The Bridge Kingdom (The Bridge Kingdom, #1)

by Danielle L. Jensen

She would carry their mission forward while her sisters made their own lives, now free to be masters of their own fates.

Ithicana so powerful. It was the bridge stretching above and between those islands—the only safe way to travel between the continents ten months out of the year. And Ithicana used its asset to keep the kingdoms that depended on trade hungry. Desperate. And, most of all, willing to pay any price the Bridge Kingdom demanded for its services.

“While your ruthlessness makes you desirable for this role, your lack of honor makes me question whether you’ll put our people’s lives above your own.”

And you are one to talk!

thought down the moment it rose. “What’s wrong with her learning how to wield a weapon? Ithicana’s dangerous. It would be for her own safety.” He eyed the table, then sat at the end of it. “It’s not her safety that I’m concerned about.” Lara shot him a look of disdain. “You’d fit in well in Maridrina, Your Grace, if the thought of your wife knowing how to wield a knife puts such fear in your heart.” “Oh my.”

“You’re wasting your breath, Ahnna,” Aren said, ignoring the comment. “Lara believes weapons are the domain of common soldiers and not worthy of her time.” “I said no such thing. I said I was trained to be a wife and a queen, not a common soldier.” “And just what did that training entail?” “Perhaps fate will favor you and one day you’ll find out, Your Majesty. Although as it stands, you’ll need to content yourself with my flawless needlework.”

She waited for one of the servants to serve her, but they all departed. Then the royal siblings began helping themselves, loading their plates with salad and fish and beef all at the same time with no regard to the order of things.

Test your limits in a way that won’t make them suspect your capabilities,

They expect you to be ignorant, helpless, and indulged. Capitalize upon their mistakes.

“I wouldn’t be so confident about that,” Lia said. “When we blocked her from the boats, she looked about ready to punch me in the face. She might not be a warrior, but she’s no coward.”

“I’ll win her over, I suppose.” Lia’s drink sprayed out from between her lips. “Good luck with that, Your Grace.”

were a thousand things he could ask, for which she had no answer. For which she’d have to lie, and then keep that lie alive for the length of her time here. And the more lies she had to balance, the greater chance of getting caught.

“What’s your worst memory?” She had a hundred worst memories. A thousand. Of abandoning her sisters to fire and sand. Of Erik, the man who’d been like a father to her, taking his own life in front of her because he believed she’d been driven to murder her own sisters. Of being left alone in a pit in the ground for weeks. Of being starved. Of being beaten. Of having to fight for her life, all while her masters told her that it was to make her strong. To teach her to endure. We do this to protect you, they had told her and her sisters. If you need someone to hate, someone to blame, look to Ithicana. To its king. If not for them, if not for him, none of this would be necessary. Bring them down, and no Maridrinian girl will ever suffer like this again.

Give him a truth. “I was born in the harem in Vencia. I lived there with my mother among all the other wives and younger children. After the treaty was signed, my father had all of his female children of appropriate age taken to the compound for their—for our—protection from Valcotta and Amarid and anyone else who sought to disrupt the alliance. I was five years old.” She swallowed, the vision of the memory fuzzy, but the sounds and smells sharp as though

“There was no warning. I was playing when the soldiers grabbed me, and I remember kicking and screaming as they dragged me away. They smelled awful—like sweat and wine. I remember more men holding my mother against the ground. Her fighting, trying to get to me. Trying to stop them from taking me.”

“I never saw her...

“I wasn’t fond of your father before,” Aren said quietl...

“The worst part is…” She trailed off, staring at the insides of her eyelids, trying to find what she was looking for. “Is that I can’t remember her face. If I met her on the...

Her father had told Lara and her sisters that they’d be underestimated because they were women, but the women here seemed to be as respected as any man.

“How did your parents die?”

She’d also found a box full of treasures that only a mother would keep. Baby teeth in a jar. Portraits. Notes written in a childish script. There had been rough little carvings, too, with Aren’s name scratched on the bottom. A much different family from her own.

“They drowned in a storm,” he answered flatly. “Or at least, he did. She was probably already dead.”

“Let me make myself abundantly clear, Lara. Ithicana has not held the bridge by spilling its secrets over a bottle of brandy, so if that’s your intent, you’ll have to get more creative. Better yet, save us all the trouble and forget it even exists.”

Damn

was forbidden for civilians to leave Ithicana. Only highly trained spies were granted

“We are in a cage, a prison of our own making. Why can’t you see that?” “It’s what keeps our people safe,” his father would shout back. “Let down our guard, and Ithicana is done. They will tear us apart in their fight to possess the bridge.” “You don’t know that. It could be different, if we tried to make it so.” “The raiders who come every year say otherwise, Delia. This is how we keep Ithicana alive.” And always, she would whisper, “Alive isn’t living. They deserve more.”

