The Princess Tied Read online

  The

  PRINCESS TIED

  Cari Silverwood

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  RULED

  DARK MONSTER FANTASY

  BEAST HORDE TRILOGY

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  About Cari Silverwood

  Also by Cari Silverwood

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  This story could start with Xander and Princess Po falling in love, but the smut, the kidnapping, and the action are more interesting,

  so let’s begin…

  Here.

  ears of his mount twitched as hooded soldiers spilled onto the road before him and his brother, John. They were on their way to the capital of Bitzocoin and this close to the city, Xander would never have expected an ambush. Instead of being alert, he’d been wondering how to tell his beloved bro that he had actually fallen in love with a woman.

  Since she was infuriating, bratty, and a princess, he felt sure he would win John over to also loving her, eventually…after they had both spanked her and bedded her. He’d been smiling at that thought.

  Then this happened. Inconvenient. The wedding plans needed finalizing.

  Xander frowned at the soldiers.

  Yet ambush this was—the many bows raised and pointed their way made that clear.

  For a moment longer, he kept his hands on the reins to quieten the skittish mare, then he raised them to show he was not resisting. “What is this?”

  Stating who he was could wait. In a week he was to marry Princess Pollianna, but that status could get him killed if these were the wrong sort of enemies.

  He twitched his gaze over to John, wondering at the calmness his brother showed, yet knowing that John might burst into action at any second. Most likely he could dispose of them all and not suffer a scratch.

  Then a man spoke, “Hold!” A single word, and yet a strange expression melted over John’s face. He was no longer an alert, killing machine.

  Who was this man who could disarm John with one word?

  As he turned in the saddle to see the newcomer, Xander found the locket at his neck, and wrapped his hand about it. It was a treasured gift from Po.

  Something bad was about to happen. The chill in his bones told him so.

  A lanky man in flowing robe and coat strode among the hooded, silent soldiers—two heads taller than most of them. Though his concentration fell on this stranger, Xander glimpsed a malevolent writhing within some of the hoods.

  What horror lay within those?

  And who was this over-confident man?

  “I am the Storyteller,” the man said, smiling. “And you will be coming with me on a long journey, Xander of Guerre. Your brother, however, I have no use for. Him, I will send to Hell.”

  * * * * *

  The last chunks of dirt fell away above, letting in a shine of light, blinding him as he forged upward and squirmed from the tunnel to Hell. John pushed all the way out and straightened to his full height. Clods of earth and paving stones slid from his shoulders. He looked about, squinting, spitting out soil, brushing the brown from his dark shirt. A few stray embers and ash flakes puffed away to nothingness in the drab rays illuminating this alley.

  He gave a last shake, like a dog that has just left the water, only he had left a whole pile of dead demons down there, not water.

  The Storyteller had underestimated him. Most did.

  This was a street off Fleur Parade, the main street of Grand Poncifer, capital of the kingdom of Bitzocoin. It was a kingdom about to become a queendom, unless his dates were off? A strange intuition slash feeling, slash certainty told him this was the same day he’d been thrown into Hell.

  A week before the coronation.

  He needed to find out for sure.

  No one had entered this ramshackle alleyway while he’d stood recovering his bearings and becoming definitely human. Not that he’d ever been anything but human.

  Considering where he had been, it was a good point to raise.

  John rolled his shoulders, pleased at the familiar shift of heavy muscle beneath his thick riding coat. He reached into a pocket and his round-lensed spectacles met his fingers. Thanks be. Everything was where it once was—muscles, spectacles, and hopefully every other essential part.

  He raised the glasses to hitch the curled ends over his ears and saw what he did not wish to see.

  Flames. Flames reflected in the lenses, flickering and flaring.

  “Damn. What did you do to me, Storyteller?” He needed to get moving so as to find his brother, Xander, likely still in the clutches of that long tall piece of evil, but first he had to know what had become of himself.

  The words from the Storyteller reverberated in memory.

  You are heartless, a man of straw. Do you feel guilt when you kill, John of Geurre? No, you do not. I cast you to Hell then. I send you to burn there, and I rename you John the Wickerman. Burn and die.

  He swallowed the renewed blows those words dealt him. He was heartless. He knew this. He had known it for a very long time.

  The flames flickered still, dancing in the glass lenses. Before, his lack of guilt had been invisible, now his eyes showed his damnation. He put a hand to his chest, over where his heart should be, and then he felt for a pulse at his wrist. There was nothing except for, perhaps, a crackle and a flair of heat under his fingers.

  He did not dare to unbutton his gray shirt and look.

  Many things were unknown to him. The world was vast and full of magics, but to discover that Hell was truly a place? Chalk that up to experience. He didn’t intend to revisit it anytime soon.

  John muttered a curse then settled the spectacles into place. After a few breaths, he strode forth into the brighter light and colors, into the busy street and the noise.

