Stranger to the Crown Read online

  Stranger to the Crown

  The Heirs of Willow North, Book 2

  Melissa McShane

  Copyright © 2020 by Melissa McShane

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Jay R. Villalobos www.coversbyjuan.com

  North sign and shield designed by Erin Dinnell Bjorn

  For my children,

  all of whom have influenced my writing in one way or another,

  and all of whom are in the pages of my books somewhere

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  About the Author

  Also by Melissa McShane

  1

  Torchlight flickered off the floor of the cavern and its rough-hewn stone wall, making a pool of light beyond which lay emptiness. From where Elspeth stood, the space might have been, not deep underground, but open to a starless sky. She tilted her head to look up even though she knew she would see only blackness and the tiny sparkles that filled her vision when she strained to see beyond her mortal limits. If this were an open space, she would feel the motion of the air, brushing her face or tangling her hair, but the air hung heavy with moisture, still and dank. It smelled of mineral-laden water and smoke from the torches and old, old stone.

  She shifted her position minutely, her bare feet welcoming the touch of the unfinished stone. It was bumpy and irregular but smoothed by the passage of generations of women’s feet. Beside her, water cascaded from a slit in the rock, spraying her with a fine, icy mist that gleamed white in the torchlight. The sodden air clung to Elspeth like a second skin, comforting in its familiarity. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs with damp air, and waited.

  Her guide, Tha, held the torch high and gestured to a nearby cabinet that looked like it might have come from someone’s sitting room. It had two shelves built into it, and a bar of soap rested in a shallow dish on its top. Nothing could have looked less like it belonged in this rough, ancient place.

  Elspeth shed her rose-colored robe, then the black linen shirt and trousers beneath it, and folded them all neatly. She set them on the lower shelf, along with her undershorts, and laid a clean change of underclothing and her hairbrush on the second shelf. The bar of soap was slick in her hand, but she grasped it tightly and, shivering, ducked under the frigid fall of water.

  A shock of cold went through her, and she gasped, but her hands had already begun soaping her body. She rubbed soap across her skin and through her thick red hair. Her body tingled with numbness, an exhilarating feeling, and she imagined the freezing water and coarse soap scrubbing away impurities. Nothing in the world could equal that moment.

  She handed the soap to Tha and ran her hands over her body, sluicing away the last of the soap like shedding her old skin, rinsing her thick hair until no trace of soap remained. She was numb enough that the water had started to feel warm, sign that she’d taken just long enough under the waterfall. She stepped away from the water’s spray and accepted the torch from her guide. The still air chilled her wet body. She shivered again and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly to control the shaking. Her guide was taking her own sweet time getting to the next step of the ritual, and that had better not be because Tha believed she needed to learn patience—

  “Haran approaches the well,” Tha intoned in a voice deeper than her usual one. She spoke Veriboldan even though Elspeth was by birth Tremontanan. Elspeth suppressed a smile and walked at the fastest pace she could manage that wasn’t a run toward the square pool in the distance. The black marble ledge surrounding it gleamed wetly in the light of the torches at three of its corners, and water slapped its edges as if some invisible hand were stirring it. Elspeth imagined she could feel the heat radiating from it, though she knew the water was only lukewarm and just felt warmer by contrast to the freezing cold of the waterfall.

  Four women robed in white, their gowns’ hems damp from brushing the wet stone, surrounded the pool. Elspeth set her torch in the one empty holder and crouched to sit on the marble lip of the pool before lowering herself into it. No, this was the moment unlike any other, the touch of warm water that felt like gliding into oil, surging up her legs to her waist. Elspeth never felt so perfectly happy as at this point in the ritual.

  “Haran enters the well,” one of the women, Chie, said, also in Veriboldan. “She is made clean and washed free of impurities. She is prepared to look on heaven’s wisdom.”

  Elspeth dabbled her fingers in the warm water briefly, bidding it farewell, then clambered out of the pool. She took the towel Chie handed her and rubbed herself fiercely. The rough nap of the towel made her tingle as if she were back in the waterfall. Then she handed the towel back to Chie and let the priestesses dress her as if she were a doll, this time in white shirt and trousers under her rose-colored robe. One of them dragged the hairbrush through Elspeth’s hair, as gently as she could given the tangle the soap had made it. Elspeth gritted her teeth and made no sound.

  When her hair was as straight as human hands could make it, which wasn’t very—it would dry in masses of curls and need to be brushed a second time—the woman handed Elspeth her hairbrush, and Tha led the way back across the chamber to the low-ceilinged switchback tunnel. The sound of the waterfall echoed in the tunnel and the stairs beyond, creating the illusion that Elspeth and Tha were surrounded by laughing, mocking voices.

