The Rebel Prince (The Season Series #3)

Chapter 1

I had no intention of marrying Princess Dulciana. I also knew, in no uncertain terms, that she felt the same. On our first night aboard, she'd made it clear that she would never agree to marry "el premio de consolación" - the consolation prize - in a fiery, curse-laden rant the thin walls of the ship hadn't managed to keep from my ears. She'd been yelling at her ladies-in-waiting, raving mad that she was being sent home so utterly insulted.

As amusing as I found her wrath, I had a terrible feeling that Pretania would eventually pay a price for Andrew jilting her. How a steep a price that would be depended entirely on whether Ardalone's eldest princess was as savvy a politician as I dreaded that she was.

Dulciana was the eldest of the royal family's children, but a woman, which meant that per Ardalonian law, her younger brother Frederico was first in line for the throne. If Dulciana somehow convinced him to abdicate, she could marry another Ardalonian of royal blood and become queen regnant herself. I didn't doubt that becoming queen was her endgame, but in what little time I'd had to prepare, I'd learned a few interesting things about the kingdom of Ardalone that raised even more questions.

The king of Ardalone, a widower after the queen had died giving birth to his seventh child (and sixth daughter), had no intention of ever letting Dulciana sit on his throne. It was no secret that he'd been grooming Frederico to reign from the moment his son had uttered his first word, if the court accounts I'd pored over were to be trusted.

From what I could gather about him, the king of Ardalone seemed to hold little faith in the intelligence of women. No woman had ever held a seat on his council, his own wife doing little more than presiding over the social aspects of the court while she'd been alive. Whether the king's preference of Frederico over Dulciana as his heir stemmed from that ingrained sexism or from his daughter's conniving nature was something I had yet to determine.

What I did know beyond the shadow of a doubt was that the questionable wording in the treaty with Pretania had most definitely not come from the king of Ardalone, for he would never have left such an easy escape for his daughter. My father had seemed markedly displeased upon its discovery, but that my mother had been the one to find it likely meant that he'd helped plant it there for someone astute like her to find, provided they looked in the right places. Ambassador DeGallo, the Ardalonian ambassador to Pretania, whom I suspected to be more loyal to Dulciana than the king, had likely been the other driving force behind the vague wording.

The loophole my mother had discovered neglected to name Andrew and Dulciana by name, thus granting me the opportunity to take Andrew's place, all while freeing Dulciana to pursue her own throne if I chose one of her sisters.

The days of our journey had my curiosity growing, eager to determine what kind of court awaited us in Relizia. If Dulciana's brother Frederico was half as cunning as she was, I was about to be embroiled in quite the royal intrigue. However tenuous our relationship was, for the moment, the princess and I were allied in that neither one of us wanted to be married to the other. Logically, Prince Frederico would push for us to wed as soon as possible to eliminate Dulciana as a threat to his throne.

But as much as I didn't want to marry her, I much preferred the idea of King Frederico over Queen Regnant Dulciana.

After Andrew's snub, if Dulciana ascended the throne, whatever we stood to gain from the treaty would be lost, for she would have no reason to uphold a treaty her own father had signed in an attempt to void her claim to his throne. I didn't want to find out whether the wrath of a spurned queen would be sufficient for her to rain warfare down on Pretania as revenge. So while Dulciana and I were temporary allies in our desire not to wed, I did hope to eventually align myself with Prince Frederico in order to ensure continued peace between Ardalone and Pretania.

The point of all this rambling , I suppose, is that I would have to tread carefully into this nest of vipers.

"We're almost home," I said, barely bothering to knock as I pushed the princess' cabin door open. She fixed me with that same hateful glare she'd been casting my way since we'd departed Pretania, before returning her focus to the card game before her.

"Are we back in Pretania? Because you should know that Ardalone will never be your home," she said.

"We'll see about that," I replied, shooting a grin at her trio of ladies-in-waiting. They had largely ignored me for most of the voyage, no doubt under orders from their princess. But that didn't stop me from shamelessly flirting with them, if only because it got such a rise out of Dulciana.

"Gilipollas," Dulciana muttered under her voice. I fought to keep my expression innocently ignorant despite the sneer that threatened to curl my lip.

"Gesundheit," I said, pretending I'd thought her muttered insult to be a sneeze. Dulciana rolled her eyes, her pretty face contorted with annoyance.

"Eres un idiota," she said, "Ve a saltar por la borda."

You're an idiot, go jump overboard.

I swallowed the frustrated sigh that rose to my lips. Patience, Thomas, patience. I'd get my moment to reveal exactly how much of her Ardal I understood, but that would only be after I'd eavesdropped on every last secret conversation whispered in the royal court of Ardalone.

I was leaning against the doorframe, still running brazen eyes over the ladies-in-waiting when the ship gave an almighty lurch and the cards they'd been playing slid off the table and scattered across the floor. Dulciana snapped at her ladies-in-waiting, one of whom had thrown her hands across the table in an attempt to keep the rest of the cards from tumbling off, only to confound the entire set up of the game they'd been playing.

"Useless little fools!" the princess snapped in Ardal, tossing her own cards to the floor, "Pick them up, you idiots!"

The ladies-in-waiting scrambled to do her bidding, while I watched the scene unfold with nausea in my stomach, completely unrelated to the rolling, bobbing ship.

No, this woman could never be queen. I took some solace in the knowledge that I'd saved Andrew and Pretania from her, only for it to be overshadowed by dread.

Unlike Andrew, I hadn't been able to devise a plan to extricate myself from a marriage to this monster of a princess.

Yet.

"I'll see you above-deck," I said, excusing myself so I wouldn't have to endure any more of her barked abuses as her ladies scrabbled around the floor like pet rats.

I took a heaving gulp of salty, seaweed-tinged air as the first rooftops of Relizia sharpened into more than shapeless blurs on the horizon. The city glittered like a jewel, the roofs lined with seashells and the buildings painted in vibrant colours. A stark brown wall loomed over the cheerful homes and shops, marking the divide between Relizia and Suprelizia, or High Relizia.

High Relizia housed the nobles and the palace, encircled by the walls of an ancient fortress that hadn't been breached since the dawn of recorded time. Rumours abounded that High Relizia was still watched over by guardian spirits, a lush oasis of plenty amidst the bland, brownish beige of the surrounding rocky countryside. Hints of greenery peeked over the mighty fortress wall, while a trio of alabaster turrets speared the cloudless blue sky. 

As I looked up to the formidable wall that separated the cheerful, multifaceted buildings of the commoners from the sleek, stark white spires of the palace, I couldn't help but wonder how a society so divided hadn't tumbled into rebellion sooner.