The Rider's Reign

  This one’s for my whole family:

  The outlaws, the in-laws,

  The clever cousins, mustachioed uncles, and favorite aunts,

  The adorable and hilarious nieces and nephews,

  I love you all!

  Also by Jessica Day George

  Dragon Slippers

  Dragon Flight

  Dragon Spear

  Tuesdays at the Castle

  Wednesdays in the Tower

  Thursdays with the Crown

  Fridays with the Wizards

  Saturdays at Sea

  Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow

  Princess of the Midnight Ball

  Princess of Glass

  Princess of the Silver Woods

  Silver in the Blood

  The Rose Legacy

  The Queen’s Secret

  CONTENTS

  1. The Battle Begins

  2. Unwelcome Letter

  3. This Bearded Imperial Highness

  4. Into the Forest

  5. Hoofprints

  Florian

  6. Hunting

  7. Dancing with Hostages

  Constantine

  8. Ghosts

  9. A Fast Set

  10. Running the Race

  11. A Note

  12. Nine Days, Then Eight

  Constantine

  13. Unexpected Guests

  14. More Missing Horses

  Florian

  15. Break-In

  16. Unexpected Help

  17. Captured

  Constantine

  18. A Proposition

  19. His Bearded Imperial Majesty

  20. Confessions

  21. Dinner

  22. Begin the Count Again

  Constantine, Florian, and Bluebell

  23. A Subtle Trap

  24. The First Parade

  25. Packing

  Florian

  26. The Second Parade

  27. Flowers and Fire

  28. The Third Parade

  Acknowledgments

  1

  THE BATTLE BEGINS

  “You’ve been preparing for battle all your life,” Anthea whispered. “Why are you nervous?”

  “Battle? This isn’t battle!” Jilly’s whisper was too shrill, and the man in line in front of them turned around to glare.

  He turned back quickly as the enormous oak doors—inlaid with the Kronenhofer Royal Crest in gold—opened. A footman looked at the man with raised eyebrows, and the man stalked out, straightening his coat. The doors closed behind him, and Jilly gulped audibly.

  “Of course this is battle,” Anthea said. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

  “You’ve done your best, Anthea,” Jilly’s mother, Lady Cassandra, said, fussing around them with light fingers. “But there really is no substitute for Rose Academy training.” She stepped back, frowned at her daughter, and then turned to Anthea with a smile. “Miss Miniver’s touch is unmistakable,” she said with approval as she looked over her niece.

  “Ahem,” Jilly said pointedly. “You said I was—”

  “Ready?” Finn asked. He looked as nervous as Jilly.

  “It’s just a battle, it’s just a battle,” Jilly whispered.

  “The drama,” Lady Cassandra said, rolling her eyes. She gave Finn a little push. “You know what to do!”

  Finn threw back his shoulders, holding out his elbows for Anthea and Jilly. The doors opened. Anthea’s stomach dropped to her shoes.

  “The Lord of Leana, Finn magTaran,” the footman’s voice boomed in Anthea’s ear, and she would have shied like a horse without Finn there to keep her steady. “The Lady Anthea Cross-Thornley, and the Lady Jillian Thornley.”

  Anthea froze at the sound of her name. Not Cross, she wanted to whisper to the man. Only Thornley. But he had gone on, oblivious to her distress.

  “The Lady Cassandra Locke,” he announced.

  They entered a glittering ballroom, with crystal chandeliers throwing prisms against the gilded walls. The mellow wood of the floor was so highly polished that it, too, looked like gold. Or at least what you could see of it looked like gold. The room was so full of people that it was difficult to see anything except the black of the men’s suits and the swirling colors of the women’s gowns, plumes bobbing above their heads, jewels flashing.

  And every eye was on Anthea and her companions.

  “We’re breathing, we’re doing this, we’re fine,” Finn said without moving his lips.

  They started down the shallow stairs to the ballroom floor, with Anthea’s gold gauze overdress floating around her raspberry pink silk slip.

