Dad laughed. “Konnelby was rattled, as well.”
“I must reward him,” said Russal. “I rarely expect my hedge trimmers to protect the queen’s parents.”
Kambry swatted his arm. “He’s a master gardener and designed the new maze, hardly a hedge trimmer.”
“Hardly a swordsman, either.” Russal laughed and leaned his chin on his finger. “Perhaps I’ll gift him with a golden shovel. It will be useful and symbolic.”
“Perhaps I’ll just carry a shovel around with me,” Dad said. He drew his shoulders up and back. “We’ve allowed you to derail the conversation, but I would like to know that all is well between you two.”
Kambry chewed her lip. She didn’t have it in her to assert that they had resolved their issue.
Russal was equally silent. His fingers caressed hers, his thigh warm even through her dress. “We visited Gordy this morning,” Kambry said.
Perplexed, Dad looked back and forth between Kambry and Russal. “You rose early to visit your guard. I realize he is high ranking and trained Kambry, but this is a day of celebration. Shouldn’t you be making the rounds with your subjects?”
“Speaking of guards,” Kambry said. “Where is Justinia? I assigned her squad to the both of you.”
“Kambry,” Russal said, his voice soft. “Are they any different from you? The do Kon and Gordy are friends.”
Dad stepped away from Mom. His broad figure no longer a concerned father. “Kambry.”
She gazed at Dad and took a settling breath. “Gordy was injured. His daughters are caring for him. It will be weeks, perhaps months before he recovers.”
Mom was by his side at once. “Brode, go see him.”
“I will.” He cupped her hand where she pressed it on his arm. “You’ll come with me?”
“Of course.”
Russal looked at Kambry, and she eyed him, trying not to be smug. “I’ll write the address,” he said.
“I will, Russal.” She spied a writing desk with inkwell and headed toward it. “I don’t think Dad can read your writing.”
Russal feigned offense. “It’s not that bad.”
“Not for those familiar with it,” she said over her shoulder as she pulled out a drawer and searched for parchment.
“You weren’t familiar with it, and you could read it.”
“I’m a scribe. I can read anything.” She wrote the address and dusted the ink.
Mom sighed. “I think they’ve worked out the details, dear. Let’s get our things and go see your friend.”
Kambry turned, the sheet in her hand. “You’re leaving us?”
“You’re not children.” Dad headed to their room, and Mom followed. “We’ll see you later, perhaps for dinner if we’re back by then.”
They returned after a moment. Kambry and Russal had yet to stir. “Still here?” Mom asked and went to a table and picked up her gloves and a hat. She pulled the parchment from Kambry’s fingers.
Dad headed to the door, stopping and turning to look at Russal. “You, come with me. We’ll talk briefly.”
Russal gave Kambry a resigned look, and she chuckled and waved him on.
“You’re lucky it’s a long way to the kitchen,” he said in to her ear as he passed her and followed Dad to the door.
Mom stopped at her side long enough to kiss her cheek and continue to the door.
Maybe they both had something to say to Russal. Kambry sat down and gazed about the room, trying not to remember the bandage wrapped around Gordy’s head. They’d given Dad little warning.
A floorboard creaked behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder and then jumped to her feet.
Felip Covey leaned in the open doorway of a room just off the drawing room, his arms folded across his chest, his head tilted and his green eyes gentle. “I heard you didn’t sleep in the same bed with Russal,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” she said, ignoring the fact that he had access to whether or not she slept with her husband. She had to keep Russal and Covey apart.
“Checking on your parents.” His voice sounded sincere, and his smile was soft, almost kindly.
She wondered if he had experienced traveling with a group of thespians. He looked completely relaxed, as if he didn’t fear her calling for help.
“I worry. Your parents are important to me.”
“Why?”
“They’re your parents.” Covey took a step into the room. “Why haven’t you screamed yet, Kambry? Russal is just outside the door.”
“Why are you pursuing me?”
His smile broadened. “So you now believe I am serious about you. I want you for my queen.”
“I am someone else’s queen.” That wouldn’t change. Maybe this was more about him realizing the truth.
“It need not be permanent.” He watched her. “Still, you hesitate to call out. Perhaps you don’t want it to be permanent.”
“What will make you leave Kavin?” She had to get him out of here, even better out of the realm.
“Tell me you feel nothing for me. Tell me why I haven’t killed Russal and taken the kingship from him. I could have in all these years. Tell me why I haven’t stolen you away. Tell me why, when I could have, I haven’t taken that ring from you.”
She refused to think about the points he listed, but the last made her speak. “You can’t. Only Russal can remove it.”
“You can remove it if you truly want to.” He watched her reaction before continuing.
She gazed up at him, keeping a polite smile on her face, as if she lacked concern for him being in her parents’ quarters. She had learned there was much she could do with Kavin magic if she wanted to. Maybe she could remove the ring, but she wouldn’t. Her gaze shifted, and she jerked it back to him. She wasn’t worried about him being here with her, just that he not face Russal. Why was that?
“Or Russal can slip it off your hand. There are multiple ways, expedient ways to do so, but I won’t let that happen. I won’t let them harm you.”
