Free The Constant Queen by Joanna Courtney

their visit. The troll cave had been real – but had the words spoken been real too?
    ‘Your caskets are safe, yes.’
    ‘
Our
caskets, Elizaveta. I would like . . .’
    But now Agatha bounced up between them.
    ‘Harald! You made it. Are you not racing?’
    Harald gathered himself and smiled down at the five-year-old.
    ‘I am too old to qualify, Agatha.’
    ‘You’re more than eighteen?’ she asked, her wonderment at his great seniority making them both laugh.
    ‘He
is
eighteen,’ Elizaveta told her. ‘He has been at war too long and missed his chance.’
    ‘At what, Princess?’
    Harald seemed very close, his grey eyes sharp as new-mined crystals.
    ‘At racing, of course.’ Elizaveta licked at her lips, suddenly dry, and added as Agatha bounced away again, ‘I rode the rapids once.’
    ‘
You
did?’
    He looked down at her, his grey eyes swirling with something that was either admiration or disgust.
    ‘Yes,
I
,’ she said defiantly. ‘Or rather, I rode them halfway.’
    ‘You crashed?’
    ‘No!’ She glared at him. ‘I rode very well.’
    ‘I don’t doubt it. So what happened?’
    ‘I was netted.’
    He blinked.
    ‘Netted? By whom?’
    His tone was playful but the memory was still painful for Elizaveta and she had to put up a hasty finger to catch a rogue tear before it could smudge the kohl her mother had finally let her use
on her lashes.
    ‘There are men stationed in groups along the banks with great nets on wooden poles to catch any riders who are tossed from their canoes and may be in danger from the rocks,’ she
explained. ‘The boys are young and no one wishes to see them die.’
    ‘Of course not, but you, Elizaveta – you were not in any trouble?’
    Despite herself, she smiled.
    ‘I was in
much
trouble, Harald, but not from the water.’
    ‘Your father did not approve of you racing?’
    She shook her head.
    ‘Girls are too delicate for such sports, or so he says, though I do not see why. We are lighter and more agile than boys and I had practised harder than any. I was hurt more by that stupid
net scooping me out of my boat than I would ever have been if they’d let me finish.’ Harald looked at her again, seeming to scrutinise every part of her face until she shifted
awkwardly. ‘What is wrong? Am I smudged?’
    He smiled.
    ‘No, Elizaveta, you are not “smudged”. I was merely wondering . . . why?’
    ‘Why did I ride? Why should I not?’ She could hear her own voice rising in a way her mother would undoubtedly condemn as undignified, but she could not stop it. ‘Has anyone
ever asked Vlad why he rides, or Ivan? No! It is a fine thing for them to wish to test themselves, to rise to the challenges that nature has set, to pit their skills against those of their peers,
so why, then, is it so strange for me? Are we so different, men and women?’
    ‘In some ways,’ Harald said, his voice so low now it stopped her own in her throat and made her heart push at her breasts. His eyes followed the motion and she swallowed. ‘But
you are right. I think women every bit as brave and fiery and determined as men.’
    ‘Oh?’ she retorted, confused. ‘And you have known many women, have you?’
    ‘A few.’ He raised a slow eyebrow and her stomach flipped inside her. ‘Though none that mattered – yet.’
    Elizaveta’s throat felt very dry. Who had he known? Concubines? Pretty, wild little street women who’d crawled over his scars with their lithe, practised bodies? His chest was tight
up against hers and for a treacherous moment she longed to put her hands against it and feel his strength. He was staring at her still, his glacier eyes fixed on her lips as if he might kiss her
right there, in the royal grandstand, as if she might let him, and she pulled back, flustered. She was not one of his street women, won with honeyed words and a muscled chest.
    ‘The race will begin any moment,’ she said stiffly, turning back to the river.
    ‘Elizaveta, I did not mean . .