LITMIR.BIZ

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hoped that Will was safe. When she’d left, she hadn’t been able to say goodbye, because Lord Cranston would never have let her go if she had. She would have given anything to be able to say it properly, or better yet, to bring Will with her. He would probably have laughed at the men who bowed to her, knowing how much that unwarranted politeness would annoy her.

      Maybe it was something Sophia had done. After all, she’d played the part of a noble girl before. Maybe she would explain it all once she woke up. If she woke up. No, Kate couldn’t think like that. She had to hope, even if it had been more than two days now since she’d closed the wound in Sophia’s side.

      Kate went through to the cabin. Sophia’s forest cat raised its head as Kate entered, looking up protectively from where it lay across Sophia’s feet like some furry blanket. To Kate’s surprise, the cat had barely moved from Sophia’s side in all the time the ship had been traveling. It let Kate ruffle its ears as she moved to her sister’s bedside.

      “We’re both just hoping that she’ll wake up, aren’t we?” she said.

      She sat beside her sister, watching her sleep. Sophia looked so peaceful now, no longer marred by the stiletto wound in her side, no longer gray with the pallor of death. She could have been asleep, except that she’d been asleep like this for so long that Kate was starting to worry she might die of thirst or hunger before she woke.

      Then Kate saw the faint flicker of Sophia’s eyelids, the barest movement of her hands against the bedclothes. She stared at her sister, daring to hope.

      Sophia’s eyes opened, staring straight at her, and Kate couldn’t help herself. She threw herself forward, hugging her sister, holding her close.

      “You’re alive. Sophia, you’re alive.”

      “I’m alive,” Sophia reassured her, holding on as Kate helped her to sit up. Even the forest cat seemed happy about it, moving forward to lick both of their faces with a tongue like a blacksmith’s rasp.

      “Easy, Sienne,” Sophia said. “I’m all right.”

      “Sienne?” Kate asked. “That’s her name?”

      She saw Sophia nod. “I found her on the road to Monthys. It’s a long story.”

      Kate suspected that there were a lot of stories to be told. She moved back from Sophia, wanting to hear all of it, and Sophia all but fell back to the bed.

      “Sophia!”

      “It’s all right,” Sophia said. “I’m all right. At least, I think I am. I’m just tired. I could do with a drink too.”

      Kate passed her a water skin, watching Sophia drink deeply. She called out for the sailors, and to her surprise, Captain Borkar himself came running.

      “What do you need, my lady?” he asked, then stared at Sophia. To Kate’s shock, he fell to one knee. “Your highness, you’re awake. We were all so worried about you. You must be starving. I’ll fetch food at once!”

      He hurried off, and Kate could feel the joy coming off him like smoke. She had at least one other concern, though.

      “Your highness?” she said, staring over at Sophia. “The sailors have been treating me oddly ever since they realized I was your sister, but this? You’re telling them that you’re royalty?”

      It sounded like a dangerous game to play, pretending to be royal. Was Sophia playing on her engagement to Sebastian, or pretending to be some foreign royal, or was it something else?

      “It’s nothing like that,” Sophia said. “I’m not pretending anything.” She took hold of Kate’s arm. “Kate, I found out who our parents are!”

      That was one thing that Sophia wouldn’t joke about. Kate stared at her, barely able to believe the implications of it. She sat down on the edge of the bed, wanting to understand it all.

      “Tell me,” she said, unable to contain her shock. “You really think… you think that our parents were some kind of royalty?”

      Sophia started to sit up. When she struggled with it, Kate helped her.

      “Our parents were named Alfred and Christina Danse,” Sophia said. “They lived, we lived, in an estate in Monthys. Our family used to be the kings and queens before the Dowager’s family pushed them aside. The person who explained this said that they had a kind of… connection to the land. They didn’t just rule it; they were part of it.”

      Kate froze as she heard that. She’d felt that connection. She’d felt the country spread out before her. She’d reached for the power in it. It had been how she’d been able to heal Sophia.

      “And this is real?” she said. “This isn’t some kind of story? I’m not going mad?”

      “I wouldn’t make this up,” Sophia reassured her. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Kate.”

      “You said that our parents were these people,” Kate said. “Are they… did they die?”

      She did her best to hide the pain that went through her with that thought. She could remember the fire. She could remember running. She couldn’t remember what had happened to her parents.

      “I don’t know,” Sophia said. “No one seems to know what happened to them after that. All of this… the plan was to head to our uncle, Lars Skyddar, and hope that he knows something.”

      “Lars Skyddar?” Kate had heard that name. Lord Cranston had talked about the lands of Ishjemme, and how they’d managed to keep out invaders using a combination of cunning tactics and the natural defenses of their icy fjords. “He’s our uncle?”

      It was too much to take in. Just like that, Kate had gone from having no family beyond her sister to having a family who had been kings and queens, who did rule in at least one far-off land. It was too much, too quickly.

      On instinct, Kate found herself reaching for the locket that she wore around her neck. She took it out, looking down at the image of the woman within. She had a name for that woman now: Christina Danse. Her mother. That made her Kate Danse.

      Kate smiled. She liked the sound of that. She liked the idea of having a family name that she knew, rather than just being Unclaimed, marked by the tattoo on her calf.

      “What’s that?” Sophia asked, and Kate realized that she wasn’t looking at the locket, but at the ring she’d placed on the same chain for safekeeping. There was no doubt that Sophia recognized it. Of course she would, when it had been her engagement ring. “Where did you get that?”

      There was no point in trying to hide it now.

      “Sebastian gave it to me to give to you,” she said. “But Sophia, you need to stay away from him.”

      “I love him,” Sophia said, “and if he loves me – ”

      “He stabbed you,” Kate insisted, feeling an echo of the anger that had been there when she’d first seen Sophia lying there near death. “He tried to murder you!”

      Even given that, Sophia still shook her head. “That wasn’t him.”

      “Because that’s not how he really is?” Kate guessed. It sounded like the kind of excuse some farmer’s wife might make when her husband got drunk and beat her. “Because he loves you really?”

      “No,” Sophia said. “I mean that it wasn’t him. A noblewoman called Milady d’Angelica stabbed me, not Sebastian.”

      Kate hadn’t met this noblewoman, but she hadn’t been the one kneeling over Sophia’s body.

      “He was here,” Kate insisted. “He had the knife in his hand. He was covered in your blood!”

      “Maybe he was trying to save me,” Sophia insisted.

      “And maybe you’re just reaching for anything you can find to defend him,” Kate shot back. “Maybe you even really believe that this woman was here, rather than Sebastian, but I know what I saw.”

      “It

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