It wasn’t that she didn’t love them. It was that she didn’t love what they had planned for her. Her brother and her father before him had very definite ideas about the ways in which an Elessedil Princess should conduct herself, and Khyber had trouble even seeing herself as a Princess. Her station in life was an accident of birth, and she could never quite bring herself to accept it as her due. She was always more comfortable with being someone and something else. Her family didn’t like that. Her family let her know that rebelliousness would not be tolerated.

  Her response had been to run away. She started at eight. At twelve, after two failed attempts, she had determined that this time she would succeed, that she would put herself permanently beyond their reach. Callahorn was Free–born land, and people of all Races were welcomed and accepted no matter who they were or where they came from. Everyone was treated the same. Royalty had been gone from the Borderlands for hundreds of years and wasn’t likely to be coming back anytime soon. If she could get that far, she could disappear into the mix and never be found. At least, that was the way she saw it at twelve.

  She got as far as her destination, but she was discovered by the Captain before she could disembark and was hauled back kicking and screaming yet again to her family. It was not a pleasant reunion. But she learned something valuable from that effort. She learned how to hide in plain sight. She learned that if you looked enough like you belonged, you stood a pretty good chance of being accepted. On that outing, she took on the look of a cabin boy or a very young crewmember, and to her surprise the crew never stopped to consider that she might be something else. Admittedly, she kept her exposure to a minimum, staying out of sight most of the time. But when she did surface, for food and water or just to breathe fresh air, she was able to move about without being stopped or questioned.