  People bawled out the price of goods, manned carts, waltzed into shops, kissed their girls, held hands, strolled. Dogs darted through the legs and skirts. Horses and carts and coaches clopped and rolled past. Multi-colored balloons bobbed on long strings above a street-wide banner announcing a coming food festival. Grand Poncifer hustled and bustled, and it did so far more extravagantly than it had a year ago. The new financial advisor was supposedly the reason for this resurgence of fortune.

  Though the king was dead, having fallen while mountain climbing, his queen had died in childbirth, so that child was next in line to the throne of Bitzocoin. Princess Pollianna, nicknamed Po, smartest royal ever, would soon be crowned queen. The required year of mourning was over, and someone had grabbed his brother.

  Did they wish to stall the coronation? He did not know.

  If he did know, he would also know where they had taken him. Wouldn’t he? John rubbed his brow as a headache throbbed into being.

  He liked to know.

  Not knowing led to bad things. People dying. Various and sundry unwanted side-effects.

  The princess would have detectives to do her bidding and other smart people.

  First stop, his spectacle maker, who
se shop was on the way to the palace. Second stop, the palace.

  A seated man rustled a newssheet in his face. He seized the man’s wrist and stared at the dateline below the masthead of the paper.

  Monday the third.

  “Three bitz!” offered the news seller.

  “No thanks. I’m good.”

  John weaved through the thickening crowd. He was correct. This was, somehow and strangely, the same day as the ambush. He and his brother had been riding from their estate. They had reached the outskirts of the capital when a band of hooded soldiers poured from the trees lining the road. Though not in uniform, their actions said trained soldiers.

  Held at sword and arrow point, he and Xander had watched as a tall man threaded through the ranks of their attackers. He had counted to one hundred, as he always did since puberty, tamping down his natural murderous impulses. That had been a mistake.

  “I am the Storyteller,” the stranger said, and the words were stamped with capitals.

  After which… John came to a halt, his boot heels grinding on the stone of the street beneath. After that point in the ambush affair, he recalled little more than the words condemning him.

  If Xander was gone, the wedding and coronation would be difficult, since he was supposed to marry Princess Po. Their assailants would not be hanging about. They would be fleeing the country.

  Clearly, he should not try to thwart the Storyteller by himself, no matter his singularly great skill at killing.

  Yes. Spectacle-maker, first, to order a new pair like the glasses on his nose, ones that blocked out the flames. The suspicious and startled looks he was getting from those passing by would otherwise become tiresome. After which, he would visit the princess and tell her of his kidnapped brother.

  Organize a rescue party. Pick up his new spectacles. Set out post haste with the armed party arranged by Princess Po, and some detectives, if that was possible to arrange at short notice. Catch and kill said Storyteller. Get back his brother. Watch the wedding. Reap the benefits when his bro took over the kingdom.

  Excellent plan.

  A round, dirty fluff-ball mutt bounded into view and circled him making growling noises, pausing in its circumnavigation to sniff the knee of his black pants. Despite his several discouraging words, it followed him and was still bounding at his heels when he reached the gatehouse of the palace grounds. He now wore a pair of very dark spectacles. The spectacle maker had fortuitously possessed some pre-ground dark glass and had popped the lenses into place on the spot.

  The guards refused him entry.

  “But I am the brother of the groom. I am John—” His throat seized up, and the next words were not his, well, not exactly his, even though he did speak them. “… the Wickerman.”

  “No,” they repeated, adjusting their grips on their pikes while frowning.

  Their bright red-and-white uniforms bounced glare off his eyeballs, despite his new lenses.

  John took a few steps backward. Coarse hair brushed his ankles and pants legs—the fluff ball was down there.

  The tall metal gates with the spear-shaped finials at the top remained shut. The road beyond them led straight to the palace itself, that monstrosity of turreted towers, white walls, and sky-scraping brickwork. The roofing tiles of those turrets were purple.

  The designer should have been knifed in the kidneys, in John’s subtle opinion.

  The fluff ball squeaked up at him then ruffed. He glanced down and watched as it sniffed the same place on his pants.

  “You’re right. We need to get in there.” Somehow this mutt had joined him, and he hadn’t even asked for applications. “I suppose I could just kill my way in?”

  Ruff cocked his head.

  And… he wasn’t quite sure Ruff was even a he. Far too much hair. Too scruffy.

  “Correct, the princess would not like that, but stuff her. Even if my bro wanted to really stuff her, with his sausage.”

  He walked a little further from the gatehouse. Ruff followed. So much hair there, he would swear he couldn’t see its legs move. Or any paws. The creature sort of glided, and occasionally it bounced.

  “Did you say love?” It hadn’t but he wanted to argue. “True love? Hah! She’s an uptight, too clever, snooty piece of the noble class…”

  Ruff whined at him.

  “Yes, I am a member of the nobility too. But poor and useless at it.”

  Kill them all?

  The guards looked nervous and shuffled their feet and pikes.

