertwined with a tree of some sort.
“A rowan tree, for their Rowan child,” Iiro said.
I nearly rolled my eyes at his theatrics, looking back at the girl just in time to see her pursing her lips as though she was holding in a laugh.
For at least the hundredth time since she got here, I found my mind wavering between whether she was scheming or an imbecile. She had predicted the fight, so she had some sense of strategy.
Scheming, then?
I cleared my throat to speak. “And how do we know that this ring isn’t a farce? You could have had it made.”
The ring wasn’t shiny enough to have been recently cast, but was well-worn with age - tiny scratches marked the heavy inlay. The inner band was smooth, like it had often slid off and on a dainty finger.
I was no jeweler, and neither was Iiro, though his palace halls were decorated with the wealth of his ancestors—fine jeweled eggs and gemstones, crowns and so much more.
Still, I wanted to know how he would respond, so I pushed anyway.
“Why do you expect us to believe you?”
Iiro shot me a scathing glance. “Because I give you my word, Lord Evander.”
I didn’t miss the way he stressed my title, once again, the lack of the word Sir and its implications that I didn’t belong here, but that wasn’t what mattered right now. His promise wasn’t idle. Giving your word, swearing before a Summit, and being found to lie would have dire consequences. It would be a hell of a gamble, even for a man I knew wanted to resurrect the defunct throne.
Surely she couldn’t really be…
“If you have proof to the contrary,” Iiro continued, “then by all means, present it.”
Obviously, I didn’t. Couldn’t have, with exactly no warning, which he knew.
Arès and the Duke of Crane had a low conversation until the Duke of Ram spoke up.
“We have a way to discover the truth,” Mikhail announced, his tone just a hair too close to feeling scripted. “Fetch Juho.”
The so-called princess darted a glance around the room, confusion furrowing her brow as Mikhail switched from Common to his northern dialect. He explained that Juho was a spy in Lochlann and had worked in the royal stables up until last year.
There went any doubt he had prior knowledge of this entire thing, unless he just happened to cart his Lochlannian spies around with him when he traveled.
When Juho finally entered the tent, she froze.
Shock crossed her features, followed quickly by betrayal. The man in question barely suppressed a smirk, his eyes roving over her like a cat might look at a bowl of warm milk.
Unless she was a very good liar, which seemed unlikely, this was an unexpected turn for her, which had me reassessing her role in this game all over again.
Sir Mikhail briefly relayed the situation to him, and a smirk of amusement crept onto the spy’s face.
“Princess,” he said in a tone that left little doubt as to what the nature of their previous interaction had been.
“Traitor,” she spat back with the lack of restraint I was beginning to suspect was typical for her.
What I had taken for lack of decorum could easily have been the actions of someone who never had to face any consequences for her outbursts. Like a Lochlannian royal?
“Yes, I am very familiar with this princess,” he said, confirming my assumption about their relationship.
Between him and Korhonan, I wondered vaguely how many more of the princess’s boyfriends we would meet before this farce of a Summit was over.
I was, however, increasingly sure that she was the princess. A spoiled, reckless, rebellious princess, from the looks of it, though, which would in no way preclude her from consorting with Iiro.
Chaos broke out in the room, but I didn’t bother engaging at this stage of the game. I was too busy studying the girl who had started it all.
Princess Rowan.
She was an unknown variable, one I wasn’t quite sure how to account for. Already, I had the feeling this wouldn’t end well for any of us.