Twenty-five:
Dina Dukas
The very last person I expected to see in the field was Prince Zale. His hunting lodge had existed next to our families for centuries. My cousin was his guard, and would soon be Captain of The Guard. I had grown up with Zale during the summer, always sneaking off with him and my brother on adventures. I had thought that once he turned seventeen, I would see less and less of him as he was on his way to becoming Imperator.
I didn’t expect to see him in the field tumbling some girl that I didn’t know. What I did know was that Zale was engaged and shouldn’t have been with anyone. He was part of an alliance Aurum had with Aeris, our enemy country, and if it went south, we could be at war again. As someone who had seen her family members d
