Royal Outlaw: (Royal Outlaw, Book 1) (44 page)

It was a long time before she was done, but finally she sat up and wiped away her tears. The sun was setting, and the few clouds in the sky were golden. Mariel looked around the courtyard and noticed that Narel had disappeared. For once, Mariel was sorry the goddess had left because she had not been given the opportunity to thank Narel for saving her life, but she could thank Cara and Iyela and she did.

The last ray of sunshine streaked across the courtyard and through the broken gate to an ancient oak tree at the edge of the fallow fields. Mariel stood and followed the light, her two friends following behind her.

She smiled when she saw the name carved into the trunk of the tree.

“Hello, Mother,” she whispered as she knelt on her mother’s grave with no more tears to shed. The sunlight disappeared and night threatened, but this time, Mariel was not afraid of the darkness.

* * *

From her perch in the tree, Mariel watched the four hooded riders approach along the overgrown road next to the apple orchard. A soft drizzle fell from the sky, and Mariel was soaked through, but she had been successful in today’s hunting foray and two pheasants were draped on a rope over her shoulder. An old bow she had found in the armory was settled in her hand with an arrow ready at the string and another clutched in the hand that held the shaft of the weapon.

She was grateful she had found the coniferous tree when she heard the riders coming. Remel was located in the southern plains of Natric, and this tree had probably been planted long ago by her own distant ancestors. It concealed her completely, although she was already covered in dirt and grass to camouflage her from her animal prey.

With wary eyes, and a drawn bow, she watched the four riders pass near the tree. The hoods blocked the men’s faces, but she knew they were headed toward the main house of Remel. She was not taking any chances, Cara and Iyela were there. No one came to Remel anymore, so these men should not be here, especially in the winter.

“Stop your horses, and drop your hoods,” Mariel commanded, her voice in its lowest possible octave. She hoped she sounded like a man because these riders would probably laugh if they knew she was a girl. “Or we’ll shoot.” Make them think there was more than one of her.

Mariel smiled with success as the riders stopped their horses and lifted their hands to lower their hoods. One of the men said a few words. Magic slammed into Mariel, wiping the smile off her face as she fell from the tree. She had the forethought to hold the bow and arrows away from her and at her front, but the animal carcasses crunched beneath the weight of her body.

“Ow,” she muttered as she rolled to her feet, trying to decide how best to attack these four riders, one of which was obviously a magician. Luckily, she did not need to.

“Mariel!” called a familiar voice.

She looked at the man who had spoken. James’s smile was contagious, and Mariel grinned back. Zeke, Tristan, and Dreyfuss were the other three riders.

She brushed the dirt off her as best she could and pulled the grass out of her already tangled mass of hair. When Mariel had somewhat improved her disheveled appearance, she dipped into a curtsey.

“I do apologize, good sirs, but I will not be a very good host.”

James joined the joke: “Why not, fair lady?”

Mariel lifted the broken bodies of the pheasants. “I haven’t enough to feed four big hungry men! My other dear lady and I shant eat much, for we as noblewomen have such small appetites. Yet, still I shall be in disgrace for the next eight years!”

“You have had enough time for your games,” Dreyfuss drawled, but Mariel detected some happiness in his voice.

“Nice to see you to, Dreyfuss. ‘Course you show up when Cara and I just started to enjoy our vacation.”

“Would you like a ride to the house, or do you plan on walking?” James asked.

Mariel put her hand to her chest. “How dare you even ask that when I am obviously a damsel in distress?”

She took James’s offered hand and jumped onto the horse behind him.

“How did you find us?”

“Dreyfuss used Cara’s cousin, Derek, and created a blood trace on her.”

Cara must have felt the tugging, but she obviously had not said anything to Mariel about it. It was then that her memory caught up with her and she realized what was wrong with the picture the four men presented.

“Where is Captain Clemens? And why is Dreyfuss here?”

The mood soured palpably. Zeke was the one who answered. “Your precious captain betrayed you. The king didn’t want you to come to the capital, Dreyfuss here found out that shocking bit of news when he showed up at the palace. The captain conveniently vanished during the ogre attack, so we couldn’t arrest him, and Dreyfuss showed up too late to warn us. Just like a magician.”

