Free The Hidden Queen by Alma Alexander

into a robe Catlin handed her, slid her feet into slippers Catlin brought, sat still at the gentle tug in her tangled hair of the comb wielded by Catlin’s hand. But that was a vestige of Anghara, the princess who had always accepted such as her due. Now, coming fully awake and her mind clear and rested from her long sleep, she caught the faint regret in Catlin’s eye as the woman moved away to lay the comb on the bedside table.
    “I’m Brynna,” she whispered, “and you were Anghara’s. This will be the last morning, won’t it?”
    “Yes, my dear,” said Catlin, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. “I’ll stay for as long as you need me, and be here for you; but they can’t see you being set apart like this. I can only be your friend now, and perhaps, later, in some things, your teacher—but no more than that, not here. Perhaps some day, when we go back…”
    “Then you’d better let me dress myself,” said Brynna. “Go and tell them I’m coming to breakfast as soon as I’m finished.” And then, realizing the power of command was hers no longer, not in this place, she lifted her chin and smiled in Catlin’s direction with a strange expression on her face. “If you would,” she added.
    Catlin looked down, a sudden wave of love and fierce protectiveness threatening to overwhelm her. She covered the moment by dropping gracefully into one of the deepest curtsys she had yet offered her young mistress. “Yes, my princess.”
    Then she was gone. The girl who used to be a princess finished plaiting her own hair, and shrugged into the clean dress left for her. Then she stood before the closed door and tried to still her wildly beating heart and enter this house of kinsfolk whom she must count as strangers. In her whole life as a child of royal blood, sheltered and safe, there had always been someone there—her mother, her nurse, and then, later, Catlin and her other women. Now, when all security had fled, when she needed support as never before, she walked alone. It was a strange new dance. Brynna might know the steps, and it was the Brynna identity to which the frightened child now clung. The princess called Anghara felt the absence of all the familiar props and flailed in nothingness; this was a country in which she did not know her way. But she would find it; in the tracklessness the goal rose like a light—her perfect memory of Miranei. From here, all roads would take her home. It just might take a little time.
    She squared her small chin with determination. Anghara retreated into shadows to wait her time; Brynna Kelen stepped out bravely to enter a new and unfamiliar world.

4
    B reakfast was a rather solitary affair. The only other person who awaited Brynna in the small room where it had been laid out was Lady Chella. Brynna had hesitated at the door, her two personalities both aroused at once: Anghara could not but respond to the stamp of her mother, so clearly etched in her sister’s face, and Brynna was nebulously aware she must somehow keep control. Her aunt—her foster mother—had noticed the confusion, and smiled.
    “Yes,” she said, “it’s hard denying something we both know. But even though I would love nothing better than to renew an acquaintance with the captivating little niece I left behind at Miranei almost four years ago, perhaps it’s best if you remain Brynna, even here with me. Brynna is someone whom I must still get to know; March tells me Rima’s account of her life is mostly wrong. So come, tell me about yourself.”
    So it had been Brynna who had entered and sat down to breakfast; and it had been both easier and harder to cling to Brynna in Chella’s presence than the girl who had been Anghara would have expected. She felt almost guilty, indulging in what must seem like pointless play-acting, with both of them knowing what they knew. At the same time, a gesture, a look, a turn of phrase would remind “Brynna” of the mother Anghara had left behind, and