Page 52 of Untouched Queen by Royal Command

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CASIMIROFBYZENMAACH’S Winter fortress perched atop a mountain pass. Sera had reached out to Claudia and asked if she knew of a place where she could exercise and clear her head and it was a measure of their friendship that the other woman had instantly invited her to stay.

Accepting that invitation without disclosing the secret of her parentage made Sera the worst friend in the world, but up here in the mountain pass, with Tomas’s falcons soaring overhead and dawn breaking softly over the horizon, she felt a peace steal over her that she hadn’t felt in days.

She finished her forms and bowed to the valley below and the rising sun and turned to find her hostess sitting silently on a rock behind her, watching. So she bowed to her too and watched the other woman smile.

‘That was beautiful,’ said Claudia. ‘But then, you always have been very beautiful.’

‘My lot to bear.’ Always making waves, being coveted or even despised for no other reason than she’d drawn someone’s eye. Glazed stares, suspicious glares and people wanting to possess her.

Augustus had wanted to possess her from the beginning.

It was a miracle, really, that he’d withstood that urge for as long as he had.

‘Whose heart have you broken this time?’ Claudia asked.

‘One does not kiss and tell,’ she replied quietly and picked up the towel she’d brought with her and put it to her face.

King Casimir and his family were at their Summer palace in the city, not here. She’d wanted to meet him. She hadn’t wanted to meet him. Those two thoughts did not coexist peacefully.

She didn’t know what she wanted any more.

Lowering the towel, she closed her eyes and drew fresh breath, feeling at home here, in a way that had everything to do with cool mountain air and not having to view the sky from beneath a web of steel and glass.

No endless dinners, galas and fund-raisers to oversee.

No severely tailored work clothes.

No king to serve.

No duty.

‘I don’t know what to do any more,’ she confessed. ‘I have no plans, no direction, no thoughts for the future. I’m finally free and all I’m doing is looking over my shoulder at what I left behind.’

Claudia nodded. ‘I know that feeling. Here.’ She opened a small basket at her feet. ‘I brought breakfast. The food here is amazing.’

Sera spread her towel on the ground and sat cross-legged, and for a time they feasted on meat pastries and sweet milky tea. But Sera wasn’t quite ready to let go of her friend’s earlier comment. ‘Do you ever think you should have stayed in the mountains?’

‘I’m of more use to the people of the High Reaches if I’m advocating for them here, so no. I shouldn’t have stayed in the mountains.’

‘But do you like it here?’ Sera watched as the other woman’s gaze tracked a falcon in full flight. ‘Do they treat you well?’

‘They treat me like a princess, because that’s what I am. Some treat me like a newfound friend and confidante and I like that. Some can barely look at me but dream of the day I was taken from them, nonetheless. It’s not always easy but I’m making my home here.’ Claudia reached for a paper napkin. ‘I wanted you to meet my niece. Face of an angel and an absolute terror. Wants to be a Samurai this week. I thought you two could bond.’

‘I’d like to meet her.’ A niece. She blinked back sudden tears.

‘Hey.’ A warm palm snaked out to cover her forearm. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing, I—nothing. I’d like to meet her some day.’

‘Hardly a thought to induce tears—although some of the guards here may beg to differ.’

Sera smiled, as she was meant to smile. ‘Thank you for inviting me here.’

‘Stay as long as you dare.’

‘Another day, perhaps. After that I don’t know. I need to keep moving.’ Searching, so that she didn’t keep remembering nights full of politicking and quiet confidences and one night in particular when she and Augustus had forgotten their roles and let honesty rule them.

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