The Rebel Prince (The Season Series #3)

Chapter 1

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The ship swayed as the crew scurried about the deck, tying down lines and shouting instructions back and forth. Salt spray crashed against the bow as I leaned on the railing, running a critical eye over the city I was to call home for...well, for however long it took me to find a wife and uphold my father's treaty. Though I was fairly certain that if he had his way, it would be the city I would call home forever.

I caught a few snippets of Ardal, the lilting romance language spoken by the Ardalonian crew that had sailed me into their capitol city of Relizia. It was a tongue I'd have to get used to, my clumsy, English-speaking mouth unaccustomed to such elaborate consonants and rolled R's. I had no trouble understanding it, however, though that was a secret I wasn't about to reveal. I made a point of purposefully stumbling over my grammar and poorly conjugating my verbs whenever I spoke with the crew, something they sniggered about behind my back. They called me el príncipe idiota - the idiot prince - which was fine by me.

All the better to eavesdrop, if they thought I was some ignorant buffoon.

"We're approaching the port, your Highness. Perhaps you could alert the princess?" the first mate said, coming up next to me. He was the worst of them, all smiles and kindness to my face, while insulting my mother, my sister, and my kingdom behind my back to his sniggering Ardalonian crew.

"Thank you," I managed, smiling. No matter how hard I tried, it never quite reached my eyes when I looked at him.

Stifling the words I so badly wanted to spit in his face, I pushed off the railing and stomped belowdecks. Princess Dulciana had shuttered herself in her cabin the moment we'd set sail from Highcastle, emerging only for dinner with myself and the captain, where she'd prattle on in Ardalonian and make a point of thoroughly ignoring me. I threw in the odd statement here and there, once again with my terrible grammar, which only served to annoy her more.

"This boy is a nuisance. Perhaps we could throw him overboard," she'd said one night, all while grinning sweetly at me like a cheshire cat. The captain said nothing, glancing nervously between the pair of us.

The official story was that she and I were to be married, per the terms of the alliance with Ardalone, which dictated that our royal houses be joined. Unfortunately for Dulciana, my mother and I had discovered a loophole in the wording the night before my brother Andrew's engagement announcement, allowing him to choose the girl he loved rather than the spoiled, cruel, conniving foreign princess whose ship now whisked me across the ocean like some war prize.

I couldn't really blame Dulciana for her quiet wrath, not after what Andrew had done. She had been shipped to us under the assumption that she'd sit on the throne of Pretania as queen, only for my brother, the crown prince, to pass her over for a girl of lesser birth. I didn't blame him, especially since the girl he'd fallen absolutely head-over-heels in love with was exactly the kind of queen Pretania needed.

My father, the king, however, had not agreed.

He had seethed with rage at the discovery that we'd devised a way to both free Andrew and honour the treaty at the same time.  But my brother's freedom came at a price that I'd volunteered to pay. Of the three of us royal siblings, I was the only one who wasn't completely besotted with someone back home, so the choice was only logical to send me in Andrew's stead.

That, and my excellent knack for manipulation and political strategy, of course - a skill set that will certainly prove useful in the conflicted, convoluted royal court of Ardalone.