Lady Hotspur - Tessa Gratton

The

DRAGON

PRINCE HAL

The March, late spring

HAL WAS NOT yet a prince when she fell in love with Lady Hotspur, but she would be within the hour.

It was the end of the battle, and Hal had been ordered to collect the knight of Perseria and bring her to the castle where their mothers waited.

Hal was exhausted, but lit up inside with awe and hope and rippling terror. The wind smelled of sour blood and sweaty horses, and her ears rang. Just twenty years old and Hal had nearly died four times this afternoon:

—A spear caught under her buckler, shoving her arm back, and its tip would’ve gutted her if she’d not trained herself into the twist-and-nudge that turned her body and signaled her horse to sidestep.

—A surprising gust of wind tossed a rain of arrows over the shield wall, toward the cavalry troop she led; one arrow sliced open her cheek but avoided her eye.

—Her horse screamed and fell, and Hal’s boot almost trapped itself in the stirrup before she threw herself free.

—On her feet, she fought shoulder to shoulder with Vindus of Mercia, and missed the moment her fellow knight was cut down, and suddenly the space was empty: she spun into it, breathing hard and desperate, knowing if Vin was down she was the knight in charge. She screamed as she shoved her sword into the man before her, slicing under his pauldron and up to skewer his shoulder, nearly cleaving it from his neck.

But Hal had survived.

Not only that, but the rebels had won. Her mother had won.

Hal’s nerves translated into her new mount, and the mare skipped anxiously along the muddy edge of the field. She’d not seen her mother in a decade, and now she was a rebel, bruised and panting, her hair knotted and her helmet lost saints knew where.

Ten years ago, King Rovassos had exiled his niece, Celeda Bolinbroke, to the Third Kingdom on the lying word of his lover. Celeda had been accused of murdering the king’s youngest brother, though she swore she did not—she’d fought and argued and screamed she did not—on the lives of her own mother and father, on the lives of her daughters, on the lives of the great kings before them: Segovax, Isarnos, and Morimaros the Great.

Thank the saints, Celeda had been banished instead of killed, only forced to leave her daughters and homeland behind, instead of her life. Hal had grown up without her mother, a ward of the king alongside the heir to the throne, Banna Mora. She’d always hoped that someday Celeda would return home, forgiven by Rovassos. Then last year Rovassos had stripped the title and lands of Bolinbroke from Hal, giving it to his (new, different) lover. Hal had written to her mother that the last thread of hope was gone.

But in the Third Kingdom a strong mother-line was respected, and for a decade now Celeda had gathered allies and woven her plans, always knowing she’d never be invited home. Knowing if she was to return, she would have to seize back her legacy.

The divesting of Bolinbroke by the king had been the simple spark, offensive and untimely, that lit the pyre of this rebellion. And Celeda was not the only one to have seen it for the sign it was: Caratica Persy of Annyck and the Red Castle, her sister, Vindomata the duke of Mercia, Mata Blunt of Ithios, the dukes of Westmore and Or, and Ardus of Iork, had all joined together against the weakened king, and they summoned Celeda home.

Today it had come to a head here at Strong Water Castle, at the edge of the March on the western coast of Aremoria, where the king returned from a voyage to Ispania. Rovassos was welcomed back to Aremore shores with swift violence. The rebels had crushed the king’s forces beneath banners of ancient Aremore houses: the lion and bluebells of Bolinbroke, the eagles of Westmore, the wolf of Perseria, the oak of Mercia, and the coursing river of Or. As if the very animals of land and sky, the bones and veins of Aremoria agreed it was time.

Dead sprawled across the battlefield, and the injured sat or limped with the help of comrades, but most of their soldiers remained afoot. The surrender had sounded before too many casualties fell.

And Hal had survived her first real battle. It bore repeating. It was a triumph, no matter what else.

Her shoulder throbbed and the gambeson under her mail shirt stuck to her side from the

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