Untouched Queen By Royal Command

‘You have my permission to make your living quarters habitable,’ he said finally. ‘And Sera?’

She waited.

‘Don’t ever walk the halls of my palace in your ancient slave uniform again.’

* * *

The King’s secretary had gone by the time Sera arrived back in the quarters she’d claimed as her own. She held her head high as she entered, never mind that the chill in the air and the ice in the King’s eyes had turned her skin to gooseflesh. She wouldn’t cry, she never had—not even at her mother’s funeral—but the gigantic task of readying this space for use and earning Augustus of Arun’s trust, and, yes, finding him a wife, was daunting enough to make her smile falter and her shoulders droop as she stared around at her new home.

Lianthe and the guards had already begun pulling covers off the furnishings and for that she would be grateful. She wasn’t alone in this. Other people had faith in her abilities.

‘I’ve already sent for cleaning equipment and linens,’ Lianthe said when she saw her. ‘Did you find him again?’

‘I did.’

‘And?’

‘He’s a funny guy. He’s also hard as nails underneath, doesn’t like not getting his own way and he’s going to be hell on my sense of self-worth.’

‘We knew this wasn’t going to be an easy sell. I’m sure you’ll come to a greater understanding of each other eventually.’

‘I’m glad someone’s sure,’ she murmured.

‘And what did he have to say about securing a falconer to help get rid of our feathered friends?’

‘Oh, that?’ She’d forgotten about that. ‘He said yes.’

CHAPTER TWO (#u884fe883-dc6a-582f-af1e-f7a4119c70a0)

SIX DAYS LATER, Augustus was no closer to a solution when it came to removing his unwanted gift from the palace. He’d kept his distance, stuck to his routine and tried to stay immune to the whispers of the staff as word got around that the palace’s pleasure rooms were being refurbished. Ladies Sera and Lianthe had engaged cleaning staff and craftspeople to help with the repairs. Stonemasons had been brought in. Electricity had been restored. Structural engineers had been and gone, proclaiming the glass-domed roof still fit for purpose, with only minor repair required.

Tomas the falconer had come for the owls and brought King Casimir of Byzenmaach’s sister Claudia with him. Apparently Sera and Claudia had gone to school together. Sera had prepared a lavish dinner for them that had gone on for hours. They’d caught up on each other’s lives. Swapped stories. Augustus had been invited.

He hadn’t attended.

Whispers turned into rumours, each one more fanciful than the rest.

The Lady Sera was a sorceress, a witch, an enchantress and his apparent downfall. Her eyes were, variously, the softest dove-grey and as kind as an angel’s or as bleak as the winter sky and hard as stone. She and her guards danced with swords beneath the dome, and splattered reflected sunlight across the walls with uncanny precision, so the cleaners said. She’d had the trapeze taken down only to replace it with another, and this time the trapeze fluttered with silks that fell to the floor, his secretary told him.

Silks she climbed up and down as if they were steps.

Yesterday, a convoy of heavily guarded trucks had arrived from the north and requested entry, sending palace security into a spin and Augustus into a rare temper. Don’t get too comfortable, he’d said. He would find a way to undo this, he’d said. They knew he was working on it. They had no need for deliveries full of priceless artworks only ever revealed when a courtesan of the High Reaches was in residence at the palace.

Even the palace walls were buzzing.

Augustus’s father, former King and still an advisor to the throne, had been no help. He’d been married with two young children by the time he’d reached thirty and no courtesan of the High Reaches had ever come to him. There was no precedent for getting rid of one that didn’t directly relate to the rules of the accord. A courtesan, once bestowed, could be removed once a wife and heir had been secured and not before. She could be sent elsewhere at the King’s bidding but would still retain full ownership…no, not ownership, access…full access to her quarters in the palace.

