CHAPTER ONE
T HERE WAS NOTHING unusual about the cool summer day with the bluest of skies and a fickle wind that ruffled feathers and whipped at his canvas coat. It was just another day in the life of Tomas Sokolov as he stood on the highest battlement of an ancient mountain fortress, with a hawk on his arm. He was the King’s Falconer, and he’d been born to this blessed life and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Not for him the life of a nobleman with all its responsibilities and fancy trappings. He didn’t particularly like people—apart from one or two who had slipped beneath his skin as a child, and he wasn’t drawn to power. Or maybe it was more that when he stepped up to train his eagles and falcons and anything else that came his way, his will was absolute and he liked that a little bit too much. Tomas the tyrant, the dictator, the autocrat. Maybe he was drawn to power after all.
Byzenmaach, his homeland, had already seen far too much of that.
But old King Leonidas had passed, and the rule of King Casimir was upon them, and Tomas had no beef with Cas. Better a pragmatic statesman at the helm than a petty madman. Alliances were being built. Prosperity beckoned like a promise. All good, very good, and none of it his responsibility. He had no cause for complaint.
So why, on this fine and perfectly normal afternoon, was he up here looking to the north where the narrow mountain pass brought visitors down onto the plain? Why did restless anticipation ride him so hard?
The hawk knew what was coming her way—the freedom of flight and the hunting of prey. He untethered her, enjoying the look of fierce anticipation in her eyes as she sat perched on his gauntlet.
‘Are you ready?’ he murmured. ‘Maybe you can tell me what’s out there.’
Wolves or wolverine, brown bear.
Something.
‘What are you doing?’
He didn’t need to look over the parapet to know who he would find down there, but he did it anyway. ‘You’re back.’
At seven years old, young Sophia, newfound daughter of King Casimir, was almost a replica of her late aunt Claudia. She’d been conceived during a brief fling and had spent the first-six years of her life growing up as a normal kid with no knowledge of her father at all. The way Cas told it, he’d certainly had no knowledge of his daughter. Only after Cas had come for her and become engaged to her mother had young Sophia begun to live a life of royalty. Tomas often wondered whether she even liked her new life or whether she missed her old one. Did she enjoy her gilded cage?
She had Claudia’s eyes—those remarkable golden eyes ringed with greeny-grey—along with a child’s endless curiosity and tendency to roam the winter fortress with a pair of wolfhounds at her side. She was a sweet child and a bright one, and it wasn’t her fault that Tomas could barely look at her without being swamped by unwanted memories of her aunt.
No matter how hard he tried to avoid her, ignore her, and—to his shame—be downright curt with her, she would seek him out. He’d vowed to be kinder and there was no time like the present. Steeling himself, he attempted to assemble his face into something resembling a smile. ‘I’m about to fly a hawk. Where are your guards?’
Fortunately, the King was as rabidly protective of his daughter as Tomas could ever hope for. Round-the-clock security had become the norm for those living in and around the winter fortress. Tomas swiftly picked out two heavily armed guards with eyes on the child—one over by the stable door, the other stalking the battlements of the outer wall. There would be a third guard nearby, even if Tomas had yet to sight him.
A heavily armed man stepped out of the shadow of the wall and sketched a brief salute. He was new, and Tomas didn’t trust new faces. He was young too. Fresh-faced warriors packed with youthful overconfidence were the worst. ‘Master Falconer, may we join you?’ he asked.
‘If you must.’ He sighed as Sophia and her guard made a race towards the outer stairs. It wasn’t Sophia’s fault Claudia had been snatched away as a child and held for ransom. Claudia’s northern captors had wanted a seat at the table when discussing water rights. The King had refused to negotiate and Claudia had died.
Twenty years later, Cas was inviting the northerners to finally join the discussion on water rights and, as far as Tomas could tell, Claudia’s death had been for nothing.
Sophia had arrived at his side and was trying to hoist herself up on the grey stone wall for a better view, and, ‘No,’ he growled. Hell, no, she would not sit up there and wriggle and move and give him a heart attack. He moved a few metres to the left, the hawk still perched on his arm as he pointed with his other arm towards a fat stone wedged against the wall. ‘You stand on that, and not one part of you is to overreach the wall. You don’t lean against it, you don’t rest your elbows on the ledge, you don’t stick your head over to see how high up you are. Are we clear?’
‘Yes, Master Falconer!’ Sophia beamed at him.
Why? Why did she have to beam with delight when he was being so stern?
She looked longingly at the hawk but was smart enough not to try and touch her. ‘What’s her name?’
He’d never known a child so fixated on names. Okay, that wasn’t true. He’d known one other who’d been much the same. ‘Carys. She’s five years old.’
‘Will she come back to us if you let her fly free?’
‘She’s bonded to me so she should return, but there’s also a chance she won’t.’
‘What happens then?’
