He wasn’t sure what he had to do to be granted their acquiescence, and he was running out of patience.
It didn’t help that he was almost always nursing the twin demons of a terrible hangover, and a monstrous headache. Both were such constant companions that Luka wasn’t sure if one caused the other, or if he instead used one to escape the other.
Now, he had a third problem to add to the list: the anonymous letter that sat on his desk.
Luka looked at the letter again, trying to puzzle out the sender, and more importantly, their intentions.
The paper was white, and thick, which spoke to money. And there was a faint whiff of perfume about the card, which almost felt like tea. Or jasmine. Both things that could be would not be found in the houses of a common tradesperson or a farmer.
The sender was among the landed class. Maybe even nobility.
The words were written in a slanting, curious hand, in dark black ink. He didn’t for a second think he would be able to make out who had sent the letter by comparing the handwriting, the sender would have disguised themselves, he was sure.
The message itself was what held his attention. Ten simple words.
The Crown Prince of Sunvaara is not a good man.
Do not trust him, or his men. He is not worthy of your sister, or indeed, any woman.
The letter had been signed ‘a well wisher’ and had arrived with the morning’s post. Stoffel had assured him he would find out who had delivered it, and he had returned with news just as the butler was delivering his dinner tray to the study.
Luka had invited his aide to have dinner with him, and Stoffel had gratefully agreed.
“The letter came by the usual method, postal carriage,” Stoffel had said, helping himself to bread. He’d looked up at Luka, who had waved at the man to carry on.
“I’m not hungry,” he’d said tersely, sipping at his wine as his stomach soured. “Is there truly no way to learn where this letter came from? No one recalls who delivered it, who paid for it?”
Stoffel had shifted in his seat uneasily. “The postal men say that it turned up in their offices…almost as if by magic.”
Luka had narrowed his eyes then. “A mage teleportation spell? The only ones skilled enough to do that are in the capital.”
“They are the licensed mages, Your Highness,” Stoffel said grimly. “Plenty of unlicensed mages live in border towns, where the rules are not enforced so strictly.”
“Could they even beoutsidethe borders?” Luka had asked, and Stoffel had stared at him, before nodding quickly.
“Your Highness, I think you have it. Everyone knows the Tsar himself arranged this match between Princess Ludmilla and the Crown Prince of Sunvaara. The only ones who could give us a warning about the prince would be someone from Sunvaara.”
“Wasn’t there a broken engagement in his past? He was jilted at the altar, or some such? Find out what happened there, then we will know more.”
Stoffel had nodded, and with his dinner finished, he’d sought the rest of his own bed. Luka, however, had been left to stare into the fire and brood, wondering about the letter, and how he had avoided his younger sister ever since his return.
Ludmilla had written to him since her engagement, informing him of her news—as if he hadn’t known. But then, he knew her better than that. Luka knew that Ludmilla truly loved him as only a younger sister could, that she had loved him without reservation, purely because it was what her soft, pure heart was like.
Almost as soon as he’d become old enough to understand that he was the Tsar’s second child, and all that entailed, he’d realized that the women in his life didn’t truly seehim,Luka Kamenev—they saw him as an extension of his emotionally distant father.
The Crown Princess strove so hard to prove that she was miles better than him at everything because she craved validation from their father, she wanted the Tsar to know that he had chosen his heir well, that she was capable of the great trust he’d placed on her person.
Queen Inessa, on the other hand, wanted political power. As the Second Queen, it was known to everyone that she was the lesser-favored queen, some of the courtiers even whispered that the Tsar was looking for his Third Queen this year, in preparation for when he planned to abdicate and hand over the crown to his heir.
An ambitious woman, Queen Inessa had agreed to marry the Tsar in the hopes of acquiring power of her own, but she had not counted on her power being tied to the Tsar’s affection—or lack of it. She’d assumed that as the Tsar saw her beauty, he would also acknowledge her wit and her intelligence, and he would grant her some amount of power over the kingdom. When that future failed to materialize, Queen Inessa sought to turn her son into a powerful royal in his own right, for if Luka Kamenev was influential, so too was his mother.
Ludmilla had been the only one to grant him her affection without first asking for something from him. Her love was an unasked for gift in his life, one that he quickly found he could not do without. But Luka knew that he had to continue to shower her with love like a doting older brother if he wanted tokeepher affection. It was a transaction, after all.
He remembered how he’d come running to his mother the first time he’d played with Ludmilla in the afternoon, full of tales of howcutehis little sister was, and his mother had shrugged: “Well, of course. The child knows that you are her only brother. She acts like a cute little sister because shewantsyou to love her. The moment she feels she has no use for you, she’ll drop you.”
If his mother had thought to turn him away from Ludmilla, her words had the opposite effect. His sister’s love was all the more precious for being a gift that had been given to him freely. Luka had decided that day that he would do almost anything to keep Ludmilla’s love.
So, he took to the role of a loving older brother with gusto, playing with Ludmilla and helping her with lessons. It helped, that she so obviously preferred him, her half-brother, to her own blood sister, the Crown Princess. It was another little victory that he counted in the tally he marked against Crown Princess Annika, another way he was better.