  During their journey from Travertine to Kronenhof, Lady Cassandra had gone through all their things and threatened to throw the bulk of them overboard. Jilly and Anthea had prevented that (mostly), but the compromise was to allow Lady Cassandra and her maid to alter their gowns, and to fit them out with some she had brought with her.

  Anthea was quite pleased with her new wardrobe. She had intended on wearing her white silk gown with the red roses to this first court function, but when Jilly and Lady Cassandra pointed out that it made her look a great deal like her own mother, Anthea had thrown it overboard herself.

  Jilly’s gown was a bit more avant-garde than Anthea’s. There were several layers of different fabrics in varying shades of green, and the skirt was all different lengths … some of them scandalously short. Her shoes had green ribbons that crisscrossed all the way up her legs to the knee, and she wore a ring on every finger. When Lady Cassandra had opened her mouth to demand that her daughter change, Jilly had merely arched an eyebrow.

  “The queen told us to make a splash, milady,” she had said, her voice as cool as it always was when speaking to Cassandra, whom she refused to call “Mother.”

  To balance out the splash Jilly was making, Anthea and Finn were dressed in the latest and most correct fashions. Anthea’s gown was the newest cut from Travertine, and Finn looked very uncomfortable in a stiff black tuxedo. He had tried to wear the formal kilt and jacket he had brought from home, but Lady Cassandra had screamed in feigned horror at the thought of him “parading about like a barbarian with his legs on display.”

  She did, however, recommend that he keep his kilt and jacket pressed and ready because there was a “time and place for that sort of thing.” Neither Jilly nor Anthea had yet learned what that time and place might be, but Anthea, for one, was very curious.

  They passed between the dancers, who had stopped moving to watch them. Anthea tried to walk gracefully, but with confidence, as they headed toward the dais on the far side of the room. Jilly, naturally, let her silver heels strike the floor in time to the music that was still playing despite the disinterest in dancing. Anthea knew that Jilly was nervous, but a nervous Jilly was much more likely to be outrageous. Lady Cassandra, despite having been absent from her daughter’s life since Jilly was a baby, seemed to know it, too.

  “Just keep walking and smiling,” came the whisper from behind them. “Walking and smiling!”

  At last they reached the dais. Anthea felt a rush of relief pass through her when she saw who was on it. Or rather, who wasn’t on it. Her mother was nowhere to be seen, and for that Anthea sent up a little prayer of gratitude.

  In the three days since they had arrived in Kronenhof, they had mostly sat in the beautiful suite they had been given, finishing their new wardrobes in between going down to the hastily cleaned garden shed where their horses were being kept. When Anthea had first heard that the emperor had designated a shed for their use, she had been highly offended, and also baffled that the Kronenhofer thought you could keep five large animals in a shed at all.

  But then she had seen the palace, or schloss, or fortress, or w
hatever the emperor wanted to call it. Queen Josephine’s beloved Bell Hyde would fit in the Empress’s Wing of Schloss Kronen. The gardens went on for miles and even contained fake ruins where the old emperor had kept a couple of elderly servants who posed as mad wizards to entertain guests. This garden shed was very nearly the size of the stable at the Last Farm.

  Bringing her mind back to the present before people noticed her woolgathering, Anthea let go of Finn’s arm and curtsied. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Finn bow and Jilly curtsy. She kept her knees bent and her eyes lowered until she heard the emperor’s gruff command to “Rise!”

  She thought he made them stay down just a hair too long. Miss Miniver had warned her about this; according to the headmistress it was something weak leaders did to prove their power.

  She put on exactly the degree of smile that Miss Miniver thought appropriate when greeting someone you disliked but who was nonetheless higher ranking. Jilly would have scoffed at such information being called “education” … in point of fact, Anthea had rather thought it useless at the time herself. But now here they were, and Miss Miniver’s schooling was just what was needed.

  Anthea kept her eyes demurely lowered and used the concealment of her tastefully darkened lashes to observe the emperor and his family. In the meantime, Lady Cassandra made her curtsy and reminded the emperor of the summer she had spent at his court with the old queen, King Gareth’s mother, Juliane.

