Chapter One
Princess Brit Thorson opened her eyes to find a blurry silver disc hanging directly in front of her face. Beyond the disc she could see the instrument panel of her Cessna Skyhawk.
She blinked. The metal disc still dangled, cold and heavy against the bridge of her nose, blocking the center of her vision. The controls were still there, too. Beyond them, through the windscreen now crosshatchedwith cracks, lay rocky ground. Farther away, steep black cliffs jutted downward, softened here and there with stands of evergreens, into a sliver of clear, pale blue Gullandrian sky.
It was cold and it was quiet—too quiet, except for the whispering whoosh of rising wind outside and various odd creaking noises all around her.
Her head hurt—and her arms were dangling over her head. “Huh?” The world swam and shifted, her addled senses locking at last onto the correct perspective.
She was hanging upside down from the pilot’s seat, held crookedly in place by her shoulder harness. The blurry disc? That silver medallion Medwyn Greyfell had given her before she left the palace on her way to the airport. “To keep you safe from all evil,” her father’s grand counselor had said.
Considering her current situation, the medallion could have done a better job.
Then again, though she hadn’t made it to that meadow farther inland where her landing would have been much less eventful, she was alive….
Brit groaned and shut her eyes as it all came flooding back: the unremarkable takeoff from Lysgard Airport. The smooth climbout to 6500 feet. Once she’d reached cruising level, she’d banked right, heading northwest, following the curve of the Gullandrian shoreline. At the mouth of Drakveden Fjord, she’d made a right ninety.
And then…
That routine oil-pressure check. The reading: zero.
The awful, hollow feeling of unreality as she went about setting up her best glide speed, running through her emergency checklist, reminding her guide in the rear seat to buckle up, getting on the radio at emergency frequency to broadcast her call of distress.
And all the time, checking below, seeking some viable strip of land where she might bring the Cessna down in one piece. She’d sighted the narrow spit of dry ground at what seemed like the last possible second.
The landing had been rough, but they’d made it down okay. It was during the rollout that she lost it. Some jut of rock must have snagged a wheel. She remembered the sickening lurch, the right wing going up.
About then everything went black…
Brit popped the belt latch and crumpled with a grunt to the deck—scratch that: roof. With some effort, she untangled her arms and legs and got herself into a sitting position. She stared at the dead instrument panel and tried to get her foggy mind to focus.
The Skyhawk was a beautiful, soundly engineered piece of machinery. No way it would completely lose oil pressure out of nowhere—not without help.
Whatever had gone wrong, it wasn’t by accident. Someone had tried to kill her. And someone had almost gotten what he—or she—wanted.
Gingerly she poked at the goose egg rising near her hairline. Hurt like hell. But other than that, now the disorientation was fading, she felt all right. Not terrific. Achy and stiff and bruised in places she’d never been bruised before. Also, a little too close to some serious cookie tossing. But passable. Once she and Rutland dragged themselves out of here, she should be able to keep up as the guide led the way to…
The thought trailed off unfinished. Rutland. When they boarded for takeoff, Rutland’s long, lined face had looked way too pale. “Don’t care much for flying, Highness. Think I’ll sit in back, if y’don’t mind.”
After this experience, Rutland would probably never get in a plane again.
Brit shivered. With the heater as dead as the upside-down instrument panel in front of her, the cabin was getting colder by the minute. Outside, the wind kept whining and fading and then rising to whine again.
“Rutland?” Her voice sounded strange—strained and a little shaky—in the unnatural creaking quiet of the cabin, with the eerie wind whistling outside. She wriggled around, getting herself facing aft. “You all ri—” That last word became a tight, anguished cry.
Her guide was rear-end up, knees to the roof along with his head, which was pressed into his shoulders at an impossible angle. He stared at her through sightless eyes.