‘We say goodbye and let her go.’ He crouched and rummaged through the pack at his feet for a pair of binoculars. ‘Do you know how to use these?’
‘Yes!’
He handed them to her just as a high-pitched whistle sounded on the outer battlements. Two more short sharp whistles had guards converging and pointing to the north. Sophia, too, had the binoculars to her eyes and trained towards the north. It probably wouldn’t be right to snatch those binoculars back, but only iron-clad control stopped him from doing so regardless.
‘There’s a lady on a horse,’ said Sophia. ‘Dressed in, like, furs. And a man on another horse and two wolfhounds.’
‘Which way are they riding?’
‘This way.’
He had the oddest feeling. A thundering in his heart that he couldn’t explain.
‘Give the master falconer his binoculars back, youngling,’ said the guard. ‘And crouch down.’
Tomas had never been more grateful. ‘There’s a purple silk ribbon in my pack. Find it for me.’ Keeping Sophia occupied was only part of that directive. Compulsion rode him now, as he focused on the riders. It was as she said. Two riders, two wolfhounds, two horses. And there was something about the dark-haired woman that turned his blood to ice.
No.
But what if?
She’s dead , he argued to himself.
They never got her body back.
She’s been confirmed dead for twenty years .
He’d been there the day she’d been taken by a guard who was supposed to protect her. He’d seen them in the garden. He’d thought nothing of it, and for years he’d blamed himself for not noticing that something was wrong. If only he’d been more observant. If only he’d waved to Claudia and called her over rather than hurrying after his father because he wasn’t supposed to be friends with her when other people were looking... If only he’d done something different .
No one had ever seen her again.
He crouched down beside Sophia as she pulled the strip of royal purple silk from the bag. ‘You know what this is?’
She shook her head, no.
‘It’s an old method of communication that falconers sometimes use when they fly their birds.’ He wasn’t even sure why he’d brought the silk with him in the first place, other than he’d been battling a memory of him and Claudia lying in front of his father’s fire with a fragile book spread out in front of him that listed all the colours a royal raptor could fly and what they meant. He’d been the one reading, as usual. Claudia had been listening like a little sponge. ‘When I attach it to Carys’s right leg, like this, it means royalty is in residence and it offers incoming visitors royal protection.’
‘Er, Master Falconer, sir, are you at liberty to be offering that?’
‘Too late.’ He lifted his arm and Carys shot into the sky. ‘There are only half a dozen people alive who even know what that ribbon means.’ So why was he flying that ribbon at all? Instinct?
Instinct and false, fierce hope, and a thundering heart.
Word went around the fortress that they had incoming visitors and curiosity grew. Visitors heading in from the high mountain pass, on horseback, was unusual. Carys had spotted the riders and was heading towards them. Nothing strange about that. He’d trained her to mark the presence of large animals.
And then the woman dismounted, pulled a gauntlet from her saddlebag and called that bird straight out of the sky.
His bird.
Using his signals.
It couldn’t be.
But what if it was?
He could feel the blood draining from his face, leaving him clammy and shaken. Had there not been an audience, he would have sunk to his heels and leaned against the wall and taken strength from the only home he’d ever known. As it was, he had to put his hand to the wall to steady himself.
‘Sophia, go get Housemaster Silas and tell him to get up here.’ Silas and his wife Lor had managed the running of the fortress for decades. Out of anyone, he might, might , hear Tomas out.
Ten long minutes later he met the gaze of an out of breath Silas, and avoided looking at Sophia’s mother—the soon-to-be Queen Consort Ana—and tried to project calm confidence as he explained the calling of his bird from the sky situation.
‘So she’s a falconer too,’ said Ana.
‘He thinks it’s Claudia,’ said Silas, his weary old eyes fixed on Tomas with unwavering intensity.
‘I didn’t say that,’ Tomas protested.
‘But you think it,’ Silas replied.
‘Just to be clear, you’re talking Claudia, as in Casimir’s dead sister?’ Ana looked from one man to the other. ‘You’re serious.’
‘We never got her body back,’ Tomas said stubbornly.
‘We got some of it back,’ countered Silas.
‘Okay,’ said Ana hurriedly. ‘Small girl on the battlements. Listening.’
Tomas felt himself flush. Silas shut his eyes and shook his head.
‘Is there any way we can get a look at the woman’s face?’ Ana said next.
‘She’s wearing traditional headdress. Only part of her face is showing. It could be anyone.’
‘But you think it’s her.’
‘I don’t know .’ Tomas swore and turned away before his control deserted him. Swearing in front of women and children, what next? ‘ She knew about the coloured cloth instead of jesses and what they meant. It’s in one of the royal falconry journals and I read that section aloud to her when she was helping me nurse a hawk with a broken wing. She was good with the birds. They trusted her. She knew all our call signals.’