  Emperor Wilhelm the Third of Kronenhof was an imposing man. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had been lauded for his heroics in the Bremeni uprising in his youth, and he had kept up a soldier’s regimen. His thick chest was muscular beneath his heavily decorated coat, and his scarlet sash was tied around a trim waist. Over the sash was a sword belt—not an ornamental one, but a well-oiled and well-worn belt, from which hung an equally serviceable scabbard holding a heavy saber. As was the Kronenhof custom, he wore no crown, which showed to advantage his thick, wavy iron-gray hair.

  Finn made a brief speech about how generous the emperor had been in making them feel welcome. He thanked him for the accommodations for their horses, and invited the emperor to meet the horses at his earliest convenience.

  While this was happening, Anthea stole a look at the rest of the group on the dais. There was just one woman, a tall ivory-skinned blonde barely older than Anthea—Princess Wilhelmina, the only daughter of Emperor Wilhelm. She wore a blue gown draped with an overdress of ivory lace that Anthea was certain was antique … worth more than the pearls around the princess’s neck and dangling from her ears.

  There were two others on the dais, young men in dress uniforms with nearly as many medals as the emperor. Neither of them looked old enough to be in the army at all, let alone have achieved such honors. Anthea knew that the emperor had a son her age, the Imperial Crown Prince Fritz, and guessed from his pale coloring, similar to Wilhelmina’s, that he was the young man on the emperor’s left. The other, standing slightly behind the others, was the one who really piqued her curiosity. Because, although he wore the same green uniform as the prince and they were much the same height, he was plainly Kadiji, with even darker skin and more tightly curled hair than Anthea’s friend Keth … but then, Keth’s mother was Leanan.

  The emperor had long been dangling the idea of an alliance between his son and one of the Coronami princesses; Anthea supposed he had done the same thing with countries with eligible princes for his daughter. But if the young Kadiji was there to court Princess Wilhelmina, why was he wearing a Kronenhofer uniform?

  Lady Cassandra was done introducing them, and Finn was done thanking the emperor for his hospitality both for their people and their horses. The mention of the horses made everyone on the dais perk up.

  “I must confess I’ve taken a peep at them,” the Imperial Heir said. “Enormous beasts! So bizarre that you sit on them!”

  “I’d rather die,” Princess Wilhelmina drawled. “They probably get hair and dirt all over your gowns.” She raked Anthea and Jilly with her eyes, pointedly checking their skirts for filth.

  “We don’t wear gowns when we ride,” Jilly drawled right back. “Trousers are so much more convenient.”

  There were gasps from the ladies standing nearby to eavesdrop. Anthea had been worried that no one at the court would speak Coronami. She had studied Kronenhofer, but read it more fluently than she spoke it. That wouldn’t be a problem, it seemed. Besides which, the emperor barely had an accent. His children sounded as though they had been raised in Travertine.

  “I would love to see you ride, Lady Jillian,” the prince said. He didn’t look like he thought she had filth on her skirts.

  “We will all watch you ride,” the emperor said. “We will all admire your horses and witness your bond with them.”

  The princess snorted.

  “Silly fairy tales,” she muttered in Kronenhofer.

  The emperor raised a hand, silencing her. The princess sulked, and gave Anthea a glare as though she were at fault.

  “We will visit you and your beasts tomorrow morning,” he announced. “You may enjoy yourselves now.”

  Dismissed, Anthea turned away from the dais. Plenty of guests were still staring at them, but the music hadn’t stopped and people were dancing again. Finn led them to one of the small tables, and Lady Cassandra sat down.

  “That went very well,” she said. She nodded in satisfaction. “Now—”

  “I’m going to get food,” Jilly said.

  “I was too nervous to eat before,” Finn admitted. “But I’m starving.”

  “Jillian,” Lady Cassandra began.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get enough for the whole table,” Jilly said, and left.

  Anthea moved to sit when Lady Cassandra said, “Don’t be ridiculous. You must dance.”