Mariel wilted at the news. She had always looked up to Captain Clemens. He used to visit her when she was a child and he had interfered to make sure Darren did not completely lose his job as a sergeant in the Versati Corps. Why would he betray her to the Assassin? She did not know the answer, but the news made her think of something else.

“Dreyfuss,” she began slowly. “I need to find out why the Assassin is trying to kill me.”

The archmagician turned in his saddle and exploded in fury: “You want to know the why when you cannot even remember the who?”

“The who is a corrupted zreshlan who eats humans and is bent on killing me and the king, and possibly the queen. My ancestors killed someone he cared about named Angela.”

She felt James stiffen. “How do you know that?”

She smiled. “Because I remember. I remember everything. What happened was terrible, but I can live with it now, and I won’t be paralyzed or go mad with fear.”

“Congratulations,” James whispered to her, but he seemed somewhat disappointed and she did not understand why.

They reached the courtyard and Iyela and Cara rushed out to greet them as they dismounted. Cara was thrilled at the arrival of the men, she felt safer. Mariel wanted to scold her friend for not telling her about the tugging sensation that would have signified a blood trace, but she was distracted by Dreyfuss.

“You believe it is necessary to discover this information?” He was referring to the Assassin.

“Yes.”

“Do you know where to seek this information?”

“Yes.”

“How long will it take you?”

She had to visit the zreshlans and that might take a while because they were not known for giving up other people’s secrets, especially those of their own race.

“I don’t know, it depends.”

“You have until the Spring Equinox Festival. I expect you to be at the capital by that time so King Vincent may present you and formally claim you as his heir. Is that sufficient time?”

It was more than she had expected. “Yes.”

“Captain Alecsson, these two guards, Lady Cara, and your unicorn will escort you and . . .”

“No,” Mariel interrupted. “Only James, Zeke, and Iyela. My friends to whom I’m going won’t accept anyone else.”

Cara and Tristan protested, but Mariel ignored their pleas. She would not get them killed by bringing them to the zreshlans. They were human, James and Zeke were not.

Dreyfuss was displeased, but he relented. He was clearly uncomfortable from riding and wet from the December drizzle without the prospect of a comfortable bed and good meal to look forward to. He marched into the manor house without looking back at her.

Cara took the pheasants from Mariel and hurried after him. Zeke muttered under his breath about arrogant magicians as he grabbed the bridle of Dreyfuss’s horse and headed toward the stable. Tristan followed after, but James hesitated with Mariel in the courtyard.

“I went to the zreshlans and talked to Anoria. I know everything they know about the Assassin.”

Mariel met his questioning gaze. “I need to hear it from them myself.”

“I know,” James said, smiling slightly. His smile faded. “Can you handle it?”

Mariel normally would have taken offense, but she understood why he asked. “I can handle it. Information and memories can’t hurt me anymore. I won’t let them. I faced my memories and I won. Fear isn’t something to, well,
fear
.”

A mischievous glint entered James’s eyes. “Can I kiss you in congratulations?”

He leaned down, but she ducked out of his way and danced over to the safety of Iyela who pawed the ground. “Nice try,” she said, laughing. “Can we leave tomorrow, or is your butt too sore from riding the last few days?”

“We can head out to the zreshlans tomorrow.”

“Good. And beware, Iyela is my chaperone. She won’t let you try to kiss me!”  

Here is a preview of the second book in Kayla Hudson’s Royal Outlaw Trilogy

Gilded Cage

Available September 2015

“This is highly improper. We should turn back immediately.”

Mariel did not slow, nor did anyone else in her small entourage. She did not even bother to look at her disagreeable lady’s maid as she said, “No one said you had to come. Diana, Rebecca, and Iva stayed back in the apartments to await the summons of the king like the well-bred noble ladies they are.”

“And we should be waiting with them!”

“I won’t scrape the floor for the king.”

“To think, I actually thought you had changed during your mysterious sojourn over the last months. You have been obedient and practical this last week since your arrival at the palace.”

“That was the point.”

