Their Hidden Princess novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Static

Both men pretend they felt nothing, Varrick hands the hunters her own scarf to learn her scent, and Maudie catches Elsbeth masking it with a deserter's trick.

"Storm static," I said.

My voice came out thin.

"There's no storm," Roan said.

"It rained all day. Wet stone. Wool coats." I pulled my hand and my wrist free. "It happens."

Lysander laughed, one beat too late.

"She's right. I got a shock off a door handle last winter. Nearly proposed to it."

Roan looked at him in the dark for a long moment.

"Static," he said flatly.

"Static," Lysander agreed.

Neither of them moved.

The three of us stood on that stair, breathing.

My wrist still hummed where Roan had held it.

My palm still burned where Lysander had.

Every girl in the Aldermark knew what a spark meant.

A fated mate. One.

Not two at once.

"Goodnight, Frog Knight," Lysander said, and went up past me without touching me again.

Roan went down.

He didn't say goodnight.

I found my room at the top of the women's tower by following Maudie's singing.

She was in the bed by the window, eating an apple.

"You volunteered to hunt a princess," she said. "On your first day. In front of the Lord Marshal."

"I did."

"I've been here a year. I've never volunteered for anything except seconds."

I lay down in my damp shirt and stared at the ceiling.

Two men. Two sparks. The same second.

I didn't sleep.

At dawn a runner fetched me to the map room under the Commandant's tower.

Lysander and Roan were already there, at opposite ends of the long table.

Lysander smiled at me too brightly.

Roan looked at the map.

Varrick came in with a cedar box under his arm.

He set it down and lifted out a length of blue silk.

My scarf.

I'd worn it to chapel every week of my life before the veil.

"Her Highness's," Varrick said. "Taken from her rooms in Moorhaven. Learn it."

He handed it to Lysander first.

Lysander held it to his face and breathed in.

His eyes closed for a second too long.

He passed it to Roan without a word.

Roan breathed it in and went very still.

Then he turned his head and looked straight at me.

My heart hit my ribs.

I stood beside the fire, where the smoke rolled out of the hearth, and prayed it was thick enough.

Roan held the scarf out to me.

I had to take my own scarf and sniff it.

It smelled of rain on stone and my mother's lavender oil.

It smelled like home.

"Rain and lavender," I said. "Expensive."

"Spoiled," Varrick said. "Like her."

He leaned on the table over the map.

"She trained with a sword, against her father's wishes. A girl like that might hide among soldiers. You'll start with this school."

"And when we find her?" Lysander asked lightly.

"Bring her to me." Varrick smiled. "If she fights, break something. Wolves heal."

Nobody laughed this time.

Varrick turned to me.

"You ran from home, Beth. Where would you hide?"

My mouth went dry.

"Somewhere nobody looks twice, my lord. A kitchen. A convent. A barracks."

"A barracks," he said.

He let the word sit.

Then he took the scarf back from my hands and folded it into the box.

"The women's tower first. Tomorrow. Dismissed."

In the corridor Roan stopped beside Lysander.

"It smells like the stair," he said under his breath.

"Everything smells like the stair," Lysander said. "It's a thousand-year-old school."

Roan didn't answer.

He just walked off without looking back at me.

That was the problem with fated mates.

They could smell you.

I went straight past the great hall and out to the kitchen garden.

The bitter-mint grew in a wild clump by the compost heap, where the cook let it run.

I pulled two fistfuls and stuffed them down my shirt.

My mother's old guard had taught me the trick when I was fourteen, as a joke.

Deserters burned bitter-mint to ash and rubbed it into their pulse points.

It ate a wolf's scent for a day.

It also smelled like a wet dog had died in a tea shop.

Back in the room I knelt at the little grate and burned the leaves on a scrap of slate.

The ash came out grey and fine.

I rubbed it into my wrists.

Then into the hollow of my throat, behind my ears, under my hair.

The door banged open.

Maudie stood there with two stolen rolls in her hand and her nose wrinkled.

She looked at the slate.

She looked at the grey on my wrists.

She shut the door very quietly behind her.

"That's what deserters use," she said.

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