Sophia, Princess Among Beasts

by James Patterson, Emily Raymond

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Historical Mysteries; Suspense

Synopsis

Penguin presents the audio edition of Sophia, Princess Among Beasts by James Patterson, read by Gemma Dawson.

In a kingdom besieged by poverty, war and despair, Princess Sophia must do whatever it takes to restore peace, and protect the people she loves

Release date: July 15, 2019

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 352

Sample

Sometimes the end is only the beginning. And sometimes what’s real is not the same as what is true. And the impossible? My friends, there is no such thing.

But perhaps you wish for proof.

Seventeen years ago, almost to the day, I died delivering my child, a beautiful baby girl whom her father and I were going to name Sophia. She was a tiny, fierce, and squalling thing, with coal-black hair and eyes the color of the ocean. When they placed her on my chest, her hands, which had been balled into tiny fists, unfurled like flowers, and my heart broke open with love. Sophia.

When she pushed her face against my chest, her cries quieted. I wanted to hold her like that forever, safe in the circle of my arms. But I could feel my strength fading. The room had grown dim, and the rush-covered floor, with its sweet-scented strewn herbs of sage and tansy, was dark with blood. It looked as if a great battle had taken place.

My husband, banished to the hall by the midwives, now burst through the door and flung himself to his knees at my bedside. He lay his great strong hand on my cheek. “My love,” he whispered. “Stay. Don’t leave us.”

If only I could. But I felt death’s hands gripping my heart.

Oh, how I would have loved that darling little girl, and how I miss her still. You can imagine that, can’t you?

I want you to hear Sophia’s voice—her story. Its events have never happened before, and yet it is a tale as old as time, and as ancient as love.

It’s a story about the wonder of life, the unexpected power of our dreams and our nightmares, and the secret dominions of ghosts.

Whatever your beliefs, this is a story about our lives and our afterlives. It takes place on both sides of the curtain that some call death, but which I have come to know as life after life.

Or, simply: the Beyond.

My name is Olivia. I died but an hour after my daughter was born. What I suffered is best not to say, and it was a long time ago. Pain fades quickly in memory, but love remains forever, like a flower preserved in amber.

Take my hand. Listen to Sophia’s story. It’s frightening sometimes, but it’s also beautiful and full of hope.

Sometimes the end is only the beginning.

Listen.

Jeanette, my lady in waiting, woke me by tickling my cheek with the feather end of my quill pen.

“Up late writing again, Princess?” she asked. “And what was it this time? A song? A poem? Another appeal to the King about how you should be taught to joust?”

I could tell this last idea amused her; it was another of my unladylike notions. But I didn’t answer. Instead I burrowed deeper into my feather bolster, pulling the ermine coverlet over my head entirely. I’d give my father’s crown for a few more minutes of sleep. I’d been dreaming something wonderful, full of longing, and already I couldn’t recall any of it.

“Sophia,” Jeanette said, her voice still gentle but firmer now. “It’s time to dress. Your father is in the Great Hall, and he expects you to join him. You know he does not like to be kept waiting.”

And so I emerged reluctantly from my bed and dug my bare toes into the sheepskin rug. It was a damp, chill October morning, and I shivered as a chambermaid poked the fire into roaring life. My attendants fluttered around the room, silent as moths. One brought fresh linens, and two others were dispatched to retrieve my gown and mantle. Jeanette herself would unlock the lacquer box to inspect the mound of glittering jewels, choosing which ones should encircle my neck or dangle from my ears. Today, as every day, I was to be scrubbed and dressed and pampered and styled.

“You’d think I lacked the arms to do this myself,” I muttered as Adelie, the youngest attendant, moved to take off my nightdress.

She suppressed a giggle. These indulgences were my royal right and my royal duty, and we both knew it. My father, the king, insisted on every possible luxury for me—except, of course, that of sleeping in.

