Their Hidden Princess novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Roommate

Elsbeth trusts Maudie with half the truth, and the first sweep of the women's tower ends with Roan lifting her royal moonstone out of her trunk.

I could lie to her.

I'd lied to a gate clerk, a Lord Marshal and two fated mates in one day. One more wouldn't kill me.

But Maudie had stolen two rolls and brought one back for me.

"I'm not a deserter," I said.

"You've got deserter ash on your neck."

"I ran from a wedding."

She sat down on her bed with a thump.

"Whose?"

"Mine."

I told her the half I could.

A father who needed a powerful man's favor. A betrothal I didn't agree to. A groom twice my age who said I'd learn to kneel.

I left out the throne hall and the veil.

I left out the name.

Maudie listened with her mouth open and the roll forgotten in her fist.

"So the ash is so he can't sniff you out," she said.

"If he sends men after me, yes."

"And you volunteered to hunt the princess because?"

"Because hunters don't get hunted."

She thought about that for a while.

"That's the most deranged thing I've ever heard," she said. "I love it."

Then she got up and pulled a pillowcase out from under her bed.

Inside were a wedge of hard cheese, half a pork pie and four little honey cakes.

"I know the cook's back door," she said. "You've got to eat if you're going to be a criminal."

We ate on the floor between the beds.

She told me her father shod horses in a village so small it didn't have a pack.

"I'm the first packless girl in the second year," she said. "Clarice Varrick calls me the charity case. Every morning. Like a rooster."

"What do you call her?"

"Nothing. Her uncle runs the army." She licked honey off her thumb. "In my head I call her the Pearl Pin."

I laughed so hard I choked on a cake.

She pounded my back.

"Your secret's safe," she said. "Packless girls know about running. My mother did it once."

She didn't say more, and I didn't ask.

It was the first night in four weeks I slept.

The sweep came at seven the next morning.

Every woman cadet stood in the corridor of the tower in shirt and tie, doors open, trunks unlocked.

Varrick didn't come himself.

He sent Clarice with a list.

"Ingleby, the lower floors," she read. "Dunstan, the upper." She looked at me over the paper. "And the new girl who ran from home can go with Ingleby."

"Why not with Dunstan?" I asked.

"Because the new girl's room is on the upper floor." Clarice smiled. "Who hunts the hunter?"

A few of the women snickered.

Lysander gave a big sigh. "Come on, Frog Knight. Let's go rifle through strangers' stockings. It's what I trained for."

I spent the next hour following him from room to room.

He was terrible at it.

He opened trunks, said "Lovely," and shut them.

"Aren't you supposed to look?" I asked.

"I'm looking for a princess. She isn't in a sock drawer." He held up a pair of darned stockings. "Unless she's very small."

I laughed before I could stop it.

He looked pleased with himself.

On the third floor landing Clarice caught up with us.

Maudie was coming up the stairs with a box of her tools from the forge.

Clarice tipped it over with one foot.

Files and tongs and tiny hammers scattered across the boards.

"Oops," Clarice said. "Charity case, you've got your filth everywhere."

Maudie got down on her knees and started picking them up.

Her ears were red.

I knelt beside her and handed her the tongs.

"You dropped your manners, Clarice," I said. "Want me to pick those up too?"

The corridor went quiet.

Clarice looked at me, then at Lysander, who was leaning on the wall with his arms folded.

"Careful, Fenmarch," she said. "My uncle likes to know who's loud."

She walked off with her list.

Lysander bent and picked up a hammer the size of my thumb. He turned it over.

"Did you make this?" he asked Maudie.

"Yes."

"It's beautiful."

Maudie went redder than her ears.

I liked him more than I wanted to.

Then I remembered where Roan was.

The upper floor.

My room.

My trunk.

I made an excuse about a forgotten tie and took the stairs two at a time.

My door stood open.

Roan was kneeling at the foot of my bed with my trunk lid up.

He had my rolled wool stocking in one big hand.

He tipped it, and the silver wolf head slid into his palm on its chain.

The moonstone caught the window light.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he looked up at me.

"This is royal," Roan said.

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