Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian

Author:Laura Sebastian
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2018-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

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After a lunch alone—or as alone as I ever am—in my rooms, I hear a quick, soft knock on my door. It isn’t Crescentia’s melodic knock or the forceful rapping of the guards, and I can’t imagine who else it might be. Hoa is clearing my lunch plates, so I go to answer it.

Warily I open the door, only to find no one on the other side. I lean out and peer down the hall in either direction, but the hall is empty. I almost close the door again before I notice the rolled piece of parchment on the ground in front of the door.

I pick it up and bring it back inside with me, closing the door firmly behind me. The letter is sealed with Søren’s sigil of a drakkon breathing fire, so I slip it into the pocket of my dress.

“It must have been the wind,” I tell Hoa.

She doesn’t seem to believe me, though. When she leaves the room a moment later, balancing the tray of leftover lunch food in her arms, she gives me a suspicious glance. I smile at her like it’s any other day, but I don’t think it fools her.

Not for the first time, I wonder how she sees me. She’s known me since I was six years old, she’s held me when I’ve cried, she used to tuck me into bed. I don’t trust her—I think the part of me that trusts people has been irreparably broken—but I do love her, in a way. It’s a shadow of the love I feel for my mother, roughly the same shape but without the color or warmth. Hoa looks at me sometimes like she’s seeing her own shadow of a ghost. But I can’t ask her anything about it, and she certainly couldn’t tell me anything if I did.

When the door clicks shut behind her, I take the letter from my pocket and break the seal with my pinky nail before unrolling it.

“The Prinz?” Blaise asks.

I don’t answer him except to nod. Søren’s handwriting is a sloppy, rushed scrawl that makes it difficult to read.

Dear Thora,

I dreamt of you last night and when I woke this morning, I could have sworn your scent lingered in the air around me. It’s been like this all week. You haunt my mind both sleeping and waking. I keep wanting to share my thoughts with you, or ask you for your opinion on things. Usually I look forward to time away from court, when it’s only my crew and me at sea. There are no pressures, no formalities, no games apart from those played with cards and ale. But now I would give anything to be back in that godsforsaken palace because you would be with me.

The short of it is: I miss you terribly, and I’m wondering if you miss me as well.

Erik has been teasing me relentlessly about you, though I suspect he’s a bit envious. If I were a better man,

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