“It’s the queen, Your Grace. She needs your help.”

“Good ear, Princess.” “Poor memory, soldier. I’m a princess no longer—you yourself ensured that.” She walked past them all, heading down the narrow path to the sea. The older man laughed. “I hope you sleep with one eye open, Aren.” “And a knife under your pillow,” Lia added, and the whole group laughed.

he loved my mother enough that the hope of saving her was worth his own life.” To risk everything for the slim chance of saving those you loved…Lara

“A little seasickness wouldn’t have killed her, you idiot. You shouldn’t have caved.”

“What? Too good to scrub the skids from an old woman’s drawers? And before you say yes, remember that I wiped your shitty ass more times than I care to count when you were a babe. Be grateful that I can at least still do that much for myself.”

“Oh, Lara and I will be talking a great deal over the coming weeks, because you’re going to leave her here with me.”

And I think her staying with Nana will change the way she think by the time she's gone.

But it was hard for Lara to focus on what the men were doing, because she stood on a bridge through the clouds.

Huh?

Do you think it will be any different when your father comes with his army? Do you think they’ll show any more mercy?

“My aunt believed that the surest way to earn trust was to give it.”

For as long as memory, Ithicana has placed a stranglehold on trade, making kingdoms and breaking them like it were some dark god. She’d believed that. Believed him without question. Yet Aren’s words…they weren’t those of a ruler with godlike power. Quite the opposite. They were the words of a leader of a kingdom fighting to survive.

But as to the rest of what she and her sisters had been told about Ithicana…that, Lara was questioning. Questioning what was truth and what was lies, because it was impossible that all parties had been honest with her. Not with everyone claiming to be the victim and no one the aggressor. Someone was deceiving her.

“Your father is a man who needs control, little

“Here, he can control every variable, but outside”—he used the weapon to gesture to the desert—“true control is beyond even a king’s power. Your life is as it is out of necessity, my girl. But it won’t be this way forever.”

Aren could never be anything to her but the enemy. Aren stepped closer to the training soldiers

Ugh just let it go!!!

You aren’t here to fight, she reminded herself. You’re here to observe under the cover of helping the healers, nothing more.

Ok I'm starting to get pissed of the way you still think that your kingdom is the good guy while your father is the one in charge for everything. Take guess, your father is probably the reason why these children don't get be fed! Duh!!! You've only known ond bad guy which was your father! You even know very well in you heart that he will kill you the moment he get to take hold on you! Wake up god damn it!

Aren wanted to ask why that mattered. Why she cared at all for anything to do with the greedy, sadistic creature who’d sired her.

“When I was growing up, I was told many times the amount of revenue Ithicana was rumored to make in a year off the bridge.” “How much?” He shook his head at the number when she answered. “It’s more.” “Are you bragging?” “Just being truthful.” The corner of her mouth quirked, and she was quiet for a moment before she continued. “To me, the amount was staggering. And I thought…I was told that Ithicana played and manipulated the market, gouged travelers afraid to tempt the seas, and exacted heavy taxes and tolls from merchants who wished to transport and market their own goods. That you decided who had the right to buy and sell in your markets, and that you’d take away that privilege if they crossed you in any way. That you controlled nearly all the trade between two continents and eleven different kingdoms.” “Accurate.” He didn’t bother to add that Ithicana paid in blood for that right, because she’d seen the evidence herself. “What wasn’t accurate…was the reason why.” “What did they tell you?” “Greed.”

“When I was young, I believed you must live in enormous palaces filled with all the greatest luxuries the world had to offer. That you sat on a throne of gold.”

“Why were they so hard on you?” “I thought I knew, but now…” She lifted her chin from her knees, turning her head to look at him. “You ask me what changed? What changed is that now I know you use that money to feed and protect your people.”

“I hate to break up your picnic, Your Majesties, but dawn is upon us, and we need to be on our way.”

Fucking leavs them alone!! pffft

“Does this change things for you?” he asked Lara, helping her to her feet. She closed her eyes, her face clenching for a moment as though she were in pain, then she opened them and nodded. “It changes everything.”

Maridrinian soldiers when they took Aela Island.

all she cared to learn was the depths of Serin and her father’s deception.

Oh please do!!!

Her father, Serin…all her masters. They’d lied to Lara and her sisters.

Lara was a spy. The woman he’d goddamned fallen in love with was a spy.

“Since the moment I set eyes on you in Southwatch, there’s been no one but you. Even if I’m a goddamned fool for it, there will never be anyone but you.”