Chapter 1
Randal
In a fraction of a second, the ever-present rooted rage inside of me turned into birdsong.
The source of this revolutionary change?
A girl. In a green dress.
Sounds simple enough. But, Christ, if the way my heart is about to burst from my chest, there’s nothing simple about what happened to me the moment I locked my eyes on her.
She was so fucking far away. She should have faded into the rest of the colorless scenery down on the ground. Instead, she called to me like a siren of the sea.
I’d seen thousands of girls and women in my lifetime. Beautiful ones. Ones offering themselves to me in ways the devil would only understand. Yet I was unaffected by any of them ever.
Until right now. What was different about her?
Everything. Everything was different about her.
Her dark hair with the sheen of the finest silk was tied back in a ponytail, catching more than just the sunlight. It was like Lake Aramoor at night, shining with a light of its own.
Even looking down on her from my vantage point in the ruined tower, I was lost in her dark eyes. In those first seconds that I cast my gaze down on her, she gave me the gift of forgetting who I was. What I was.
My surroundings disappeared. Silk sheets, dark wood, blazing fire and stones that had stood for six centuries faded to nothing in comparison to her. Even my beloved falcon, Xavier, a gift from Patara on her wedding day to my father, called to me from behind the bars of his cage, but the sound was consumed by the roaring of blood rushing through my ears.
Right then, I was just a man looking at a girl ripe on the threshold of womanhood and something inside of me jerked and strained. Like old gears long rusted in place struggling to turn again. Her dress was barely able to contain breasts that spilled from the top. Her hips strained against the bright green fabric. Her dress was made for a girl, but it now barely contained a woman.
“You should abdicate.” Patara’s voice cracked through my moment of joy and I clenched my teeth, wishing her away, even forgetting she was here, wanting whatever this was to never end.
My eyes trailed over the beauty at the gates, watching her hold up a milk pail, and a little growl escaped my lips. She should not have been carrying something so heavy.
“Oh, don’t growl at me. It’s not like you want the throne. When your father dies, just don’t fight me for it. Can you imagine it? A woman on the throne? A bastard woman no less. Daughter of a murdered duke and his mistress only a slight cut above a prostitute. I’d run it a damned sight better than your father though.”
“The sooner he dies, the better.”
Patara sighed. She was a beauty in her own right, that I understood, with hair the color of gold and eyes so light a blue they were nearly white. “Yes,” She started, “well, many would agree with you, yet he just…lingers.” I turned to see her scowling as she impatiently plucked at an errant gold thread on her tight bodice before turning her ice blue eyes to me. “Why not officially abdicate? Do you actually want to rule?”
“What makes you think I’d even have to abdicate?” I asked, distracted by the beauty on the ground. “You think that fucker is ever going to name me as his heir? Acknowledge me?”
“So, then why shouldn’t it be me? Why are you growling about it? Have we not discussed this before? Surely, yes, we have, but now…the time is fast approaching. We need to make things official.”
I turned back to the window, the rage returning, swimming hot through my veins as the milkmaid disappeared inside the gates, and I spun back toward Patara and the entrance to my room.
“I wasn’t growling at you.” I barked, then shook my head. “I have to go,” I spat, stomping by her, headed for the wooden door.
“You have to go where?”
“None of your fucking business.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Do I need to remind you that I’m the queen? And your stepmother? You are under orders not to leave your tower of a prison. Although, I know you do. Or, is there another monstrous beast that wanders the forests of Aramoor at night frightening little children and stealing virgins? You barely fit through the doorways Randal, how do you expect to remain unseen when you leave the castle?”
I didn’t stop. I adjusted the bronze and silver mask covering my face, securing the worn leather straps around the back of my head as I shifted the cool metal, making sure my vision was unobscured through the eye holes.
Then I grabbed the wrought-iron handle of the door and turned back to her. “You’re right. I apologize. I meant to say, none of your fucking business, your highness.”