  Calm. Calm. John counted to one hundred.

  There really was no time to waste. His brother was in dire trouble.

  And so, he, THE HERO took a deep breath, and another one, then he killed his way in. To his credit, he did a detour around the gate guards. Sometimes, he found it distasteful to kill people he knew.

  Okay, scratch that dream.

  He turned, looked the gate guards up and down, slowly, so they knew he was not a man to be rushed. “Who do I have to speak with to get a pass?” he asked them.

  “The advisor to the realm and ex-chancellor of the exchequer,” the left-hand one said, tersely. “He’s down the street. The big red building. If you hurry, he might not have left for home yet.”

  “Thank you.” John bowed.

  He hurried, and the man was indeed about to leave, but thirty minutes later he was back at the gate with a pass, then he was through and walking down that road, up the stairs, and into the palace. Passed from guard to valet to guard to maid to guard, he was patient. By the time he was ushered through a door into a small foyer, he had counted to one hundred a hundred times. At some point, probably by the front steps, Ruff had vanished.

  If he and Xander had been identical twins, he might have tricked his way in, instead of this crap.

  “This is the princess’s study, sir.” The maid opened the double doors then stayed in the entrance, with her back to the frame, her hands folded meekly to her front. Two guards, armed with swords, stood at attention on either side of the door.

  John went through. The princess sat in a window seat, half a mile across the room.

  The corridors of the palace he’d travelled were quiet, with not a scream to be heard. A pity. His insides were gnawing at themselves in worry over Xander. His hand itched for the sword and daggers he’d had to leave with the majordomo at the palace entrance.

  He stalked across, his tread silent on the thick rugs.

  The day drew to a close. The shadows grew long. The high white curtains concealing the windows leading to a balcony were partially closed but swayed in a breeze. The ceiling in here was of average height, for royalty. Fall while plastering it, and you would break your neck. No mold was evident, nor peeling paint, unlike at the Geurre manor.

  The princess sat reading by lamplight and the last of the sun, dressed in a green silk gown that would suit a banquet. The desk a few feet from her toes was covered in books, as was the floor in between. Several of the tomes appeared to feature mathematics.

  John scowled.

  How ridiculous was this? How had she not noticed him? Was he now invisible?

  John stamped his boot. “I have a brother to find and rescue. Your future husband.”

  “I know you’re there. Here.” She closed her book, after placing a bookmark inside it, one with a pretty tassel. “Where is he? Is he in danger?”

  Through her eyes had widened, and she seemed startled, a mask of statesmanship fell over her face. A princess was trained in diplomacy and deception, as well as how to rule in general. It still irked him. Surely, she should have gasped, at least once?

  True love? He was tempted to laugh.

  He’d never before thought Xander gullible.

  “Yes, I believe so. We need to send out scouts and assemble a force to reckon with his kidnappers—a sizeable force, equipped with the best mounts, your best soldiers, and clever people. And probably you should scour the harbor for foreign ships, the city for suspicious men, and so on.”

  She blinked a
t him, and said in a steady if husky voice, “First. Tell me what has happened.”

  Even the perfect curls of her red hair annoyed him… those slim wrists, the heave of her bosom, the sculpted shape of her red lips. How dare she have seduced his bro.

  Of course they had been going to remove her from power and send her to a small padded room to do embroidery, once the throne was secure.

  Family was family, and she was merely… sexy, beddable, and powerful.

  Providing the bed was first swept for dangerous things like math books. His lip curled.

  He told her what had happened, though the Storyteller wasn’t mentioned by name, because his name was not going to help, and his trip to Hell became merely being felled and knocked unconscious. She sat for a while, breathing a little harder than seemed normal.

  “I will call my hussars and scouts to search the kingdom for this group of ruffians.”

  “And detectives?”

  “Yes, of course. Detectives. Please, you may wait outside while this is done.”

  John frowned. He’d expected more passion, less serenity, and a bit of female squeaking or wailing.

  Even so, he waited, being fed tea and cakes while the scouts galloped to the edges of this smallish kingdom, and sent semaphore messages to the outermost furthest outposts, while ships were boarded and searched, and foreigners questioned, or so he was informed. While detectives, did detectiving too.

  He slept in a small room he was offered, wishing he were out there galloping and looking, yet knowing he must wait. He could not match the resources of the kingdom.

  The next afternoon, late, he was recalled to Princess Po. She was outside on the balcony, where a wind had risen to tease her hair from its bun, fluttering strands of scarlet sideways, wrapping them over her full lips, where they stuck as if entranced by her.

  No wonder. He envied that hair.

  How he could be in lust when his brother was missing?

  He was a man, she was attractive, if soulless. It was nothing more.

  Since he was heartless, they were a match. He smiled grimly as he listened to her proclaim the scouts and other soldiers and detectives had come up with nothing—no trace of a path, no way to tell where Xander had gone.