“To trick everyone into thinking you would make a halfway decent princess?”

“No, to trick everyone into thinking I had been tamed, so that I could successfully pull this stunt off tonight.”

“Shall I repeat?
This is highly improper
!”

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Isabel?” The plump girl with hazel eyes teased the whining black-haired beauty.

“Men do not care for women who like
adventure
.”

Mariel stopped and spun. Isabel, in her extravagant ball gown, nearly ran into her. “Either shut up, or go back. I’m not going to tolerate you being obnoxious tonight.”

Isabel immediately shut her mouth, but she was not silent long. “You will be disowned.”

“I wish,” Mariel muttered under her breath, so that only the plump girl on her left and the copper-haired girl on her right would hear. To Isabel she said, “I won’t be.”

“The king specifically gave you instructions to—”

Mariel had no patience, not when her nerves were already frayed and the night was still young. She ground her teeth and restrained from pulling out one of the many knives hidden on her body and placing it against Isabel’s throat. Not daring to look at the lady’s maid she most detested, she glanced to the side at a handsome olive-toned young man around twenty-one wearing a perfectly pressed uniform of green and silver and an insignia on his breast that marked him as captain of the Natrician Princess’s Guards.

“Captain Alecsson?” she began, once again wondering if she would ever get used to calling her long-time friend, the infamous outlaw James Snaketongue, that.

“Yes, Highness?” he said in a smooth voice, but with annoyance she noted that he looked like he was trying not to laugh as he stared straight ahead down the corridor.

“Have one of your men escort Lady Isabel back to my apartments.”

“No!” Isabel wailed.

“Then
shut up
!”

To Mariel’s astonishment, Isabel actually stopped speaking. She had to glance back to make sure the young woman was still with the group. The eighteen-year-old princess reflected that Isabel must be determined to be seen with her tonight, to display her high rank of being selected as lady’s maid to the heir-apparent to the powerful kingdom Natric. The fact that Mariel and Isabel detested each other did not matter, not when power could be gained by the acquaintance.

Mariel wanted to retch at the thought of power-hungry nobles vying for attention, let alone trying to gain
her
attention and respect. She had spent most of her life in exile after her mother, Princess Carolina, sole child of King Vincent and Queen Meredith, managed to find a way out of the gilded cage built around her by seducing the young Sergeant Darren of the Versati Corps. Mariel was the result and her very existence had led to the exile of herself and her mother. That was until an assassin shattered her life by murdering her mother and all of the servants who had lived on the manor of Remel with them. Through the tricks her papa had taught her, Mariel ran south for two weeks, and, as the insane monster caught up with her, she fell into a river. It was a river that bore her to a very different sort of life.

She was raised by the long-lived, striped-skinned, human-like people called zreshlans. They had long hated humans and killed any that crossed their border, but a half-dead six-year-old child had proved too much for the zreshlans to kill. They took her in, educated her, and filled her head with their culture and beliefs—easy to do when she remembered nothing of her life or who she was. The zreshlans called her
Greslina
, which meant “river-emerald” because of the remarkable green color of her eyes and the way she had been brought to them.

Little known to her, her papa had committed high treason in an effort to kill the king after the corpulent monarch rejected Darren’s request to utilize a magician to find his missing, albeit exiled, daughter. Darren had fled the capital and gone into hiding where he used the skills he had learned as a part of the Versati Corps—a group of men trained to be versatile—to form an underground group he called the Resistance. The power of the Resistance eventually spread beyond the borders of Natric. Its goal was to overthrow the corrupted de Sharec monarchy.

After her papa had found her when she was eight, and most of her memory had returned, Mariel had been a part of this underground network. She had spied and thieved and become a wanted outlaw referred to as Mariel Quickwit. That was until a year ago, when her grandparents had found her. This time they did not want to let her die to clear the taint on the family’s name, they wanted her for their heir because no other living person carried enough de Sharec blood to rightfully claim the throne except her. But she did not want to be princess . . .

“Are you sure you want to do this?” The quiet voice of Mariel’s copper-haired friend, Cara, tore her from her reverie.

