Book 4: Hard Realities

Finn

I grunt as I lift one of the last crates of supplies off the back of the cart at the edge of Tarrin. Something inside shifts heavily against my chest.

“I would offer to help,” the driver says, “but there’s a reason I only do the smuggling.” She raises her arms, displaying how thin they are.

I shake my head as I struggle a few steps forward. “You have a princess’s arms, if nothing else.”

Princess Joli Som, last in line for the throne of Lightning Cape, laughs and throws a few locks of her pinned, dark brown hair over her shoulder. “Most people don’t risk talking to me that way.”

I heft the box higher in lieu of a response. Obviously, an actual tanner wouldn’t tease a princess, even if she was perched on the back of a dirty hay cart, wearing leather pants and a stained tunic. A princess who introduced herself as “Joli, the one keeping you all fed.” Who I only recognized from being forced to learn royals’ faces. At least her status is