Penelope and Prince Charming (Nvengaria #1)(101)

“Were you followed here?” Egan broke in sharply.

“No,” Anastasia answered without worry. “I know how to lose a shadow when I wish to. But word was waiting for me at the house in which I am staying. Alexander has dissolved the Council of Mages.”

Sasha gave an anguished cry. “What? But he cannot do such a thing! The Council, they have existed for eight hundred years. They study and regulate magic—they work for the good of Nvengaria.”

Anastasia glanced at him with her lovely brown eyes. “Alexander has called them a ‘nuisance body of old mumblers.’”

Damien’s eyes flickered. Penelope could see that he found the description amusing but also that Alexander’s words made his anger surge.

“The people will never stand for it,” Sasha declared. “They will rise up.”

Anastasia broke in. “I am afraid the people rather agree with Alexander,” she said, her lips flattening. “They jeered Nedrak as he rode away from the city—he is allowed to retire to his daughter’s house in the north. The only magic the people want is the prince and princess.”

Damien studied her with shrewd assessment, then he lifted his brows. “You believe Alexander to be correct?” he asked. It was not really a question.

Anastasia flushed. “Nvengaria needs to be modernized—without losing itself, of course. This is what you must do, Damien. And I will do anything I can to help you.”

Penelope remembered Damien’s declaration that Anastasia worked for Nvengaria, not him. She realized now that if Anastasia thought ridding Nvengaria of Damien was what was best for the country, she would endeavor to do so.

“Go back to the Viennese palace and flirt with Metternich,” Damien said. “Keep him busy while I put down this coup in Nvengaria and restore the people’s faith in our ways. Alexander always knows just how far he can push my subjects.”

“Alexander is not a bad ruler,” Anastasia said, “if a trifle ruthless—”

“I am Imperial Prince,” Damien interrupted her. His eyes held a hint of ice, and the air grew chill. “Nvengaria belongs to me.”

Anastasia’s lips parted. She and Damien studied each other for a long moment, then her flush deepened. “I beg your pardon, Your Highness.” She bowed her head.

Damien nodded in acceptance, but he took firm charge of the remainder of the conversation, and the atmosphere was strained.



* * *



The next day Damien’s party left in another vessel, which was bound south on the Danube for Budapest. The water teemed with barges large and small, moving upstream and down. The going was slower because as the river broadened, the number of towns crammed with barges and boats grew. Penelope watched Damien’s impatience surge; Midsummer’s Day was rapidly approaching.

Damien announced that they would stay on the river all the way beyond Transylvania, and in the cold mood he’d lapsed into after their encounter with Anastasia, no one argued with him.

He seemed to change as they moved on. The carefree prince dropped away, and Damien became more and more Nvengarian—in Penelope’s opinion at least—as he moved into the lands of his ancestors.

In Budapest, Damien ordered Egan to guard Penelope at the inn where they’d taken accommodations while he departed to meet with a contact somewhere in the city. He refused to answer questions about this meeting when he returned, and Petri admonished him for going out alone.

“This city was my school,” Damien said bluntly to the stern looks of Egan, Petri, Sasha, and Penelope. “I spent three years in Budapest learning how to go from mere survival to living on my own terms. I know every street intimately and slept in not a few of them.”

“Well, we did nae know that did we, laddie?” Egan said, his Scots voice a growl. “We did nae know whether ye be dead by an assassin’s blade or merely bein’ intimate with the streets.”

Damien gave him a withering look and rang for a servant to bring dinner.

That night they had a bed alone, and Damien made love to Penelope perfunctorily and swiftly. Then he held her close, saying nothing, burying his face in her neck. Penelope stroked his hair, being quiet with him, but she worried. He didn’t know what they’d find at the end of the road. The people’s support? Or death by firing squad? Penelope’s heart squeezed in fear. She would never let that happen, if she had to tear the guns from the men’s hands herself.

From Budapest, the river ran straight south until it fetched up in Belgrade, where it turned abruptly east again, pulled toward the Black Sea. They plunged between the Carpathian Mountains and lands to the south of these, the cliffs rising abruptly from the water. They drifted close to a rock face with a small Roman tablet carved into it, marking the spot where a Roman of old had crossed the river to conquer the barbaric peoples to the north.

Penelope let her fingers scrape the stone in wonder. She’d seen Roman ruins in Bath, but this lone marker here in the middle of the wilderness, carved nearly two millennia ago, struck her as lonely and powerful, silent and sad.

Not long after that, when the cliffs receded, Damien declared they should abandon the river and travel on horseback the rest of the way.

There, where narrow paths took them through cool mountain passes and soaring trees, Felsan struck.





Chapter 29