Was it true? Were the reports about her father true? How could one man destroy an entire country? Were the Warriors coming to Silvergard to exact punishment? Her father had spoken of them on their visits to Predaria.
Caleb and his Warriors had waged war on Baltrasard’s nobles beyond the Great Plains. They were said to be savage and merciless men who cried out to the heavens before they killed. They wore black around their eyes and their blades were long and razor sharp. They didn’t fight to take over the kingdom, but against any noble caught in illegal trade or sale of humans or anything rare. Some of the nobles had been hacked to pieces, others were taken to Predaria’s prison and never seen again. The Warriors had also been known to kill at least a hundred of the hated Catchers a year.
The princess thought they fought for noble causes and wondered why her father didn’t support them.
The Warriors fascinated her. Though she would never admit it to her father. Still, who appointed the commander Caleb guardian and keeper of Predaria and gave him the keys to the prison? How did he and his men survive the sun? There were other dangerous groups on the plains, but the Warriors fought battles and were sustained enough to travel and do it. They fought men who had committed crimes, though Caleb was said to be called the King of Predaria—a crime he would answer for should her father catch him. Treason was punishable by death.
Willow almost hoped her father didn’t catch the commander.
She shifted her weight and the floor creaked. She closed her eyes and swore under her breath as her father looked her way.
“Willomenia! I told you to pack your things!”
She hurried to the stairs and up to her room.
They were leaving. She wanted to jump with joy as she entered her room and shut the door. She hated Predaria. Especially after the cliffs outside had taken her mother. Though her father was king here, it was too arid and hot, not to mention dangerous to live, so she lived in Beldar with her father and their servants. Why did they have to come here for three months out of the year anyway? Everything here was dead. Every day was over a hundred degrees.
Still, she thought it better than living in the freezing tundra of Lionese with Oscar d’leanard, heir to the throne of Lionese, whom her father advised her three days ago, was now her betrothed. She fell onto her bed and pounded her fists into the mink coverlet thrown over her downy mattress.
She’d met the prince twice. He was rough and raw and overly hairy, but he had an army of fifty thousand men. Her father wanted the union. Willow did not. She would never love Oscar d’leanard or his home in the northern mountains. Lionese was as cold as Predaria was hot. She wasn’t the one who made the promise to take him for a husband, so why should she have to honor that promise? Besides, she was far too genteel to spend the rest of her life bound to a creature that frothed at the mouth whenever he clapped eyes on her.
She wanted to stay in their home in Beldar. There, the weather was perfect, and she could have a bath whenever she wanted one. She could sit under the trees and listen to a waterfall nearby, and she didn’t have to wear a dozen different lotions on her skin to protect it whenever she went outside.
Her father would probably never speak to her again after the way she had defied him these last few days about Oscar, but why should she care? She was the one who was angry. She was the one being sold off to a hairy ogre, not her father.
Well, she thought, if she had to live in Oscar’s ice castle, she could at least wear some of her ermine and sable gowns.
She left the comfort her canopied bed and finished packing her things.
When she was done, she went to stand by the window. It was too dark to see out, so she studied her reflection in the glass, turning for a side view as well. She was getting thinner. She hadn’t been able to eat since her nineteenth birthday three days ago when her father handed her over to the beast of Lionese.
She ran her fingers over her belly, covered in her high-waisted wide, silk pants and