I made my way toward the great wooden tub of steaming water, scented with verbena, sweet woodruff, and rosemary. The last rose petals of the season dotted the water’s surface, and sinking into the bath was like sliding back into summer’s heat.

I almost could have drifted back to sleep (as Jeanette suspected, I had stayed up half the night). But I had barely closed my eyes when the door to my chamber flung open, and a scullery maid stood gasping on the threshold, her face as white as milk.

“What are you doing here, Margery?” Jeanette demanded. “This is not your place.”

“He’s coming,” the girl whispered. “What they said—it’s true. His army—”

But Jeanette didn’t let her finish. She unceremoniously shoved the girl back into the hall and quickly shut the door. Then she turned back to the room and stared at all of us, and finally me, her expression now dark with worry. My attendants stood frozen, some with their hands to their mouths, and all with terror in their eyes. My heart began to pound in my chest.

Ares was advancing upon our realm.

For weeks there had been rumors: from the bitter north would come an army of ruthless knights, laying waste to all that they saw. No village was safe, and no force could turn them back. Ares’s men were giants, the people said, and Ares himself could not be slain.

Though I did not believe the fevered whispers of frightened villagers, the threat of any attack unsettled me.

“Back to work,” Jeanette said sharply. “It’s only kitchen gossip.”

Was it obvious to everyone that she was lying? It was to me.

Still, they obeyed her. Adelie, visibly trembling, began to pour a thin stream of sweet almond oil into the bath. When she splashed some onto the floor, I reached out and touched her rough hand. “You have nothing to fear from Ares’s army,” I said.

All movement in the room stopped again. Adelie’s older sister, Elodie, stared at me with huge, anxious eyes. Faye, the chambermaid who’d been stoking the fire, began to wail. Her cry was as sharp as a wounded animal’s. “Oh, Princess,” she sobbed, “they say Ares’s men are monsters. I don’t want to die!”

Her panic was contagious. Elodie and Adelie, too, began to weep. But ancient Ana, who had been making my bed, hauled the sobbing Faye upright, slapped a hand over her mouth, and hurried her out of the room. Then she poked her head back through the doorway and threatened everyone else with the switch if they didn’t calm themselves immediately.

I looked then at wise, sturdy Jeanette. I had known her my whole life, and she was the closest thing I had to a mother. I wanted desperately for her to reassure us. But that wasn’t her task. It was mine.

I drew myself up from the bath. Adelie, remembering her place, hurried to wrap my shoulders in a soft cloth. “There’s no such thing as monsters,” I said. “Our enemy may be preparing his attack, but our armies will meet in the field. You are safe inside the castle, which is an unassailable weapon in itself.”

“Go on,” Jeanette urged. “Tell them.”

I made sure my voice didn’t betray my own fear. “The moat that surrounds Bandon Castle is our first defense,” I explained. “Men cannot swim with swords and shields, and any of Ares’s soldiers who attempt to cross the bridge will be shot by our marksmen.”

“Suppose some arrows miss?” Adelie whispered.

“Then the enemy comes to the gatehouse’s iron-plated door. Should they get through this—which they won’t—they find themselves in a narrow, winding passageway, where they will be pierced by arrows shot through slits in the walls.” I gave each of my attendants what I hoped was a comforting look. “And don’t forget the murder holes,” I added, “which allow our guards to pour torrents of boiling water down from the ceiling!”

“Excuse me, Your Highness,” Jeanette said, “perhaps before you go on…” She held out a chemise of white linen, so fine-spun it was almost transparent.

I looked down at my body: my breasts goose-fleshed, my legs slender and dripping wet. I had been giving a speech standing half naked in a tub!

I flushed. Propriety had never come naturally to me. “Forgive me,” I said, and were it not for Ares, I would have laughed outright. As it was, I stepped from the bath, holding up my arms so Jeanette could slip the chemise over my head.

“Now that you’re properly covered,” she said quietly, “you can continue to soothe their fears.”

