The Bridge Kingdom (The Bridge Kingdom, #1)

by Danielle L. Jensen

“My father, and his father, and his father before him all sought to break the Bridge Kingdom. With assassins, with war, with blockades, with every tool at their disposal. But not one of them thought to use a woman.”

Their father believed that brilliance and beauty were the most important attributes in the daughter he’d select. That she be the girl who’d shown the most acumen for combat and strategy. The girl who’d shown the most talent in the arts of the bedroom. He’d thought he’d known which traits mattered most—but he’d forgotten one. Sarhina stiffened next to her. I’m sorry, Lara silently whispered to her sisters. Then Sarhina’s body began to spasm. I pray that you’ll all find the freedom you deserve. The soup spoon in Sarhina’s hand went flying across the table, but none of the other girls noticed. None of them cared. Because all of them were choking, foam rising to their lips as they twitched and gasped, one by one falling forward or backward or to the side. Then all of them were resting motionless.

“You were mistaken in your choice, Father.” Lara stood tall as she addressed her king. She stared him down, allowing the dark, grasping, and selfish part of her soul to climb to the surface and stare out at him. “I will be the next queen of Ithicana. And I will bring the Bridge Kingdom to its knees.”

The men who’d been intended to dispatch Lara and her sisters turned their swords instead on the servants, whose tongueless mouths uttered wordless screams as they tried to flee the massacre. The musicians were cut down, as were the cooks in the distant kitchens and the maids turning down sheets on beds that would never be slept in again. Soon, all who remained were the king’s loyal cadre of soldiers, their hands coated with the blood of their victims.

Erik had dispatched her to the training yard as punishment for a minor transgression two nights prior, and she’d overheard members of her father’s cadre plotting the deaths of her and her sisters. A conversation led by Erik himself. Her eyes burned as she regarded him—the man who’d been more a father to her than the silver-haired monarch to her right—but she said nothing, gave him not so much as a smile in return.

It was still almost more than she could bear to leave her slumbering sisters surrounded by a ring of fire, unconscious and helpless until the concoction of narcotics she’d given them wore off. Already their pulses, which had been slowed to near death for a dangerous length of time, should be quickening, their breathing obvious to anyone who looked closely. If Lara found excuses to linger to ensure their safety, she would only risk discovery, and then all of this would be for naught.

That was what her sisters would wake to: fire and death. For only if their father believed them silenced did they have any chance at a future. She would carry their mission forward while her sisters made their own lives, now free to be masters of their own fates. She’d explained all of it in the note she’d slipped into Sarhina’s pocket while her father ordered the compound swept for survivors. For no one must be left alive who might whisper a word about the deception that now journeyed toward a wedding in Ithicana.

“As was agreed upon, I stand here to offer my most precious daughter, Lara, as a symbol of Maridrina’s commitment to its continued alliance with Ithicana. May there ever be peace between our kingdoms.”

Long fingers curved around hers, the nails cut short. His palm was calloused, the skin, like hers, covered with tiny white scars. The nicks and cuts that couldn’t be avoided when combat was one’s way of life. She stared at that hand. It offered some strange comfort; what stood before her was nothing more than a man. And men could be defeated.

Maridrina and Valcotta were continually at war over the fertile stretch of land running down the western coast of the southern continent, the border contested by both kingdoms.

Though Ahnna’s voice was light, Aren didn’t miss how her hazel eyes turned dull at the mention of her half of the bargain. The king of Harendell, their neighbor to the north, had yet to send for his son’s Ithicanian bride, but with Aren now wed to Lara, it was only a matter of time. Harendell would know by now the terms Maridrina had negotiated, and they’d be keen to extract their own pound of flesh. Both deals would incite retaliation from Amarid. The other northern kingdom’s relationship with Ithicana was already fraught with conflict, given that their merchant ships competed for business with the bridge.

She’s the daughter of our enemy. He wants you to be distracted by her. She’s probably been instructed to seduce you, to find out what she can about Ithicana’s secrets on the hope she’ll be able to pass them back to her father.

Ithicana needed a queen who was a warrior. A woman who’d fight to the death for her people. A woman who was cunning and ruthless, not because she wanted to be but because her country needed her to be. A woman who’d challenge him every day for the rest of his life. A woman Ithicana would respect. And there was one thing he was certain of: Lara Veliant was not that woman.

“I wanted to see the bridge.” Aren stopped in his tracks, turning to give her a sharp look. “Why?” She met his gaze unflinchingly. “I wanted to see the bit of architecture that was worth the rights to my body. My loyalty. My life.” He recoiled as though she’d slapped him. “The rights to those things are yours to give, not your father’s.”

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.

“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 they were yesterday. “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.” Lara’s eyes burned, and she chased away the tears with a mouthful of brandy. Then another. “I never saw her again.”

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.

It was forbidden for civilians to leave Ithicana. Only highly trained spies were granted the right to do so, and always on the order that if they were ever caught, they’d die on their own sword before revealing Ithicana’s secrets. Only the career soldiers in his army knew all the ways in and out of the bridge, but it was impossible to keep the island defenses from the civilians who lived on them, and everyone knew about Eranahl. Which was why any civilian caught attempting to leave was flogged. And any who succeeded in the attempt were hunted. And Ithicana’s hunters always caught their quarry.

War Tides. That was what the villagers on Serrith Island had called it. The two coldest months of the year when the Tempest Seas were calm enough for Ithicana’s enemies to attack.

As a child, she’d believed Ithicana must have palaces made of gold filled with everything they took from Maridrina and the other kingdoms, but so far she’d seen only modest luxury.

“Everyone supported the treaty to end the war with Maridrina, but no one supported the inclusion of a marriage clause. No one wanted Aren to marry an outsider, especially a Maridrinian. But Aunt Delia believed it was the only way for us to ever have peace with our neighbors. The only way for people to stop seeing an enemy when we sat across the table to trade.”

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.