Their Hidden Princess novel · Chapter 5 of 32

Chapter 5: Two Heirs

Lysander swung down off the ledge and landed on the wall walk in a crouch.

He tossed the apple core over the parapet.

"I heard every word," he said. "You have a very loud voice for a quiet man."

"Then you heard it was her mother's," Roan said.

"I heard a story about a maid." Lysander looked at me. Not unkindly. Just carefully. "It was a good story. I nearly cried."

"Leave it," Roan said.

"Leave a royal stone? In the trunk of a girl who turned up the day the princess vanished?" Lysander laughed. "That's the Vale, Roan. That's the whole Vale, sitting in a sock."

"It's not the princess."

"Then why hide it from me?"

Roan didn't answer.

Lysander's smile went thin.

"Or maybe you'd rather find her quietly. On your own. So Dunstan gets the Vale and you don't have to split it with an Ingleby."

"Careful," Roan said.

"Why? It's what your father would do."

"My father didn't burn your mill."

"No. He burned our hay barns at Ashford. Three winters in a row."

"Your father's riders killed my brother."

The wind dropped.

Even Lysander went pale.

"That's a lie your pack tells itself," he said quietly. "And you know it."

Roan hit him.

It was a short punch, and it put Lysander into the parapet.

Lysander came off the stone swinging.

I'd seen men fight in the palace yard my whole life. This wasn't that.

This was two men who'd been holding a war in their chests for a year, and it had just come out.

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