“Suppose they survive the gatehouse’s murder holes,” I went on, as two attendants brought forth a high-waisted gown with trailing sleeves, cut from blue silk shot through with silver thread, and edged with lace as pale and delicate as spiderwebs. “They come to the outer castle wall, where more marksmen wait on the battlements above.”

The rustling silk pulled tighter against my ribs as Jeanette set to work on the buttons. It felt wrong to dress so exquisitely on a day such as this, but I knew my father’s rules. It didn’t matter what forces might be amassing against us; my duty was to look as pleasing as a painting.

Adelie brought me burgundy slippers embroidered with violets, and her sister waited with a velvet surcoat in a rich midnight blue—the shade my father liked for me to wear. Then Jeanette led me to little stool before a tall mirror. I sat down carefully, readying myself for what came next: five hundred strokes of a boar’s bristle brush through my long, dark hair. After that, Jeanette would arrange the shining waves into artful clusters, coils, and ringlets. I will admit, I did always like this part.

Elodie seemed to have gained some of her color back, thanks to my reassurances.

Adelie, on the other hand, said, “But what if—”

Jeanette glanced up from her brushing to silence her with a look.

“There’s another thick wall beyond that,” I reminded them. I gestured to the ancient, leather-bound tome I kept on my bedside table, Myths: Demons and Monsters. “You are no more in danger from Ares than you are from the imaginary monsters in this book. You have my word.”

Elodie, smiling shyly now, came forward with an ornately etched tray of glittering bottles, each filled with the distilled essence of a flower. I pointed to the eau de rose in its ruby glass vial. I shivered as she touched the dropper to my neck, and the scent of roses—my mother’s favorite flower—filled the room.

As Jeanette finished plaiting my hair and fastened a necklace of pearls and sapphires around my throat, I thought of what lay inside that second wall, should it be breached: the broad castle yard, the gardens, the Great Hall.

Us.

But I did not mention this to the women and girls in my bedchamber.

I stood regal in my gown, armored by the splendor of silk and jewel. “Ares’s men are soldiers like ours,” I said. “They do not have the strength to breach Bandon’s walls, and they will not mount a siege with winter fast approaching. They will soon seek easier conquest elsewhere. We should not look upon the coming days as different from any other.”

Only Jeanette still looked uncomforted. She bowed her head. “May what you say be true, Princess,” she said quietly.

Unescorted, I made my way to the Great Hall, through castle passageways that were empty and strangely quiet. Unless I counted the ancestral figures woven into the richly colored tapestries decorating the walls—my great-grandfather, King Martinus, leading his knights into battle, and his wife, Queen Rosalia, kneeling in a forest, flanked by tame foxes—I passed no one at all.

Usually the long hallways rang with the footsteps of my father’s knights or bustled with the busy labors of pages and servants. But not today. I couldn’t explain the absence of washerwomen and valets, but the knights, I now knew, had gathered in the armory to polish their swords and sharpen their daggers.

“We will be safe,” I said out loud to myself, and the hall’s stony emptiness amplified the sound and sent it echoing back to me. Safe, safe, safe.

Somehow this served to reassure me—it was as if the castle itself had a voice—and I began to sing part of the song I’d stayed up so late writing.

A lovely girl, so young, so bright

That death sought her for his own

He made her his queen on a winter’s night

In a dress of ice and a crown of bone…

In the Great Hall, my father, a huge, gray-bearded man with powerfully muscled shoulders, was hunched in his gilded chair like a boulder. I approached, taking small, graceful steps so that he wouldn’t reprimand me, as he sometimes did, for “indelicate behavior.” He raised his big, grizzled head and smiled gently at me. But his calmness was deceptive—he could strike quicker than a snake.

If Bandon Castle was our first weapon, my father, King Leonidus, was our second. Our kingdom had tripled in size since he’d ascended the throne after the early death of his own father. His skill with a sword was unmatched, and he could kill with a single blow from his fist. He’d spent more than half his life on the battlefield.

