His eyebrows dropped and his lips turned down. “Do not speak to me like you have a right to order me about, cuckoo.”

The blood drained from my face, I could feel it slide. Cuckoo. A child slipped into another’s nest to be raised, but not of their kind. An interloper leaching the strength and resources of others.

“I am not a bastard. I know who my parents are.” I was on my feet and striding toward him, anger driving me. “You are an Ender, and you answer to the royal family of which I am a part. Perhaps you should remember that.” I was in his face, my head tilted back. He had a few inches on me and he used them, staring down at me, the contempt written in his eyes plain to see.

“You are not a part of the royal line. Or you would live in the Spiral.”

He might as well have slapped me. My jaw dropped and I had to work up the spit in my mouth before I could answer. “I am. The king is my father.”

“Yet here you are, a Planter.”

I glared at him, unable to come up with a proper, scathing response. The best my brain would give me was ‘so what’? But I wasn’t going to resort to a childish back and forth.

“Lark, are you—” Simmy’s voice broke the standoff. “Oh, I see you have company. Ender Ash, how are you this night?”

I didn’t turn around, and Ash never took his eyes from me. “I’m well, Persimmon, Lady of the Fields.”

Simmy laughed softly. “Well, aren’t you the sweet one? That title hasn’t been used in a redwood’s lifetime.” She reached us and put a hand on my arm. “Lark, come, you know tonight you must go to the Spiral. It is your night to sit at your father’s side.”

I blinked and glanced at her. “Goddess, I forgot!” I turned toward her, put a hand on her arm. “Thank you, Simmy. You’re a good friend. I’m sorry, for earlier.”

She flushed. “Ah, ‘tis nothing, Larkspur.”

I looked over my shoulder to see Ash tip his head back staring at the tree’s swaying branches above our heads. “Goddess save me from the king’s whims.”

What happened next wasn’t planned and yet it came together so smoothly you’d think I’d have been prepping for weeks for that one moment. I jumped to the left side of Ash, slammed my right arm across his chest as I drove my right leg behind his.

He went flying to the ground, landing in a puff of dirt, his honey gold eyes wide as saucers. “The king’s whims are commands to you, Ender, perhaps you’d best remember that.”

His eyes flashed as he looked at me, a hand going to the knife on his left thigh. Simmy yanked me hard. “Run, before he’s to his feet.”

I took heed of her words. I’d attacked a king’s Ender, a whipping offense at the least. Worse I was sure if Ash caught me. Spinning, my hair strung out behind me as I ran from the fields, a smile on my lips.

Whipping offense or not, it was worth it to see the shock on his face, the widening of those eyes always so in control.

So, totally worth it.

Chapter 3

My best dress was something of a throwback to an era gone by. My mother’s finery was really all I had left to me of her, and I seldom wore it for fear I would ruin the tiny stitching and expensive materials. Tonight, though, I had to stand in front of my father’s and our people, and I needed all the armor I could muster.

The sky blue gossamer gown floated on the breeze making it feel as though I wasn’t wearing anything at all. With a square cut neckline and sleeves that looped low over my arms, leaving my shoulders bare, it flattered my body, as it no doubt had flattered my mother’s. The bodice ran snug down to my hips where the gossamer was left untamed and allowed to flow as the wind would take it. I fingered the simple teardrop diamond that sat in the hollow of my throat. A gift from my father to my mother on the day of my birth, a precious gem for the love of his life. Or so my mother had told me. I’d twisted my hair into an elaborate cluster of curls with Simmy’s help, but a few tendrils had escaped their confines as I’d walked to the Spiral and they now spilled down my back.

“Scared?” Coal stood at my side, escorting me as was his tradition, even when we’d been fighting. Like tonight.

“I hate sitting in there, everyone looking at me.” Their eyes full of pity. I didn’t say that part, but Coal heard me loud and clear. He turned me toward him, his hands on my arms.

“You are a beautiful, amazing woman, no matter your abilities, Lark. You have to remember that. You are a princess; don’t let them treat you elsewise.” He kissed my forehead and our fight from the morning was gone. These were the moments I knew he was a good man. That I was happy he was in my life.

I nodded and was about to go in when I caught a glimpse of blond hair and Ender leathers. Ash obviously hadn’t said anything to anyone about me knocking him down or I’d have been taken to the whipping post already. Which meant he didn’t want to be embarrassed by telling someone I’d bested him. Even if it wasn’t really a fight, it didn’t matter; I had the upper hand now.

Stiffening my back, a smirk on my lips, I stepped into the Spiral, my bare feet on the warm wooden flooring. All around me, the room was lit with lightning bugs and candles. The bugs darted around the room, lighting up the recesses, and the candles flickered and sputtered with the tiny breezes the bugs caused. Everyone was dressed in his or her finery. The bringing forward of complaints happened only once every season, which was my excuse for forgetting it was my turn to sit at my father’s feet while he listened to the concerns of his people. With five other siblings, it was easy to forget where I fit in.