The Rebel Prince (The Season Series #3)

Chapter 18

My sleep was riddled with dreams of home, of her, of everything I didn't want to think about after my headache had come roaring back thanks to the confrontation with Callum Winters. I woke in a far fouler mood than I had been when I'd stormed in the night before, collapsing onto my bed in a heap of frustration.

As the sounds of churning waves and birdsong floated in on the muggy morning breeze, I stared up at the canopy of my bed, wondering why I'd ever agreed to come to this forsaken country. If I wasn't being insulted in Ardal, I was being poisoned or used as a means to someone else's end.

I'd never felt like more of a pawn in my entire life.

But then, I'd never been so utterly alone in all my life. In Pretania, I knew whom to trust. I knew that I could count on Andrew, irrevocably, and that Anne would always take my side, even if she didn't always think ahead to the consequences. For what it was worth, my father had never turned on me the way he'd turned on Andrew, but my fool of a brother should have known better than to force the king to choose between family and country. Mother knew that I was clever enough to understand that, but she'd always been blinded to Andrew's faults.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, homesickness gnawing a hole in my stomach. I'd dutifully replied to all of their letters with my signature sass and sarcasm, but I missed them. I missed them all, more than I could bear to say. More than I dared to say, for fear that it would let on about how this court was affecting me.

It had barely been a month, but I could already understand why Inés always seemed on the verge of tears. It was stifling in this palace, oppressed by both the weather and the reigning monarch. When she'd first arrived in Pretania, I'd written Dulciana off as the spoiled daughter of a foreign king. In reality, she was a desperate little girl fighting for what little power she could glean, in the only home she'd ever known.

Perhaps if she hadn't attempted to kill me, I could have been rallied to her cause.

But after my night in Lower Relizia, after my conversation with Prince Frederico, I knew where my allegiance stood. Ardalone needed a new king, one who could only ascend the throne if I swept his nightmare of a sister away, as my bride, following through with the very treaty that had landed me here in the first place.

"You decide the outcome, Thomas..."

Her blue eyes were exactly like my own, the origin of the glare I so loved to adopt. I could hear Mother's voice as clearly as if she were beside me, but the balm of time still hadn't softened the blow those words had delivered, the way they had tilted my entire world on its axis.

Andrew was her favourite son. Anne was her only daughter. I was the spare, the one father could auction off like King Felipe did his daughters, to appease a foreign ruler and fulfill a treaty. But she had been the one to give me a choice, the one to fight for her children's ability to decide their own fates.

She was the reason I was here, she was the reason I had even been given a choice in the first place. I didn't dare let her down, especially when her words were still just as true as they had been that day so long ago.

"Perhaps you ought to rise for breakfast," Giles said, finally poking his head into the bedchamber when I still hadn't risen.

"I'm not going to breakfast," I said, still staring at the canopy.

"Would you like me to fetch you a tray, then?" Giles asked.

I pressed my eyes closed. What I really wanted was peace and quiet, alone, to think. The last thing I wanted, however, was for Giles to suspect how badly this court had shaken me and write home to Mother about it.