The Decoy Princess by Dawn Cook Page A

spacious as the banquet hall.
    You could get to anywhere from here, and I stared at a small archway beside the dais. Please, no , I thought. Not the one leading to my parents’ rooms . My shoulders eased as the man before me went to the large archway leading to the solarium.
    It was warmer past the heavy oak doors of the indoor garden, the moisture beading up on the inside panel. I could smell the night blooming vine my mother loved, mixing with the early roses. The damp air was a balm against my face. The sound of my father’s voice raised in anger was both a relief and a fear.
    “Father,” I whispered, darting round the first guard to reach him.
    “Hey! Get her!” someone shouted.
    I ran down the path to the glow of torches, jerked to a halt by a rough hand when I turned the corner of the path and found the fishpond. “Mother!” I cried in fear, struggling to push the hand about my arm away as the soldier who had caught me apologized to Prince Garrett. My mother was in the grip of a Misdev guard. Angels save us . There was a knife at her throat.
    My attention flicked over the tiled patio. Garrett stood confidently with one foot upon the fishpond’s retaining wall beside my game of thieves and kings. My mother was before him, looking small in her nightdress, pride in the set of her lips and the flash of her eyes. Two guards held my father. One had a bruise on his cheek and a cut lip. My father was sweating, straining against their restraint. His fear chilled me. I’d never seen my father afraid. It was quiet, with only the sound of water and the first twitters of caged birds. The sky beyond the glass was gray with the coming dawn. No one would hear us here. No one would see.
    “Well,” Garrett said as he pulled his foot down and straightened his uniform’s coat. “Now we can start.”
    I said nothing, taking my cue from my parents. They looked vulnerable, pulled from their beds in their nightclothes with their hair rumpled and their faces bare. They were no longer a king and queen, showing only their deeper bond of husband and wife. I could see their love and fear for each other. And I knew Garrett could see it as well.
    Garrett turned to my father. “I’m not going to be delicate about this. Tell me where the Red Moon Princess is, or I will cut her throat.”
    Shock took my breath away. “No!” I cried. I tried to break free, my knees buckling when the hand on me squeezed my arm with an unbearable pressure.
    “Tess, no,” my mother said, and the calmness of her voice pulled me back from the brink even as the knife under her ear glinted. “He won’t do it. His father doesn’t want a war with us.”
    Garrett blinked one eye at my father with a mocking slowness. “For once we are in agreement. My father is a coward. He and my brother. They’d quake in their boots if they knew what I was doing.” He took a step to my father. “Where is the Red Moon Princess?”
    My father went desperate. With a guttural groan, he fought to break free. The guards wrestled him to lie half upon the table, his arms pulled behind his back.
    “I’m going to count from five,” Garrett said, his breath fast as he came to stand before the table between my father and my mother.
    “You won’t,” my father said, his face pinched as the guards kept him unmoving.
    “Five,” Garrett said, his hands on his hips and his back to my mother and me.
    Chin against the table, my father sent his gaze over Garrett’s shoulder to my mother. Desperation and fear showed from him. His breath came fast in indecision.
    “Don’t tell him, Stephen,” my mother said, standing unafraid with a Misdev knife at her throat. The man holding her had wide, frightened eyes. His hands shook.
    “Four.” Garrett ignored her, fixed entirely on my father’s fear.
    “Don’t tell. He won’t do it.” My mother’s voice was strong.
    Garrett stood unmoving. “Three.”
    My father’s eyes shot from Garrett’s to my mother’s. “May?” he