  Anthea looked around.

  “With Finn,” Lady Cassandra said with a sigh. “But remember, should anyone else ask you …?”

  “I must dance with them or sit out the rest of the night,” Anthea recited.

  “What, really?” Finn said. “What if he’s … I don’t know … a murderer or something?”

  “Murderers don’t attend balls,” Lady Cassandra said severely.

  “Shall we?”

  Lady Cassandra had said “murderers” a trifle too loudly. Chaperones at the nearby tables were turning to look. Anthea quickly led Finn onto the dance floor.

  “I know how to dance,” Finn muttered.

  “You do now,” Anthea said.

  She was trying to joke, but it came out too sharp. They had spent hours on the boat learning to dance—well, Anthea already knew how, and had been enlisted by Lady Cassandra to teach Finn and Jilly. Jilly was prone to throwing in her own steps and wild arm movements. Finn was a quick learner, but he couldn’t seem to get rid of the strained expression on his face.

  Anthea was still so nervous, and because Finn looked to be in actual pain as he led her into the figures of the dance, she burst out laughing.

  Finn froze, but Anthea kept him moving. His surprise kept her laughing, although much more demurely. One benefit was that it changed his expression from wooden intensity to mere confusion.

  She let out another little giggle. “It’s just … your face!”

  “I can’t help it!” Finn said through gritted teeth that almost looked like a smile. “I have this fear that if I lose count or turn the wrong way, they’ll have me killed!”

  “Who will?”

  “Lady Cassandra, for starters!”

  Anthea laughed outright again. Finn expertly swung her around the couple on their left, and they began the long promenade down the middle of the floor, with the other dancers lined up on each side, clapping in time.

  “See!” Anthea spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “You can do this!”

  “Did you sneak some champagne?”

  “I didn’t,” Anthea said, her smile fading in indignation. “I think I’m just giddy!”

  “From the dancing?”

 
Anthea felt a hot flush rise up her cheeks. They were standing across from each other now, waiting for the next couple to make their way down the line. Finn could clearly see her blush, and she could hardly shout across to him that it wasn’t his hands holding hers that was causing her to blush.

  They finally rejoined and moved into smaller eight-hand circles, and Anthea could explain. Her blush had faded by then, fortunately.

  “I’m just happy because we did it,” Anthea said. “We met the emperor! He wants us to show him our horses! That’s all good news, right?”

  “We still have to pretend that he doesn’t know about horses, and doesn’t know your mother,” Finn whispered when the dance allowed them to move closer together.

  “And pretend they didn’t kidnap Meg,” Anthea agreed, her smile fading further.

  They had spent the journey, when not practicing dances or being fitted for new clothes, rehearsing their story about Princess Margaret. Anthea’s mother, Genevia, had kidnapped Meg and half a dozen horses, destroying a village in the process. Even worse: one of the horses was Constantine, the herd stallion and king of the horses. They suspected that Genevia had made a deal with the emperor, who had supplied her with soldiers and a monstrous machine called a schutzer-something— an armored car with an enormous gun mounted on the front.

  In order to avoid a war, Anthea and her companions had to pretend they knew nothing of this, and to find Meg and the horses as quickly and quietly as possible. The official word from Coronam was that Meg had gone on a holiday with some feckless friends, and Lady Cassandra, Jilly, and Anthea were being sent as belated chaperones. Finn was originally to be their bodyguard, but the moment he had set foot on Kronenhofer soil, the emissary from the emperor had given Finn the title “Lord of Leana.”

  So now he was an ambassador from his “cousin” Queen Josephine. They were likely distantly related, but neither the queen nor Finn knew how. Fortunately, no one had asked yet. In fact, they had barely spoken to anyone at all.

  The servants came and went silently, bringing clean towels and trays of food, and demonstrating the ornate bathroom taps. Groundskeepers showed them where to put the horses. A footman came with a tray bearing the invitation to this ball, but like the others he said nothing. It was eerie how silent they were, how stone-faced.