A Jewel for Royals. Морган Райс

to leave? You don’t want to, do you?”

      She did the unthinkable then, and delved into her friend’s mind without asking. She could feel the doubts there, but also the hope that this would be all right. Cora wanted to be able to stay. She just didn’t want to feel like a caged animal. She didn’t want to be trapped again. Emeline could understand that, but even so, she relaxed. Cora was going to stay.

      “I don’t,” Cora said, “but… I need to know that this isn’t all some trick, or some prison. I need to know that I’m not indentured again in all but name.”

      “You aren’t,” Vincente said. “We hope that you will stay, but if you choose to leave, we only ask that you keep our secrets. Those secrets protect Stonehome, more than the mist, more than our warriors. Now, I shall leave you to settle in. When you are ready, come to the roundhouse at the heart of the village. Flora runs the eating hall there, and there will be food for both of you.”

      He left, which meant that Emeline and Cora were able to look around their new home.

      “It’s small,” Emeline said. “I know you used to live in a palace.”

      “I used to live in whatever corner of a palace I could find to sleep in,” Cora pointed out. “Compared to a store cupboard or an empty niche, this is huge. It will need work though.”

      “We can work,” Emeline said, already looking around to see the possibilities. “We crossed half of the kingdom. We can make a cottage better to live in.”

      “Do you think Kate or Sophia will ever come here?” Cora asked.

      Emeline had been asking herself almost the same question. “I think Sophia is going to be busy in Ishjemme,” she said. “With luck, she actually found her family.”

      “And you found yours, kind of,” Cora said.

      That was true. The people out there might not have truly been her kin, but they felt like it. They had experienced the same hatred out in the world, the same need to hide. And now, they were there for one another. It was as close to a definition of family as Emeline had found.

      It made Cora family too. Emeline didn’t want her to forget that.

      Emeline hugged her. “This can be a family for both of us, I think. It’s a place we can both be free. It’s a place where we can both be safe.”

      “I like the idea of being safe,” Cora said.

      “I like the idea of not having to walk across the kingdom hunting for this place anymore,” Emeline replied. She’d had enough of being on the road by now. She looked up. “We have a roof.”

      After so long on the road, even that seemed like a luxury.

      “We have a roof,” Cora agreed. “And a family.”

      It felt strange to be able to say it after so long. It was enough. More than enough.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Dowager Queen Mary of the House of Flamberg sat in her receiving rooms and struggled to contain the fury that threatened to consume her. Fury at the embarrassment of the last day or so, fury at the way her body was betraying her, leaving her to cough blood into a lace handkerchief even now. Above all, fury at sons who would not do as they were told.

      “Prince Rupert, your majesty,” a servant announced, as her eldest son flounced into the receiving chamber, looking for all the world as though he expected praise for all that he had done.

      “Congratulating me on my victory, Mother?” Rupert said.

      The Dowager adopted her iciest tone. It was the only thing keeping her from shouting right then. “It is customary to bow.”

      That, at least, was enough to stop Rupert in his tracks, staring at her with a mixture of shock and anger before he essayed a brief bow. Good, let him remember that she still ruled here. He seemed to have forgotten it thoroughly enough in the past days.

      “So, you want me to congratulate you, do you?” the Dowager asked.

      “I won!” Rupert insisted. “I pushed back the invasion. I saved the kingdom.”

      He made it sound as if he were a knight riding back from some great quest in the old days. Well, days like that were long past.

      “By following your own reckless plan rather than the one that was agreed,” the Dowager said.

      “It worked!”

      The Dowager made an effort to contain her temper, at least for now. It was growing harder by the second, though.

      “And you believe that the strategy I chose would not have worked?” she demanded. “You think that they would not have broken against our defenses? You think I should be proud of the slaughter you inflicted?”

      “A slaughter of enemies, and of those who would not fight them,” Rupert countered. “Do you think I haven’t heard the stories of the things you’ve done, Mother? Of the killings of the nobles who supported the Danses? Of your agreement to let the Masked Goddess’s church kill any they deemed evil?”

      She would not let her son compare those things. She would not go over the hard necessities of the past with a boy who had been no more than a babe in arms for even the most recent of them.

      “Those were different,” she said. “We had no better options.”

      “We had no better options here,” Rupert snapped.

      “We had an option that didn’t involve the slaughter of our people,” the Dowager replied, with just as much heat in her tone. “That didn’t involve the destruction of some of the kingdom’s most valuable farmland. You pushed the New Army back, but our plan could have crushed it.”

      “Sebastian’s plan was a foolish one, as you would have seen if you weren’t so blind to his faults.”

      Which brought the Dowager to the second reason for her anger. The greater one, and the one that she’d been holding back only because she didn’t trust herself not to explode with it.

      “Where is your brother, Rupert?” she asked.

      He tried for innocence. He should have realized by now that it didn’t work with her.

      “How would I know, Mother?”

      “Rupert, Sebastian was last seen at the docks, trying to grab a ship to Ishjemme. You arrived personally to grab him. Do you think I don’t have spies?”

      She watched him trying to work out what to say next. He’d done this ever since he was a boy, trying to find the form of words that would let him cheat the world into the shape he wanted.

      “Sebastian is in a safe place,” Rupert said.

      “Meaning that you have imprisoned him, your own brother. You have no right to do that, Rupert.” A coughing fit took some of the punch from her words. She ignored the fresh blood.

      “I’d have thought you’d be happy, Mother,” he said. “He was, after all, trying to flee the kingdom after running out of the marriage you arranged.”

      That was true, but it didn’t change anything. “If I wanted Sebastian stopped, I would have ordered it,” she said. “You will release him at once.”

      “As you say, Mother,” Rupert said, and again the Dowager had the feeling that he was anything but sincere.

      “Rupert, let me be clear about this. Your actions today have placed all of us in great danger. Ordering the army around as you will? Imprisoning the heir to the throne without authority? What do you think that will look like to the Assembly of Nobles?”

      “Damn them!” Rupert said, the words bursting out. “I have enough of them for this.”

      “You can’t afford to damn them,” the Dowager said. “The civil wars taught us that. We must work with them. And the fact that you talk as if you own a faction of them worries me, Rupert. You need to learn your place.”

      She could