‘Why would she stay away all these years, only to return now?’ asked Silas.
‘Who knows?’ Tomas snapped but he could take a wild guess. ‘Because her father who left her to rot is dead, her brother is whole and happy, Byzenmaach is moving forward and she wants to come home? How should I know?’
‘But you think it’s her,’ said Ana. ‘Again, just to be clear.’
He stared at her and then Silas and finally young Sophia, with those eyes so wide and round. He didn’t know. He couldn’t be sure. But here he was staking his reputation and likely his livelihood on the return of a woman from the dead.
‘Yes.’
‘Then we have to tell Cas.’
The winter fortress stood exactly as she remembered it, starkly grey against a brilliant blue sky. Built into the side of a cliff face, there would be no attacking it from the south, just endless views over a secluded valley several thousand feet below. To the far north, and behind her now, rose a vast mountain range, inaccessible to all but the hardiest of mountain clans. Between mountain and fortress lay flat unwooded plains—a battleground of old with no place to hide. They would be seen. They had been seen—the hawk currently perched on her arm confirmed it.
A hawk carrying a strip of purple cloth.
Welcome , that strip of cloth said, if she remembered correctly. We see you and you may approach. We offer our protection .
She’d given no notice regarding her arrival. Who would believe her identity without seeing her in the flesh? And even then, she had her doubts as to whether anyone would know her on sight. So many years had passed. Her features had changed so much.
All she could hope for was an audience with someone who’d once known her.
Her brother, ideally, if he was in residence.
Silas and Lor, the older couple who had once managed the fortress, if they still served.
Tomas.
The bird on her arm spoke of his presence.
Or maybe she was just being hopeful.
‘First smile I’ve seen from you in a week,’ murmured her companion. Having Ildris by her side on this journey was a comfort, because he was a big brother to her in all ways that mattered, and twelve years older than she was. It gave him an aura of strength and maturity, those two words describing him perfectly.
‘Coming home’s a scary business,’ she replied, pulling two ribbons from her saddlebag. White for peace. Purple for royalty. What a beautiful hawk to sit so patiently on her gauntlet and let her attach coloured ribbons to the left anklet. The ribbons hinted at who she was and what her intentions were. The King’s Falconer would surely know what they meant. It was his job.
‘It could have been less fraught for all concerned had you allowed me to inform them of your return,’ Ildris offered dryly.
‘Who would believe you?’
‘I think you just like creating drama.’
He wasn’t exactly wrong .
‘Then let’s just say I’ve waited so long for this day, and it serves many purposes to claim the element of surprise. In that first moment of recognition, we’ll be able to tell allies from enemies. And there will be enemies. Hopefully, my brother won’t be one of them.’ Her blood brother, Casimir, had grown to manhood beneath their father’s cruel yoke. Who knew what kind of man he’d become?
Ildris sat comfortably in the saddle as she finished tying the ribbons and launched the hawk into the sky. ‘What do you remember of him?’
‘I have so many memories based on fear of my father and my mother’s neglect, but Cas...he tried so hard to protect me. He took the lash for me, over and over again.’ She shook her head to clear her mind of those bitter memories. ‘One of my greatest regrets is not being able to tell him I was alive and happy. I don’t know how that’s going to go.’
‘Tell him that no matter our initial intent, once your father refused to negotiate your return, you were safe with us. Tell him we nurtured you and love you. We are not forcing your return—you could have stayed with us for ever. This time, we could and would have negotiated without involving you.’
‘I know.’ And she loved him and the council of the northern clans all the more for making that clear. ‘But I want to help him and his new wife and their little girl who looks just like me when I was her age. I want Byzenmaach to move forward. I truly want to serve my country and I’m uniquely positioned to do so. You always thought I’d return one day. You took me in and built me for exactly this moment.’
‘Do you really think that?’ he grumbled. ‘My parents took you in because they were never on board with taking a child hostage. We gave you political survival skills so that no one would take advantage of you. Does it also not stand to reason that I’m wary of returning you to those who once considered you expendable?’
‘I don’t think my brother ever thought me expendable.’
‘I hope you’re right. Otherwise, we’re in a bit of trouble. Yet another reason for telling people about you from a safe distance. The trust involved in expecting them to greet you with joy rather than suspicion. I shudder.’
‘You’re loving this.’ She remounted and they continued on their way. ‘You live for excitement.’
‘ Live being the operative word.’
‘It’s going to be fine. Cas has already reached out to the northern clans in peace. What better measure of good faith negotiation than the return of one of Byzenmaach’s beloved jewels? And by that I mean me.’
For good or for ill, she was coming home and fully prepared to wield any scrap of power her identity afforded her.
‘I’m ready, Ildris. For whatever comes next.’ She watched the hawk soar, ribbons trailing, and hoped that if the owner of the hawk was Tomas, that he had not forgotten her. That he, of all people, would keep an open heart and mind. She had such sweet memories of him.
