Home > Princess of Dorsa

Princess of Dorsa
Author: Eliza Andrews

Part I:

 

 

The Princess Natasia of House Dorsa

 

 

“As a child, the Princess showed no particular exceptional promise or talent; she was known more for her tendencies towards petulance, stubbornness, and disobedience than for excellence. In fact, there was nothing in her childhood or early education to suggest that she would be anything more than ordinary. How surprised the Wise Men who educated her would have been, had they lived to see the woman she became! How surprised her father, the Emperor Andreth, would have been to know that her name would one day overshadow his own.”

 

— Wise Man Tellorin, The Updated Histories of House Dorsa

 

 

1

 

 

The dawn light didn’t wake Tasia from slumber; the birds did. She was accustomed to the morning song of the birds. In childhood, they woke her nearly every morning with their musical chittering, their high voices like crystal chimes blowing in a gentle wind. Birdsong was followed by the matching chatter of her mother, cooing to them as they cooed to her while she sprinkled their breakfast of seeds and grains across the red brick of the inner courtyard. Tasia, not quite five yet, would go to the window, stand on tiptoes on her trunk in order to peer through the muslin drapes and into the courtyard below.

Even then, her mother had seemed more angel than human, her long blue sleeping gown hiding her feet so that she didn’t walk across the courtyard so much as she glided, her little white birds with their bright yellow tails following along behind her, singing out their morning joy, waking the royal family one by one.

But the palace birds imported from her mother’s Northeastern homeland were not the birds that woke Tasia now. There was nothing magical or musical or joyful about this birdsong; it was the rough

 

 

“CAW, CAW!”

 

 

of city crows that roused her from sleep, that reminded her she wasn’t at home.

She woke from the dream of her mother with a shallow gasp — disoriented, eyes wide and searching for light in the dark, stuffy room. She stifled an annoyed groan when she realized where she was, disentangling herself from the heavy bare arm and heavy bare leg draped over her. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. What time was it?

She stood from the bed, nearly tripping on a sheet that had wound itself around her ankle like a constricting snake, then began groping blindly for her discarded clothes. Moonlight filtered in through the high open window, which meant she had somehow managed to wake herself before dawn.

Well, the city crows had woken her, actually.

Gods be thanked for those damnable birds, she thought, shaking an undergarment loose from another tangled sheet. She pulled it on hastily even as the man in the bed grunted and seemed to half-wake.

Where had she dropped that ugly brown shift she’d had her handmaid borrow from the cook’s daughter?

“Tasia?” said the man in the bed groggily. He lifted himself up on one elbow, combing long brown hair from his face with his other hand. “Are you leaving?”

“It’s the middle of the night, Markas,” Tasia said. “Close to dawn, really — the crows woke me.”

Markas’s brown eyes grew large. “Did we fall asleep?”

Tasia almost snapped, Of course we did, you idiot!, but managed to contain her irritation. It wasn’t his fault she had fallen asleep; he always fell asleep after sex. That was the time when she generally dressed and slipped out, just as the city guard called out eleven-of-the-clock. But last night he had begged her to stay with him a while longer, and Tasia, with her thoughts drifting to other topics, other worries, other lovers, had foolishly allowed herself to fall into the welcome oblivion of unconsciousness.

“Yes,” Tasia said, pulling on the shift she’d finally found. “We fell asleep.”

Markas sat up, sheets falling away from his bare chest. With moonlight glinting off the well-defined planes of his body, Tasia momentarily remembered why she still found herself in his apartments once or twice per week.

“There’s no point in you leaving now,” he said. “If it’s almost dawn, the cart merchants will be setting up outside anyway. They’ll see you. You should stay.”

Tasia shook her head. “It’s not that close to dawn. The moon is still out. I have time.”

He reached for her wrist, but she took a quick step backwards.

“Stay,” Markas implored.

“No,” she said curtly. “We’ve talked about this before. It is risky enough for me to be doing this as it is. You know what would happen if my father found us out.”

“I’m not afraid of your father,” Markas said, but his eyes gave him away.

She let out a half-laugh, not bothering to humor him with a response. “Until we meet again,” she said, bending forward to kiss his brow.

She slipped her shoes on, pulled the navy blue cloak with the heavy hood around herself, and picked up the basket of bread she’d left next to the door — her usual prop for these visits. Anyone on the street who saw a hunched and hooded girl with a basket of bread would just assume she was a baker’s girl, finishing a late night delivery to the Ambassador Quarter.

Late night delivery, maybe, but pre-dawn delivery…? No one with respectable business would be leaving the quarter at this hour.

Tasia continued to chastise herself as she hastened down the back stairs from Markas’s apartments, fabricating an excuse in her head in case she had the misfortune to arrive at the palace during the changing of the guard.

Which was why she didn’t see the shadow slip onto the street a few paces behind her as she hurried up the hill that paralleled the Royal Canal.

She had an arrangement with the guardsmen of Sunfall Gate, the palace gate most commoners referred to as Westgate — two silver pennies for each man on guard when she quietly slipped away, one penny on her way out, the second penny on her way back in. She’d bought their silence, it was true, and as her father was wont to say, Loyalty paid for is no loyalty at all. Which was why she’d also taken care to learn each of their names, their wives’ names, their children’s names. On the nights when she had the time for it, she traded bawdy jokes with them, shared the leftover pastries from her baker’s girl’s basket.

The night guardsmen of Westgate were her friends, inasmuch as a princess can make friends with common soldiers. But the morning guard — that was a different story. The night belonged to Tasia; the morning belonged to her father, the Emperor. No quantity of pennies or dirty jokes would stop the morning guard from turning her in. And so she walked as fast as she could without running, panting and perspiring up the hill, determined to make the gate before the guard changed.

Later it would almost amuse her that her most pressing concern that night was not getting caught by the morning guard.

Tasia was so focused on making the hill’s crest that the first touch of the hand behind her did nothing to dilute her focus. It wasn’t until the same hand tightened around the arm that held her bread basket that Tasia noticed it at all.

The man acted too quickly for the Princess to call for help. In one swift sweep of his arm, he swung her towards him with such force that Tasia lost her balance, feet tangling together beneath her. On instinct, she opened her mouth to scream, but he slapped his other hand against her mouth.

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)