She had the right to refuse entrance to all but him. She had the right to entertain there but the guest list had to be approved by him. He’d asked for more details when it came to Sera Boreas’s background and education and an information file had landed on his desk this morning. She’d studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford. She’d taken music lessons in St Petersburg. Dance lessons with members of the National Ballet company of China. Learned martial arts from the monks of the High Reaches. Her origins were shrouded in mystery. Her mother had kept the company of high ranking politicians and dignitaries the world over. Her mother had been a companion, a facilitator, often providing neutral ground where those from opposing political persuasions could meet. Lianthe of the High Reaches might just be her grandmother but that had yet to be verified. The more he read, the less real she became to him.

For all her contacts and endless qualifications, he still didn’t know what she did except in the vaguest terms.

In the last year alone, and as the youngest representative of the Order of the Kite, she’d graced the dining tables of dozens of world leaders and people of influence. Her reach was truly astonishing.

And he was currently keeping her in the equivalent of his basement.

He needed to talk with her at the very least.

And damn but he needed another woman’s opinion.

And then his intercom flashed.

‘Your sister’s on the phone,’ his well-worn secretary said.

‘Put her through,’ he murmured. Problem solved.

‘Augustus, I know you’re pining for me, but did you seriously buy a cat?’

‘I—what?’ Not exactly where his head had been at. Augustus scowled, and not just because his sister’s recent marriage had left his palace without a social organiser and him with no clue as to how to find a replacement equally dedicated to the role. ‘Who told you that? Theo?’

‘He told me I needed to phone you because he’d heard rumours you were all lonely and had acquired a pet. He also mentioned something about a cat. Is it fluffy? Does it pounce? Has it conquered cucumbers yet?’

Theo, King of Liesendaach and neighbouring monarch, was Moriana’s new husband. Theo, King of sly manoeuvres, knew exactly what kind of cat Augustus had bought. ‘Moriana, let’s get something clear. I am not a lonely cat king. I bought a catamaran. An oceangoing, racing catamaran.’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Figures. In that case, I have no idea why Theo was so insistent I phone you this morning. We’ve just returned from visiting Cas and Ana in the Byzenmaach mountains and, by the way, I will never tire of the views from that stronghold. More to the point, I got on well with Cas’s new bride and his newfound daughter. There’s hope for me yet. They did ask me why they hadn’t received an invite to your Winter Solstice ball. Strangely, I haven’t received my invitation yet either. I left very comprehensive instructions.’

Moriana was the Queen of Checklists. He had no doubt there would be a binder full of colour-coded instructions sitting on a table somewhere. ‘Why isn’t Marguerite on top of this?’ his sister scolded.

‘She didn’t work out.’

Silence from his sister, the kind of silence that meant she was valiantly trying to keep her opinions to herself. He gave it three, two, one…

‘Augustus, you can’t keep firing social secretaries after they’ve been in the role for two weeks!’

‘I can if they’re selling palace information to the press,’ he said grimly.

‘Oh.’

‘Yes. Oh. There’s a new assistant starting Monday. Meanwhile, what do you know about the Order of the Kite?’

‘You mean the courtesans?’

‘So you do know something about them.’

‘I know they existed centuries ago. They were kept in our round room. Like pets.’ Moriana paused, and Augustus waited for her to put Theo’s comment about him having a pet together with his question and come up with a clue, but she didn’t. ‘There are some costumes in the collection here that were reputedly worn by them.’ Moriana was warming to her theme. ‘Gorgeous things. I wouldn’t call them gowns exactly—more like adventurous bedwear. The leather one came with a collection of whips.’

‘Whips.’ No guesses needed as to how some of those courtesans of old acquired their exalted levels of influence. Augustus put two fingers to his temple and closed his eyes, a habit he’d picked up from his secretary, or maybe the old man had picked it up from him. ‘So what else do you know about them? Anything from this day and age?’

‘These days they’re the stuff of legend. There’s a children’s book in the nursery about them, assuming it’s still there. Seven-year-old girl, clever and pretty, gets ripped from the arms of her unloving family and taken to a palace in the sky to learn how to dance and fight and be a spy. Then she meets a King from the Lower Reaches and spies for him and he falls in love with her and they live happily ever after. Ignore the bit where she poisons his barren wife. You should never believe everything you read.’