Without realizing it, she had reached a set of side doors that led to the massive ballroom. Did she want to do this? Yes. Could she do this? She was not sure. But she refused to let fear make her weak. She had recently learned to accept fear because fear could be good sometimes. She had every intention of benefitting from it tonight.

Delaying her entrance a moment longer she touched a unique crown resting on her styled brown curls. The crown looked as though someone had taken leaves and woven them into a circle and then turned them to silver. At the front of the crown, the silver vines transformed into an elegant serpent. The silver serpent had been the symbol of Natric for hundreds of years, and when the de Sharecs overthrew the Nería monarchy more than two hundred years before, they had not replaced the symbol.

The crown was not made of silver, but of a light, strong metal called
puilion
that was known only to her zreshlan friends. They had given her the crown as an expression of their acceptance for her claiming the right to the Natrician throne when they were a people who did not believe in dictatorship. It was a pity Mariel did not also accept being princess.

“You’re gorgeous. Now will you stop fussing with your crown and enter the ballroom?” James teased. “I can’t wait to see the expression on Dreyfuss’s face when he sees you.”

The reminder cheered Mariel and calmed her buzzing nerves slightly.

“Let’s go commit treason,” she said cheerfully as she pushed open the door and stepped into the opulent ballroom.

The marble floor and been shined to perfection so that it reflected the light from the glittering chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Columns marched around the edge of the massive room and small rooms filled with tables piled high with rich food hid behind the columns. Chairs and small tables could be found on the edges of the room, allowing for those who wished only to sit and watch the dances and gossip and critique rather than join in themselves.

The sweeping grand staircase caught her attention and brought a smirk to her lips. Had she been an obedient girl and listened to her grandparents, she would have entered on those stairs once nearly all of the guests had arrived. It was at that time that the king would formally present her as his heir. Those were not Mariel’s plans though.

Tonight she would make a statement that she was not just another fluff-brained noblewoman who could be played as a chess piece at the will of her relations. She was intelligent and cunning and she was going to do everything in her power to change the way the kingdom was run.

First of all, she would not place herself a step above and a separate entity from the rest of the noble class. Instead of allowing the king and queen to specifically select who she should meet tonight, she would meet everyone, and she would do it her way—or at least the way it had been done long ago.

“There, he’s seen you,” James informed Mariel.

Mariel smiled brightly as a tall man approached.

“Good evening, Archmagician,” she said cordially as she dipped into a slight curtsey, while her three present lady’s maids did the same.

Archmagician Dieter Dreyfuss did not return the smile. His face nearly matched the shade of his red hair. He kept his voice low as he glanced around the room to see how many people had noticed Mariel’s unexpected arrival. “What are you doing?”

“Attending the Spring Ball.”

For a moment, Mariel thought Dreyfuss might actually strangle her, but he managed to control his temper.

“You were supposed to arrive with their Majesties.”

“I didn’t feel like it.”

“You. Didn’t.
Feel
. Like. It?” He forced out through gritted teeth.

Mariel flashed him her best smile.

It took several large breaths before Dreyfuss was composed enough to continue. “I should have expected something like this from you. You have been so well-behaved this last week, but I knew it was one of your games. I knew you were going to do something.” He turned to James. “I don’t suppose you even tried to stop her?”

James looked ashamed, although Mariel and Dreyfuss knew he was not. “She is royalty and I am but a lowly captain. How could I refuse a direct order from my princess? That would be treason.”

“Like she is committing now?”

“You could always release me from our
agreement
and then I would not play any games at court.”

“You would also leave,” Dreyfuss said angrily.

“I tried to stop her!” Isabel said.

The Archmagician barely offered Isabel a glance. He glared at Mariel and James and then glanced around the room again.

If Dreyfuss had been one of the few people who had noticed Mariel and her group’s immediate arrival, it was not true now. Only a handful of nobles had arrived at the ball, but they stared at them and whispered to each other.

Dreyfuss winced. “It’s too late to force you to return to your quarters and wait for the king and queen. What exactly do you have planned?”

Mariel smiled victoriously. “Only to greet my guests, all of them, like the Nería family used to before my dear ancestors decided to drive knives through all of their chests and steal the throne.”