“You know I don’t notice shit like that about her.” I lied. I noticed every fucking thing about her.
Dora answered with a little wry smile.
“Typical man, more interested in politics and intrigue than beauty. But you can’t fool me, my lad. I know there’s more than just iron and steel in that heart of yours, and one day you’ll meet a girl that turns your head, just as your sister will turn a fair few heads of her own, I can tell you.”
“I don’t need my head turned by a—” I started, when the sun’s journey brought it into alignment with the distressed glass of the window opposite my mother’s old room, casting a dazzling spray of light along the wall that quickly diminished and settled to a pleasant glow.
Fuck.
The hour had gotten away from me. My sister could be miles away by now on one of her god-damned hunting trips. Anika didn’t care that such things were forbidden. She rarely got caught slipping past her guards, and had no fear of highwaymen or wild animals. She didn’t give a shit about any of it.
She was like a hawk that had to fly. It had become such a common occurrence for her to slip out of the castle that I had taken to checking on her four or five times a day, following from a safe distance when I found her missing so she wouldn’t figure out I was there and redouble her efforts at secrecy.
If I didn’t keep an eye on her, nobody would.
I didn’t have a single goddamned second to lose. I grabbed my sword belt from the hook by the door and booked it down the hallway, pulling the belt tight and adjusting my weapons as I went.
“Prince Maksim!” Dora called out after me.
I spun around, still walking backward, and lifted my eyebrows impatiently. “Yeah?”
Dora beamed, all mischief. Again, I couldn’t tell if she was lucid or crazy as a shithouse rat. “Come back. I’ve got a little something for you,” she said, eyes sparkling in the early light.
Unless it was a goddamned sign from above that fucking my stepsister wasn’t going to get me hanged, it could wait.
“I’ll come back, next time I do you can give it to me.” I spun on my heel, and took off toward the courtyard, hustling to get to Anika at the old stables as fast as I could.
I dismounted deep in the forest, about a hundred yards from the abandoned stables where I knew Anika always tacked up when she wanted to hunt on her own. They had once been the stables to a royal palace that stood here in the forest, but that was many centuries ago. Nothing now remained of that old palace except this ruined building, a place with a reputation for being haunted that kept away those who might otherwise try to steal the stones for newer buildings.
Tying my horse to a nearby beech tree, I spotted a pair of small, curious eyes in the thicket between me and the old stables. I knew all of Anika’s secrets, even this one. Her pet fox, Falroy, followed her everywhere. He’d gotten plenty used to seeing me, so that he didn’t even run when he saw me. But he was still wild and I knew that bribes helped me keep cover. From my pocket, I took a piece of dried meat and tossed it to him. He chased it down with a flick of his tail and a rustle of leaves.
Keeping my footsteps soft and steady on the low carpet of ferns, I went around the back of the stables, where a crumbled wall let me get inside without Anika knowing.
I could just barely hear her whispering to her mare, another gift from me, and one I partly regretted since the horse was swift and light-footed, making her fucking difficult to track.
She’d come with the name Rosa, but Anika always called her Rosie. She was a beautiful roan with a cream and gray coat, with dappled spots up her flanks, which made her look much older than she actually was. She had been a prizewinning racer in her day, always fooling everybody because she looked so ordinary. Watching Anika’s every move let me get to know her in a way that nobody else did—I could tell she was happiest on her own, unseen, able to move from place to place unnoticed. Rosie was just the horse for it. A teenage racehorse in a work horse’s skin.
Of course, the saddle and tack provided for a princess at the castle stables were no good for hunting. Princesses were supposed to go for dainty side-saddle rides on the well-kept pathways through our carefully manicured grounds, not galloping through the forest looking for game animals to bring down and drag home. Hence the need for a second set of stables where she could discard the trappings of her status and saddle up for the hunt.