Until last year, that is.

When I turned sixteen, my father—full of wine, and flush with victory in battle—told me to name my birthday gift. Ask, he’d said, and it shall be yours.

I knew that I could have any treasure from the castle’s vaults. If I wanted a carriage of mother-of-pearl and six fire-eyed horses to pull it, I would have it. Had I said that I wished for a dress of ice, my father would have found a way to make one. Gold or silk or fur or diamond—anything I sought would be mine.

But I asked this instead: No more war raids. No more conquests.

How many times had he marched upon some other king’s lands, seeking to take what he did not truly need? How many men died for our claim to a forest, for the right to call a mountain ours? Shouldn’t we take better care of what we already had?

Our kingdom was large enough, I told him. It was time to stop fighting. Time to protect instead of attack.

Let us not cause any more suffering: that was my argument. What I didn’t admit to him, though, was my fear. How when he was gone, the castle felt haunted, and I couldn’t sleep from worry. First, of course, was the worry that I would lose my father, having already lost my mother. And if I were left alone, what then? I’d be expected to rule a kingdom by myself—I, who had never even been permitted to dress myself.

Please, I’d said. Enough.

My father’s face grew ashen as he listened. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. But he was a man of his word, and he had promised me anything I wanted. And so Great Leonidus the Warrior King set aside his weapons and shield to honor his only daughter’s wish.

Now I bent and kissed my father on the cheek. Sunlight spilled in dusty rays through the high windows, but still the room was dim. As big as it was, it felt cozy to me.

Safe, safe, safe.

“Ah, you are brighter than the sun this morning, my little songbird,” he said, as a manservant in blue livery came bearing a platter of bread and meat and a pitcher of small ale for my father, and a bowl of fruit for me. “Tell me, how does this day find you?”

How could I answer his question truthfully? My father was unable to bear the thought of anything troubling me, so I dared not admit my fear of the coming battle.

“I’m well enough,” I said, sitting down next to him.

“You look a bit tired,” he said.

I lowered my eyes and said nothing. I picked up a slice of apple and then put it back down again.

“You were writing songs all night long again, weren’t you?” he asked. I heard a low chuckle. “If only you’d been practicing the harp instead of singing—I know your teacher begs you to.”

“And I endlessly disappoint her,” I said, offering him a smile. I had neither talent nor affection for the instrument, and we both knew it.

At my father’s elbow, the servant poured small ale into his goblet. When he finished, he bowed solemnly and then stood up, his gaze meeting my father’s. “To the defeat of Ares’s army,” he said, as if he were a lord giving a toast.

I turned to him in surprise—he must have been new and untrained to dare to speak in front of the king unprompted.

My father’s jaw clenched as he rose from his chair. I put my hand on his to calm him, because I knew his temper. But he roughly shook me off. His lips curled in a snarl, and then he struck the man across the face with the back of his hand.

The blow rang through the hall.

“Father!” I gasped, as the servant crumpled to the ground with a cry of agony.

The guards, too, seemed stunned. Though the king was known for his fury, never had he struck a servant with his own hand. No one moved except the man on the floor, who clutched his cheek and moaned.

Then my father snapped his fingers, and the guards stationed at the door rushed forward and pulled the servant roughly from the floor. The man looked at me dazedly, pleadingly, as they dragged him away by the hair. A dark rivulet of blood trickled down his cheek.

“You know where to take him,” my father said to his men, and then he turned back to his breakfast.

“You mustn’t let them hurt him more,” I pleaded. “It was a misunderstanding—”

He grunted. “You have only me in this world, Sophia, and it is my duty to protect you. I do not care that he forgot his place and believed he had the right to speak. But I will not let you be disturbed by any talk of strife,” he said.

“So am I to pretend that Ares will simply pass us by?” I asked quietly.

My father’s dark eyes flashed with warning. “Do not speak of such things. Listen to me, Sophia. That man shall be taken to the dungeon, whe. . .