  The stone steps underfoot were cool and slick, forcing Elspeth to go slowly. Her skin tingled from the contrast of hot and cold water, a breeze threaded through the steep stairwell, and her legs ached slightly from mounting the steps. She breathed deeply, embracing the sensations. Haran couldn’t have undergone this ritual, not on the treeless Eidestal where she’d had her vision of ungoverned heaven, but it still made Elspeth feel close to her spiritual ancestor.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, Tha said, still in Veriboldan, “Those stairs will be the death of me.”

  “Heaven welcomes your sacrifice,” Elspeth said, intoning in a pious imitation of the priestess Sela, who was humorless and rigid. It was Sela’s response to any complaint from the junior priestesses.

  Tha made a rude gesture. “I don’t think heaven cares whether my legs are sore.”

  “Probably not.” Elspeth glanced around to be sure no one was watching, then squatted deeply, pressed her hands palm-first against the smooth marble floor of the landing, and stood with her hands still pressed against the floor, stretching out her legs and back. “I guess heaven welcomes my sacrifice too.”

  “Next year, you’ll take my plac
e,” Tha said. “Only eight more months before you take your vows.”

  “It feels like forever away,” Elspeth said. She dusted her hands off on her robe, though the floor was clean enough to eat one’s supper off. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Tha nodded and walked away down the corridor with its high, slanting roof. Elspeth went the other way, toward the narrow staircase that led to the tiny rooms called cells where attendees to the Irantzen Festival stayed. As she ascended, she passed narrow window slits looking out over Haizea. One of her favorite things about the Festival was the opportunity to see the great city from a bird’s perspective. The cells at the top of the temple were almost the highest point in the Jaixante, the royal city within the capital city of Haizea, and Elspeth sometimes did her meditating while looking out her window at the clustered buildings and the green-glass flow of the Kepa River.

  Elspeth was out of breath by the time she reached the top of the stairs and the wide hallway whose ceiling rose to a sharp crease. Her cell was fifth from the end. She’d never been given the same one in all the five times she’d attended the Festival, but the cells were identical except for the views one had from the windows.

  She let herself in and set her hairbrush on the brass-bound chest beneath the window, then settled herself cross-legged on her pallet and picked up her toan jade medallion. The creamy jade pendant, slightly larger than her palm and thick as two fingers’ width, was carved with the tiny symbols of meditation rituals. Elspeth ran the silk cord it hung from through her fingers, feeling her skin catch on tiny imperfections in the cord and the bumpy knots that were themselves a focus for meditation.

  She closed her eyes and settled into the even breathing that prepared her to meditate. Yesterday, she’d drunk the tea and had a vision. Today, cleansed and made new, she was ready to meditate on the vision and make sense of it in preparation for discussing it with others tomorrow. Her fingers slipped over the smooth, cool, almost soapy surface of the toan jade. She had one of her own, but she always left it home on these annual visits. The thought of the hundreds of women who’d used this one before her made her feel connected to her faith and enhanced the experience of the festival.

  Her vision had been unremarkable, a memory of walking through the palace in Aurilien as if she were actually there. She’d been to her father Prince Sebastian North’s childhood home a handful of times in her life, and in the vision she remembered it better than her waking mind could. As a child, she’d been afraid of the palace because of its patchwork construction, the work of generations of rulers of Tremontane adding to it according to their whim.

  Having grown up in the Tremontanan embassy in the shadow of the Jaixante, her standard of architectural perfection was the unified beauty of the Veriboldan city within a city, its white walls and gilded fairy spires that shaded to pale blue and bronze when the afternoon sun sent shadows across it. The palace in Aurilien, by contrast, squatted warm and unwelcoming on its low hill, confusing to her young mind. She’d been afraid for years that someone might come along and build a new wing atop her, trapping her. Even now she was an adult, she never enjoyed the visits to Tremontane.

  She relaxed her shoulders, letting her arms hang loose. Her spine was next, that string of pearls threaded on wire that curved softly from the base of her neck. She let her hips relax, wiggled her toes, and let out a deep, warm stream of air from her mouth. The palace. The vision was unremarkable, but in Elspeth’s experience, that simply meant she needed to dig deeper.

  Her fingers traced the first meditation ritual, the path of awareness. Wake, and let the inner eye see. What did the palace mean to her? Confusion. Distance. Discomfort. It reminded her that she wasn’t one thing or another. She’d been raised in Veribold, true, and she understood that culture, but most of the Veriboldans she met—particularly the Veriboldan landholders her father the ambassador most often encountered—treated her with the distant politeness that said she would never be one of them. And yet she never felt at home in Tremontane, which was loud and boisterous and had all sorts of customs she didn’t understand. Her cousin Francis had always tried to make Elspeth and her siblings feel at home when they visited, but he was awkward and they never knew what to say to each other.