She believed him. She’d figure out why later. “You need to leave.” That was paramount. Russal could return any moment.
“Are you protecting me from Russal?” he asked, his voice low and questing.
She would have to tell Russal, wouldn’t she? She had argued for not just truth between them, but involvement. “Leave before he gets here.”
She heard the door open in the hall. “Leave,” she whispered.
Kambry turned to the entry to the drawing room. Russal would be here in an instant. When she looked back, she saw no sign of Covey.
She closed her eyes and took a long breath before exhaling.
Russal entered the parlor. “Your dad tells me you don’t like it when people are overly protective,” he said, a wry smile quirking his lips. “He should have told me that yesterday.”
“You think that would have made a difference?” Why didn’t she think of Felip as overly protective? Because he talked to her about it, claimed a motivation she could at least argue against.
He opened his mouth and closed it with a snap, giving her a shrug. “Probably not. I suppose I have to learn by experience. But I am going to make sure I don’t shut you out or protect you too much. Again.” He scratched his ear and looked apologetic.
She turned in a circle, her gaze catching on the room she suspected Covey had ducked into. “About that, Russal.” She finished her turn and faced him. “I need to talk to you about something.”
He gathered her against him. “Let’s talk while we walk. We have more than an hour before we have to lunch with the Condoris. Let’s go to the garden.”
She shook her head but didn’t stop him from guiding her out of the room. “Russal, I want to talk.”
“Doesn’t it feel odd to visit in your parents’ quarters when they aren’t here? Come on.” They were out the door before she could pull them to a halt.
“Russal, you’re doing it.”
He closed the door behind them and nodded at an alert gu
ard. “What?”
“You’re not listening. I wanted to talk to you about something important.”
“I’m listening.” He pressed her hand onto his arm. “We’ll talk while we walk.”
Kambry noted the guard behind and the other ahead at the corner. Now would not work. Russal would hardly listen calmly to her telling him she had a chat with Covey while he was getting advice from her dad, and he already didn’t like the idea of his rival getting close to her. “We need to talk privately.”
He grinned at her. “Well, then I have even more to look forward to than what I have planned in the garden.”
Exasperated, she said, “On your head be it.”
A quizzical look altered his face, but he continued forward, and she pressed her concerns to the back of her mind. Guilt pushed back at her. Maybe she should just tell him. She could whisper, but he wouldn’t stay quiet. He’d probably send a guard off at the run for Burty and then charge back into the chambers to search for Covey.
Felip was long gone. Without her in the room, Felip had nothing to entertain him. Had he really been checking on her parents? What would he do if he found someone ready to do them harm? She was an idiot to believe him. She tugged on Russal’s arm. They were going to have to talk about this in the corridor, guards, Burty and Russal be damned. “Russal.”
He came to a halt, grasped her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Yes?”
The grin on his face made her falter. He looked so joyful. Maybe she could delay it until they were in the garden. “You look very handsome today.”
Smugness formed dimples on his cheeks. “Oh, that is important. I never should have hindered your bringing this to my attention. How handsome am I? Will damsels fall at my feet?” He glanced around. The female guard at the corner gazed at him with half-veiled eyes.
“Do you know any damsels?” he asked her. “I want to test this.”
“No, Your Highness. We’re low on damsels these days. I can ask around if you wish.”
He huffed. “No damsels, Kambry.”
She rolled her eyes, which elicited a chuckle from him. “Let’s go to the garden,” she said.
They resumed their walk. “Do you think we’ll find damsels there?” he teased.
“Did you arrange for any?”
“I had other ideas in mind.” He snapped his fingers. “I really should have planned better. After all, I went to the trouble of being handsome.”
“What’s in the garden, Russal?”
“Wait and see.”
Chapter Ten
After Russal parted the wall of greenery before them, Kambry stepped through, careful to pull her dress close to avoid snagging on the twigs and curled leaves. A twenty-by-ten-foot area of flat ground stretched toward the high outer wall that encircled the royal gardens. The gardeners had completely overlooked the area.
“Move along, darling,” Russal said from the other side of the hedge.
Kambry sidestepped, leaving him room to join her.
“What do you think?” he said.
“Um. It’s a bit of an empty page, isn’t it?”
Russal laughed. “That’s the point. We can do what we like, and who would notice? My mom took me here to practice manipulating Kavin magic when I was a boy.” He seemed pleased with the rectangular space, the blank gray of the stone wall before them and the low-cropped ground cover. His satisfied smile dropped some. “I’d only just started when, well, you know, there was a sudden end of things. I don’t think I returned here for at least a year, and I couldn’t make myself practice the skills she had taught me. It looks like it’s just been waiting for us, doesn’t it?”
She reached out to him, squeezed his hand and gave the space another viewing, this time appreciating it for its lack of design and landscaping. “So we can play with the plants?”
“The plants, the soil, the wall, anything natural and within reach of Kavin magic.”
Russal had already sealed the hole in the hedge. Tall shrubs surrounded them on three sides.
“Can we make anything grow?”