His boyish face in the firelight. His youthful voice as he’d stumbled over unfamiliar words as he read from books way too advanced for him. His hidey-holes and his smiles when he was absolutely certain no one else was looking.
It would take more than a lifetime before she ever forgot the fine mind and tender heart of her very first friend.
It took the riders what seemed like half a lifetime but in reality was measured by hours before they reached the outer walls of the fortress. There they had dismounted to shed layers of clothing and weapons. Rifles and scimitars, daggers and even the woman’s hairpins. A dark plait had fallen to her waist in the absence of those lethal fasteners. She’d turned slowly in a circle, her arms out wide and her movements graceful. She and her companion were stating with vivid clarity that they were entering unarmed.
The stately, ceremonial nature of their approach had set people on edge. Cas had arrived by helicopter. Sophia had been safely stashed away inside the fortress and security was on full alert. The mysterious travellers were making their final approach, on foot, towards the stable doors.
‘Let them come,’ Casimir had commanded. ‘No one is to ride out to meet them.’
The tension behind Tomas’s eyes was excruciating. What were they even doing , adhering so closely to the old ways when they had all sorts of technology that could help to identify them without actually letting them in? It was as if time had slowed and hope had risen and reason had unequivocally left the building.
The stables were as they’d ever been. Twenty stalls capable of holding three or four horses apiece ran either side of a large central square. The square was covered in sawdust and the stable hands kept it immaculate. Huge wooden doors stood sentry on opposite sides of the square. Doors strong enough to hold invaders out rather than horses in.
Tomas stood in the centre of the sawdust square alongside Ana, with Cas on her other side. The stable master, stable hands and a company of guards took up other positions as Cas finally ordered the opening of the outer doors to let the visitors in.
The male rider entered first, leading his horse. He picked Casimir out of the crowd and steadily approached.
‘Your Majesty,’ he said with the click of his heels and a swift bow. ‘It’s been a long time.’
‘Welcome, Lord Ildris of the North.’ Cas clearly knew the man by sight, even if Tomas didn’t. ‘Who’s your companion?’
The northerner waited a beat, as if taking a deep breath. ‘She’s the negotiator you requested and speaks for the people of the north and for herself. A future for a future, Your Majesty. Delivered to you in good faith.’
The woman entered the stables, swift and sure, and the horses and dogs followed, and Tomas knew who she was even before she lifted her eyes and made it a foregone conclusion. Her eyes were the same shape and colour as Casimir’s. Same as Sophia’s. The eyes of the royal family of Byzenmaach.
‘Hello, Cas,’ she offered quietly and then her gaze flickered sideways, passing over Ana to rest squarely on him. ‘And Tomas. You’re the falconer here now?’
He had no words. He could barely remember to breathe, so it was fortunate that Ana answered for him. ‘Yes, he is.’
‘I thought so.’ She smiled as if they’d just shared a joke, but he could find no smile for her in return. He was too busy fighting a horde of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. Astonishment. Disbelief. Anger. Relief. Where had she been these past twenty years or more?
And then Ana said something to Cas in Russian and then Cas was striding across the floor and pulling his sister into an embrace that left no one in any doubt of the depth of his supposed loss, or his joy at finding her alive.
‘You were right, Tomas,’ Ana murmured, and maybe he should have stuck around but he’d had enough of this day and all the drama, and if he was going to break down, he wanted to do it in private.
He turned on his heel and left without a word. Back to the house he’d been born and raised in, shedding his clothes as he headed for the shower and the tap that brought the icy underground river water into the homes of those living here, to be heated by a furnace and pushed through pipes so it could beat down on a man’s head, hot and strong or icy cold and anything in between. A pleasure or a punishment, and today he chose the latter, standing beneath the stinging, icy spray far longer than was wise in an effort to wash away his confusion.
Claudia of Byzenmaach was dead . He’d mourned her. They all had. Her absence had coloured their lives.
Did the impossibly beautiful woman who stood there, so regal and composed, have any idea of the sorrow she’d left behind? Where had she been all those years? What atrocities had she endured? And to single him out. To remember his name and greet him like an old friend. She’d stood, magnificent and defiant, so impossibly alive and begging him with her eyes to acknowledge her existence...
Emotion after emotion broke over him. Confusion. Resentment. Rage. Where was it all coming from?
He didn’t want to be drowning in emotions. Get a grip.
He was a man of firm control, not seething, unruly compulsions. A simple man, a falconer. Nothing more and nothing less. There would be no befriending the returned princess of Byzenmaach. No trying to protect her, no welcoming her home. Definitely no regarding her as an impossibly desirable woman capable of setting his body alight at a glance. He wanted nothing to do with her. Nothing!
He was not getting caught up in Princess Claudia of Byzenmaach’s blast radius ever again.