  Elspeth let out another long stream of breath. She hadn’t thought of Francis in years, not since his father Landon had died unexpectedly, making him King of Tremontane. It was hard to imagine gawky, ill-spoken Francis as King of anything. Then she felt guilty for the cruel thought. Francis wasn’t terribly bright, and he was prone to saying the wrong thing, but he was well-meaning and might make a good King. He couldn’t be worse than his father, whom Elspeth hadn’t liked. Her father hadn’t liked him either, though he wouldn’t say bad things about his older brother in Elspeth’s presence. Mother would only say “Landon’s interests are limited, and that’s bad in a King.” Elspeth couldn’t imagine how her Aunt Veronica, quiet but kind, had ended up married to the loud and uncouth Landon.

  She dragged herself back to her meditation. The palace. Her vision had taken her through its corridors, down the Long Gallery with paintings of the Kings and Queens of Tremontane and into the north wing and even to the ancient hall where the Scholia was housed. Maybe there was meaning in the places the vision had taken her. She relived the vision in memory, retracing her steps: antechamber, the Rotunda with its high domed ceiling, the Long Gallery, the Scholia hall, and finally the north wing.

  That last had to be her imagination. She’d never been closer to the north wing, where the business of ruling Tremontane happened, than the few short stairs carpeted in North blue that led up to its dark paneled halls and heavy doors. And yet in vision she’d seen offices, and a curved desk big enough to sleep on, and windows looking out over the palace grounds. Elspeth was familiar enough with visions to know they drew from your mind and memory, and couldn’t show you things you weren’t already familiar with, or at least had seen once before. Maybe she’d been in the north wing as a child and had forgotten it.

  A soft rap on the door startled Elspeth out of her meditation. She looked up to see the door swing open and Hien enter the room. The chief priestess looked as somber and as expressionless as always, but Elspeth felt a chill pass through her as if Hien had burst into the room sobbing.

  “Elspeth,” Hien said, “please follow me.”

  That Hien spoke to her in Tremontanese chilled her further. Elspeth spoke Veriboldan as well as she did her native tongue—though who was to say which of those was truly native to her?—and she was accustomed to using it in the Irantzen Temple. Hien’s use of Tremontanese made Elspeth feel like an outsider in her beloved temple for the first time in five years.

  Hien said nothing more as she led the way back down the stairs. Elspeth was desperate to know why Hien had interrupted her meditations, but Hien’s silence was the sort that bound someone’s tongue, and Elspeth couldn’t think what to ask first anyway. Dreadful possibilities presented themselves: something had happened to her family, she’d done something wrong and the Temple was kicking her out, they were rescinding their offer to make Elspeth one of them…she’d started imagining truly absurd possibilities, such as that the King of Veribold wanted to marry her, by the time they reached the foot of the stairs.

  Hien took her to one of the little rooms where in normal times, not during the Festival, people would come to receive guidance and counsel from the priestesses. “I will speak with you later,” she said in a low voice. “Remember that you are always welcome here.”

  That made Elspeth truly frantic. Before she could grab Hien by the collar and demand an explanation, the door swung open, and Hien gestured Elspeth inside. The room was unfurnished except for a couple of chairs and a tall vase, half Elspeth’s height, filled with decorative striped grass that let off a spicy scent. Elspeth’s heart beat faster when she saw her parents waiting for her.

  It was a possibility she hadn’t considered. Her mother, maybe; Mother attended the Festival occasionally and was friendly wi
th Hien. But Father should not have been allowed in this part of the temple during the Festival—no man was. And yet here he was, standing rather than sitting, with his hands clasped behind his back the way he did when he was about to deliver bad news. Mother sat beside him, her hands resting loosely on her thighs. Her red hair, threaded with gray but otherwise identical to Elspeth’s, was a tangled, windblown mess. It reminded Elspeth that there was a world outside the temple. A world that had intruded on her cozy, peaceful sanctuary. That could mean nothing good.

  No one spoke at first. Elspeth’s gaze roved from her mother’s face to her father’s. Finally, she couldn’t bear it any longer. “What’s wrong? Did something happen to my sibs? Or—”

  “No, the children are fine,” Father said. His handsome face looked ashen, though, as if he’d witnessed things he couldn’t bear. “It’s your cousin Francis. Influenza. He passed away three days ago.”

  Guilty relief surged over her. “Oh. That’s…I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Mother glanced up at Father. “There’s more,” Father said. “Francis died without producing children, and he was Landon’s only heir, which means the Crown passes to Landon’s siblings.”

  Shock struck Fiona so hard she tingled as if she’d once again passed through the waterfall. “You’re Uncle Landon’s next brother. You—does that make you the King?”

  Father shook his head. “I renounced my claim to the Crown before you were born. It was—it doesn’t matter. The point is, it turns out according to the law I can only make that decision for myself. I can’t disinherit my children. It’s a safeguard against…well, against situations like these.”