“Anything that’s actually here. We can’t produce roses without a rosebush, but we’re not here to design a garden. This is practice. You practice knife throwing with a well-balanced knife and a target a close distance away. As you improve, you increase the distance and change the knife. You practice Kavin magic with the stuff of nature: soil, rock, plants and air. Those are our tools. As we improve, we’ll draw more ingredients for our needs.”
Kambry walked the length of one thick hedge, running her hand through the foliage. The narrow leaves were soft and sunk beneath her palm. “How do we start?”
He raised his index finger at her and crossed to the wall. Pressing his hand to the stone, he stood a moment, appraising the canvas, she supposed, before looking over his shoulder at her. “Come over here.”
She joined him, and he nodded at his hand.
Where his hand lay against the smooth, chiseled wall, the stone rose around his spread fingers as if it were soft as mud. She pulled his hand away to find an imprint exactly matching the shape of his palm and fingers. Setting her hand inside the indentation, she expected it to reshape to her own smaller hand. Nothing happened.
Russal leaned against the wall. “Draw the magic inward and push it out. Tell it what you want any way you please. Think it, say it, imagine what it would look like or desire it.”
The grainy texture of the cool stone beneath her hand tickled her palm, and she jerked it away.
Russal laughed and pressed her hand back in place. “That was me. I’ll stop. Now what mark do you want to leave?”
Kambry stared at the wall. She gave Russal an impish grin, and he raised an eyebrow at her. The indentation shifted like liquid, almost a caress, before reforming into the shape of an oak leaf.
Russal nodded approval, and she pulled her hand away. He leaned in closer. At the center of the oak leaf was a small shape. A proilis flower in bloom. He caressed it with a fingertip.
“Lovely.” He gave her a quick kiss as a reward. “That’s us. Force and cunning, endurance and malleability, the forest and the vine.”
“Malleability?” She leaned on the wall, facing him, and crossed her arms.
Setting his forearms on the wall on either side of her, he looked at her with smiling eyes. “Doesn’t the vine twist and curl around the trunk? Doesn’t the dull brown bark enhance its beauty that much more? The oak gives support, and the vine creates its own base of power from it. Together they make up Kavin. Just like we do.” He kissed her, curling an arm around her waist and pulling her close. “Kambry,” he whispered.
Her heart raced, and she didn’t know if it was the desire for him to kiss her again or not. She ducked under his arm and backed away. How far would he go if she encouraged him? She wasn’t ready to contemplate that. “I think perhaps you are the vine and me the forest.”
He rolled his back to the wall and sighed.
“I remember the dress I wore at the Grand Review. It was rich brown and gold while you wore green and purple.”
“I remember it, too. The dress cut way down in the back, and my fingers pressed to your skin could feel you trembling.”
She was trembling now and backed up a few more steps. “Russal.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think making indentations in stone walls is all that useful.”
“No?”
“No.”
He turned and gave the wall a long look, his gaze rising from the base to the top, well over twelve feet above them. Russal backed up a step. Nubs formed in offset rows, growing with each second until they were small ledges one might grasp. He leaped up and climbed to the top of the wall, then sat looking down at her. “Come join me.”
“In this dress?”
“Be malleable. Or consider that I’m the only one here, and I am your husband.”
Kambry didn’t allow her thoughts to traverse along the imaginative intimation he made. She gripped her skirts and
pulled them up a few inches. She was wearing boots, not as sturdy as her training ones, but they could handle steps on a wall. But what to do with the voluminous fabric dangling around those boots? She grabbed the front of the skirt, and pulling the hem underneath, she tucked it under the snug waist of her petticoat. “Malleable enough for you?”
“This angle doesn’t quite offer the view of your limbs that I could truly appreciate, but I’m intrigued with what your next adjustment might be.”
She shook her head in teasing exasperation and advanced on the wall. Before she could raise her hands to grip the second set of ledges, they sunk into the stone. “Hey.”
“Make your own.” He laughed and leaned out over her.
She snapped her fists to her hips and glared at the wall. As an idea formed, a snicker threatened to slip past her throat. The wall rippled, and one by one a set of stairs protruded, the first just above the trim green ground cover.
Russal groaned, a hint of humor lacing the agony of seeing her trump his little ledges.
Every few steps and at elbow level, a loop of stone formed. When the last one solidified near the peak of the wall, she ascended the stair, grasping each handhold in case she tripped on the skirt hanging behind. She plopped down on the wall a foot away from Russal and kicked her feet, her heels tapping the wall with each swing.
“So this is how it’s going to be, is it?” he said, a bit of admiration in his grudging tone. The wall reformed. A wedge started at Russal’s dangling feet and angled down to the ground. Russal stood and slid down the stone, his arms out at his sides to keep his balance on the polished surface.
Kambry’s stairs disappeared back into the stone in company with his wedge. She squinted at him and waved her index finger. “Mischievous man.”
He ogled her legs, and she concentrated through her embarrassment, making the wall fold upon itself, carrying her down. It reformed smooth and vertical as soon as her feet touched the ground. She grabbed her skirt and yanked it from its tucked-up position.
He was inches from her in three long strides. “This is why I adore you.” He kept his arms at his side, his shoulders minutely shaking as if he were holding back from crushing her to him. “Please forgive me for last night.”
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