A Jewel for Royals. Морган Райс

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СКАЧАТЬ tutors before. What did they tutor you in? What did they tutor you to become?”

      Again, Sophia had the sense of her cousin trying to protect her from her brother.

      “They taught me languages and politics, fighting, and at least the beginnings of how to use the talents we all have,” Lucas explained.

      “They taught you how to be a king in waiting?” Jan asked.

      Now Sophia understood some of his worry. He thought Lucas was there to try to push her aside. Honestly though, she suspected her cousin was more worried than she was. It wasn’t as though she had asked to be called the heir to the throne of the Dowager’s kingdom.

      “You think I’m here to claim the throne?” Lucas asked. He shook his head. “They taught me to be a noble, as best they could. They also taught me that there is nothing more important than family. Nothing. It’s why I came.”

      Sophia could feel his sincerity even if Jan couldn’t. It was enough for her – more than enough. It helped her to feel… safe. She and Kate had relied on one another for so long. Now, there was her extended collection of cousins, her uncle… and a brother. Sophia couldn’t say how much that felt as though her world had expanded.

      The only thing that would make it better was Sebastian being there. That absence felt like a hole in the world that couldn’t be filled.

      “So,” Lucas said. “The father of your child is the son of the woman who ordered our parents killed?”

      “You think that makes things too complicated?” Sophia asked.

      Lucas gave a kind of half-shrug. “Complicated, yes. Too complicated? That’s for you to say. Why is he not here?”

      “I don’t know,” Sophia admitted. “I wish he was.”

      At last, they arrived at the castle, moving through it to the hall. News of Lucas’s arrival must have spread ahead of them, because all the cousins were there outside the hall, even Rika, who had a bandage masking the injury to her face she had received defending Sophia. Sophia went over to her first, taking her hands.

      “Are you all right?” she asked.

      “Are you?” Rika countered. “Is the baby?”

      “Everything’s fine,” Sophia assured her. She looked around. “Is Kate here?”

      Ulf shook his head. “Frig and I haven’t seen her today.”

      Hans coughed. “We can’t wait. We need to go in. Father is waiting.”

      He made it sound serious, but then, Sophia could remember what it had been like when she arrived there, and how cautious people had been with her. In Ishjemme, they were careful about people claiming to be one of their own. Sophia felt almost as nervous standing there waiting for the doors to open as she had the first time, when it had been her claiming her heritage.

      Lars Skyddar stood in front of the ducal seat, waiting for them with a serious expression as if ready to receive an ambassador. Sophia kept her hand interlinked with her brother’s as she walked forward, even though that drew a frown of confusion from her uncle.

      “Uncle,” Sophia said, “this is Lucas. He’s the one who came from the Silk Lands. He’s my brother.”

      “I’ve told her that it isn’t possible,” Jan said. “That – ”

      Her uncle held up a hand. “There was a boy child. I thought… they told me, even me, that he died.”

      Lucas stepped forward. “I didn’t die. I was hidden.”

      “In the Silk Lands?”

      “With Official Ko,” Lucas said.

      The name seemed to be enough for Sophia’s uncle. He stepped forward and treated Lucas to the same crushing, all-encompassing hug that he’d given Sophia when he’d recognized her.

      “I thought I’d been blessed enough with my nieces coming back,” he said. “I hadn’t thought that I might have a nephew too. We must celebrate!”

      It seemed obvious that there should be a banquet, and just as obvious that there was no time in which to prepare one, which meant that almost at once, there were servants running in almost every direction, trying to prepare things. It seemed almost that Sophia and Lucas became the still point at the heart of it all, standing there while even her cousins ran around trying to prepare things.

      Are things always this chaotic? Lucas asked, as a half dozen servants ran past with platters.

      Only when there’s a new family member, I think, Sophia sent back. She stood there, wondering if she should ask the next question.

      “Whatever it is, ask it,” Lucas said. “I know there must be many things that you need to know.”

      “You said before that you were raised by tutors,” Sophia said. “Does that mean… are my, our, parents not in the Silk Lands?”

      Lucas shook his head. “At least, not that I could find. I’ve been looking since I came of age.”

      “You’ve been searching for them as well? Your tutors didn’t know where they were?” Sophia asked. She sighed. “I’m sorry. I sound as though I’m not happy to have gained a brother. I am. I’m so happy you’re here.”

      “But it would be perfect if it were all of us?” Lucas guessed. “I understand, Sophia. I have gained two sisters, and cousins… but I am greedy enough to want parents too.”

      “I don’t think that counts as greed,” Sophia said with a smile.

      “Perhaps, perhaps not. Official Ko said that things are as they are, and pain comes from wishing otherwise. To be fair, he usually said it while drinking wine and being massaged with the finest oils.”

      “Do you know anything about our parents and where they went?” Sophia asked.

      Lucas nodded. “I don’t know where they went,” he said. “But I know how to find them.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      Kate opened her eyes as the blinding light faded, trying to make sense of where she was and what had happened. The last thing she remembered, she’d been fighting her way through to an image of Siobhan’s fountain, plunging her blade into the ball of energy that had bound her to the witch as an apprentice. She’d severed the link. She’d won.

      Now, it seemed that she was out in the open air, with no sign of Haxa’s cottage or the caves that lay behind it. It looked only a little like the parts of Ishjemme’s landscape that she had seen, but the flat meadows and bursts of woodland could have been there. Kate hoped so. The alternative was that the magic had transported her to some corner of the world she didn’t know.

      In spite of the strangeness of being in a place she didn’t know, Kate felt free for the first time in a long time. She’d done it. She’d fought through everything that Siobhan, and her own mind, had put in the way, and she’d broken from the witch’s grasp. Next to that, finding her way back to Ishjemme’s castle seemed like an easy thing.

      Kate picked a direction at random and set off, СКАЧАТЬ