My Princess Royal, My Betrayer

On the night of Lovers' Eve, war beacons blazed along the frontier. The enemy pressed toward the border, and Avington Pass hung on the brink of collapse. I, Russ Denton, wrote through the night, sending an urgent letter to the capital to beg my wife for reinforcements. She was Clarisse Kaylock, the Princess Royal, the only person in all of Millington who could lead the iron cavalry to break the siege. Her reply was frantic in every word. "Don't be afraid, Russ. I'm coming." Yet three days passed. Beacon smoke blotted out the sky beyond the pass, the city ran out of arrows and food, and still no reinforcements came. I knelt on the ground with a broken spear, drenched in blood, and sent pigeon after pigeon demanding to know where she was. All I could do was watch the city walls crumble. My mother, Marion Denton, and my elder sister, Kate Denton, were run through by enemy spears, and the soldiers under my command were slaughtered almost to the last man. Ninety-nine homing pigeons, and not one ever brought back an answer. When the city fell, I hid beneath the rubble, soaked in blood, and overheard a caravan returning in triumph from the capital. They were swapping stories. "The Princess Royal, on Lovers' Eve, drew her bow at the autumn hunting grounds and shot down ninety-nine white doves—all to win a smile from Damien Ryder, the marquess's heir." "And she told him, 'Trouble on the frontier is a small matter. It can't compare to you, Damien.'" In the painted scroll they carried, she was tying a fox-fur cloak around his shoulders with her own hands. So that was the truth. My ninety-nine pigeons had never made it past her hunting grounds. The lives of thirty thousand people on the frontier, along with my tears of blood and my desperate cries, were worth less than a single smile from the marquess's heir.