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  “Very well.” The King made a dismissive wave. “Take the princess back to her nursery—the Sisters will be coming for her soon. And as for you,” he said, looking at Varin. “It’s time to begin your training. You have much to learn if you’re to be worth the price I paid for you.”

  “Yes, your Majesty.” Reluctantly, Varin nodded and pulled his finger out of the princess’s grasp. For a moment she clung to him, as though she didn’t want to let go. When he finally did get free of her, she began to wail again, spitting out the sweet-suck and screwing her tiny face up into a fist of misery.

  Varin felt her pain as his own—an aching loss that filled his soul and made hot tears sting his own eyes, though he had sworn to himself never to cry again.

  “Princess!” he gasped, reaching for her. But the nurse was already taking her away. He watched her go, hands fisted at his sides.

  I’ll see you again, he thought. I swear I will! And the next time I see you, I’ll never let you out of my sight—not ever again.

  Chapter Two

  “You must be so excited!”

  “Your Presentation Day!”

  “Your first day at Court! Oh, Princess—how wonderful it’s going to be.”

  Brynnalla’s new ladies in waiting twittered about her like brightly colored flutterbys.

  Brynn could hardly take them in—their full, flouncy dresses were so different from the somber gray robes worn by the Sisters of Chastity and Obedience and their excited prattle was the exact opposite of the quiet she was used to.

  One in particular, Lady Amalthia, was especially loud and pretty. With her bright green dress and pale blonde hair done up in an elaborate puff of ringlets around her lovely oval face, it seemed to Brynn that she looked much more like a princess than Brynn herself did.

  She looked at herself ruefully in the full length 3-D viewer which was part of her lavishly appointed chamber in the palace. She had on the deep blue dress her Lady-mother the Queen had picked for her but it fit her oddly.

  Brynn plucked at the dress. She didn’t possess the full curves Lady Amalthia had to fill out its flounces and shirrs. Instead, a too-thin girl with a slim, almost boyish figure swallowed up in the voluminous dress stared back at her from the viewer. Her breasts were no bigger than teacups and her hips were only slightly curved.

  Lady Amalthia, on the other hand, had a bosom that was full to over flowing, her ample cleavage filling her bright green dress beautifully. Compared to her lady in waiting, Brynn thought she looked like a flower in the bud beside one fully bloomed.

  Her hair was hopeless too. Her ladies had tried to curl it—truly they had. But the result had been only frizz and Brynn had been forced to go and wet it down to make it behave again. It was long and black and fell straight as a curtain rod to the small of her back, refusing to do anything else.

  To make things worse, her long strands were too silky to hold any of the elaborate hair pins the other girls were wearing in their curly, poofed up hair. The fans of feathers and big, bright bows fell right out of her stubbornly straight mane until at last Lady Amalthia had thrown up her hands in disgust and declared that she gave up. Brynn’s long, black hair was left loose around her narrow shoulders in defiance of Court fashion, which made her feel even more out of place.

  “Well, at least your dress is lovely,” Lady Amalthia murmured diplomatically. “Even if the rest of you is…somewhat lacking.” She smiled unkindly and the other girls giggled nervously.

  “It doesn’t fit right.” Brynn tugged at the dress again. “And the color seems…wrong.”

  “I heard your Lady-mother the Queen picked it to match your eyes,” Amalthia told her. “I’m told when you were a baby, they were a blue as deep as the heavens.” She looked at Brynn’s eyes in the viewer and frowned. “Hmm. I wonder what happened? Your brother the royal Prince who was born a year after you still has blue eyes. It's a pity he's not here or you could see for yourself.”

  Brynn sighed. Her eyes might have been blue when she was a baby but they had changed when she grew older to a quiet, dove-gray. It wasn’t an ugly color—in fact, her eyes were quite pretty when she was wearing the soft gray robes of the convent where she had been raised. But they weren’t flashy or arresting like Lady Amalthia’s brilliant green gaze or big and brown and dewy like Lady Tenna’s or deep lilac like Lady Chenwith’s or—

  A rapping on the door cut into her miserable thoughts.

  “King Jerund and Queen Isolde to see the fair Princess Brynnalla,” announced a guard from outside her chamber.

  “Oh, the King and Queen! The King and Queen are here!” Her ladies in waiting fluttered like a flock of excited birds, dithering and chattering nervously, rushing to get into the right position around Brynn, framing her like flutterbys around a drab, gray moth, she thought.

  “Bow your head, Princess,” Lady Amalthia hissed in her ear as the door opened. “Though they are your parents, they are still the rulers of this planet—you must show respect!”

  Brynn needed no such prompting. She hadn’t seen her royal parents since the day of her birth and was as much, if not more, in awe of them as everyone else.

  Trembling, she bowed her head and waited as she heard the royal footsteps echo on the marble flagstones of her floor.

  “Now then, there she is!” The King’s voice—no, my father’s voice. He is my father, Brynn reminded herself—echoed a bit too heartily in her chamber.

  “Indeed she is. Now, Brynnalla, don’t be shy—raise your chin that your father and I might look at you,” the Queen commanded in a high, nasal tone.

  Slowly, Brynnalla looked up. Daring greatly, she scanned the faces of the two royal persons before her—her parents. She looked for any likeness in their features and hers but found none.

  The King, her father, had a hooked nose and a narrow, pinched face unlike her own. The Queen had a sallow complexion and a huge halo of frizzy red hair completely unlike Brynn’s straight waterfall of black. Her mouth—heavily lipsticked in a violent red hue—was pursed in a way that made her look like she’d been sucking sour-fruit all day. And Goddess above, why did they both have to be so tall?

  “Why is she so short?” the Queen demanded, glaring at the King. “Did the Sisters not feed her enough at that convent? Goddess knows we paid them well enough to raise her!”

  “What’s wrong with her dress?” the King asked, not bothering to answer his wife’s complaint. “Why is it so big on her?”

  “What happened to her eyes? They used to be so blue. As blue as mine.” The Queen put a hand to her darkly rouged cheek as though to highlight her own eyes—which, to Brynn looked like the faded blue of a garment washed too many times.

  “If it please your Majesties,” Lady Amalthia spoke up, smiling sweetly, “I think the princess is tired and a little overwhelmed by all the finery of the palace. Perhaps if she had a more simple dress to wear—”

  “Yes, yes—do as you please,” the King snapped, frowning. “But whatever you do, hurry. The tournament is about to begin and the princess must be sitting in the royal box between her Lady-mother and me when it does.”

  “And do something with her hair,” the Queen added. “It’s dreadful.”

  “They tried,” Brynn said, surprising herself by speaking up at last. “It won’t…won’t do anything. It’s too straight to curl.”

  “Ugh!” The Queen made a face and glared at the Lady Amalthia. “Do you mean to tell me you intend to let it hang lank about her face like that?” She gestured as though Brynn’s hair was a limp mass of seaweed instead of a straight, shiny waterfall. “It looks horrid!”

  “Forgive me, your Majesty.” Lady Amalthia curtsied gracefully. “I will try again.”

  “See that you do. And hurry! The King and I are going to the Royal Box.”

  The Queen turned and took the King’s extended arm. As they swept from her chambers, Brynn heard her mother say, “Such a disappointment.”

  The King patted her arm. “Yes, but never fear, my d