Free The Reign of Trees by Lori Folkman

more numerous than we had ever imagined. This, unfortunately, makes a rescue impossible. Until we breech the border and are able to penetrate the strong center of the Andoradda region, you will remain a prisoner of this unjustified war. However Illianah, I know you are safe. In fact, the castle of Andoradda might very well be the best place for you now. The Deltegrans have caused much suffering upon our working class, and the situation at St. Moraine is tense. We shall soon reassert control and it will be the Deltegrans who suffer. Upon my word Illianah, you will soon be by my side and the kingdom of Deltegra will be upon their knees.
    Ever yours,
    Prince Harrington of Burchess

    Illianah was glad she had already practiced keeping her tears from Donovan. She knew if she stopped blinking, her eyes would overflow with her sadness. Or was it anger? It felt like she had just taken a knife to the chest. She would not look up from her letter, as she did not want to give Donovan any indication that she was open to having a conversation. As long as she was still reading, he would not speak to her. But the more she looked at the letter, the more the wound in her chest began to grow. Leif had admonished her for defending the village of Freidlenburg—something no other man on the premises had been brave enough to do.
    Her eyes fell to the line where he wrote that his first duty was to her father and the kingdom of Burchess. Not to her. She stifled a sob. Leif had essentially married her father. This should not have been news to her, but every night after their wedding when Leif had shared her bed, she had thought that he did, in fact, love her. He had been so gentle with her. He had caressed her skin with such delicate delight that she would often break out with goose bumps, to which he would laugh with satisfaction. She could still see the tenderness in his blue eyes: the eyes that typically looked so bold and oftentimes fierce. She had thought perhaps she would become his Achilles heel. But his letter forced her out of the foolish imaginations of her heart. He did not love her. He would never love her. He only loved power.
    She did not realize that the sound of her heart crushing was audible to others. “Princess, are you unwell?” Donovan asked.
    Donovan was the last person she would be sharing her heartbreak with. “I am fine,” she said, but her quivering voice betrayed her. She looked at him only briefly. He looked sympathetic, but she still would not divulge that she was the most unloved creature in the entire world. Even the crickets she heard outside her window at bedtime were accompanied by hundreds of their kind. There would never be just one cricket, charged with filling the darkness of the night with sound. But that was her lot. She was to be a princess—a beacon to her people—and she was to do it all alone.
    “Is there something I might do to help?”
    “Do you not think that you have done enough already?” she snapped.
    Hurt registered on his face, but he nodded and stood. “I will give you the room,” he said, bowing as he departed.
    She still would not give in to her tears. If she was the same bold woman who faced General Montague and demanded he stop his raid of Freidlenburg, then she should not be brought to tears by her husband’s cold words.
    The letter still lay open in her lap. She folded it, stood, and turned to the table which held her other letter. Perhaps she would find comfort in reading news from Madame Partlet. She would not be cold and unloving, Illianah was sure of this. Madame Partlet always had nothing but praise and adoration for Illianah.
    Donovan had left his map of the Western Corridor on the table. But it was not just any old map. It was a war map. His strategies. Several smaller pieces of parchment were placed on top of the map, indicating where his troops were located. All of his troops seemed to converge at one location: the border at Laencia. That is how the Deltegran troops were