The Twelve Kingdoms: The Mark of the Tala

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “Part-blood?”

  “Many Tala believe we are the direct descendants of Moranu—that it is her blood that allows us to perform magic and that connects us so profoundly with our animal brethren. But our differences have long made us . . . uncomfortable for the mossbacks to be around. Then, the magic granted Annfwn great bounties. We were attacked, over and over again, decimating our people. Finally, one of our queens—your ancestress—created the barrier.”

  “Which keeps people out, protecting Annfwn and the Tala.”

  “Yes, with the unfortunate consequence of also sealing us in, so the magic intensifies—we sometimes get odd backlashes from it—and we interbreed too much, so our children fail. And once we go out, we can’t necessarily come back in.”

  “But we did yesterday. Some of us.”

  “Once you crossed over, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “When the queen is in residence, she can somehow interact with the barrier and change how it behaves. It’s a closely guarded secret and Salena would never say how that worked. Whether Tala can cross on their own seems to have to do with how much of a pureblood they are. It’s obviously not something we can experiment with much. Clearly some of it is affected by you simply being inside. The barrier knows you.

  “But what is crucial is that Annfwn needs a queen who can talk to the old magic, if we’re not to die in here, like insects trapped in a corked bottle. Salena believed that she needed a child by someone outside Annfwn to be the next queen.”

  “But wouldn’t breeding with an outsider just dilute her blood?”

  Rayfe’s mother raised her eyebrows at me and I remembered she’d called Uorsin a part-blood.

  “My father is part Tala?” The concept rocked me. I wondered if he knew. No, of course he didn’t.

  She was nodding. “So Salena saw in her visions. He was descended from Tala who’d had a political falling out, long before the barrier went up. They fled to Elcinea and quickly lost their magic and became as any other mossbacks.”

  The way she used the word, with a hint of contempt, though I’m sure she didn’t consciously intend it, conveyed the image clearly—people so stolid and unchanging that moss grew on them as if they were rocks.

  “But wouldn’t the bloodline have gotten weaker over time?”

  “Not necessarily. Tala are drawn to one another in the outside world, I understand, like a kind of deep, irresistible attraction.” She smiled then, as the blush heated my cheeks. “Ah, yes—you felt it with my son. That’s all to the good. You two will have enough to face together. You deserve to at least enjoy each other.”

  Her words echoed Rayfe’s; recalling the circumstances under which he’d said them did not help my blushing. Thankfully she let it alone.

  “So, over generations, your father’s family found one another again and produced Uorsin—a man of sufficiently intense blood to long for Annfwn. Which brought him to Salena’s attention.”

  “Because he could father viable children for her. But why not bring him here?”

  “Ah.” She looked grave. “She foresaw terrible things if she did. That was what she confided in me, that no matter what path he followed, he would become the tyrant he is today.”

  “I’m not sure it’s fair to call the High King a tyrant.” I felt stung enough by that to defend him. “He brought lasting peace to the Twelve Kingdoms.”

  “As Salena channeled him to do. She had that arrogance, as I said, to believe she knew best. Making him High King, she insisted, was the least destructive option. And she would breed a new queen for Annfwn.”

  “Or three.”

  “She said one of you would have the mark—enough of the magic in her blood to work the barrier.” Her lips quirked as she studied me. “We’d hoped to meet Salena’s daughters long before this. She’d be so proud of you.”

  A rush of emotion made my heart stutter. I hadn’t known how much I needed to hear that, to feel a connection. I blinked back the sudden tears, for once not minding them.

  Rayfe’s mother smiled. “I’ll let you settle in and take some time to mull all of that over. I took the liberty of providing a range of clothing. You didn’t bring much.”

  “I left in rather a hurry.”

  “I can just imagine. I’d apologize for my son’s tactics, but I’m so very happy to have you among us, to have you as part of my family.” She squeezed my hand and turned to go.

  “Um, my lady?”

  She raised an eyebrow at me.

  “What should I call you?”

  “Garland,” she told me. “My name is Garland.”

  A little piece fell into place with a snap. The name I’d given the pony, not the doll. I smiled at her, wanting her to see the truth in my eyes. “I’ve heard your name. She never forgot you.”

  Now her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I’d like for that to be true.”

  Rayfe found me sometime later, in the little library room, with the doll my mother gave me laid out on the carved wooden desk.

  “Planning to perform surgery?” he asked, brushing my shoulder with light fingers. He’d changed out of his leathers and wore loose white pants and a flowing blue silk shirt that brought out the glints in his eyes. His hair was tied back in a casual knot and his feet were bare. He seemed like a totally different man. Something that put me at a loss. I knew how to handle Rayfe my sometime enemy, not this relaxed man with the charming smile.

  “You look different.”

  “And you look just the same,” he replied. “I thought you might have bathed and changed by now.”

  I’d lost track of time, frankly. The sun lowered over the sea outside the windows. I frowned at it. “I am thinking about surgery. My mother gave me this doll and I’m wondering if she left a message in it for me. Something about how to talk to the barrier and let those other people through.”

  “They’ll be all right, you know. You don’t have to solve everything in the first day.”

  “I know.” But the burden weighed on me. I had never wanted to be responsible for other people this way. Hadn’t I told Ursula that countless times? “But if there’s something to the doll, I’d like to find out.”

  Rayfe smoothed a hand over my hair, a comforting gesture, and examined the doll with curiosity. “It’s not a very pretty thing, is it?”

  I chuckled at his careful wording. “No. Still, I hate to damage it.”

  “But you think there’s a reason to?”

  “Well, it’s not at all something you give a child to play with. I think she made it.”

  Bracing a hand on the table, he bent over it, sniffing. “Yes, she used hair from one of her animal forms, and—look.” He turned over one of the paw-like hands and tapped the sharp tips of the meshed fingers. “Claws.”

  “What does it mean?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Could be that it is a message of some sort.”

  The doll lay there, glassy eyes staring at the high ceiling. It did smell kind of funny. “I need answers.”

  “Come.” Rayfe held a hand down to me. “I have answers for you. Change into something comfortable. I’d like to be up top by sundown.”

  “Up top?”

  That wolfish grin slanted across his face. “Yes. The training grounds.”

  It seemed to me that anyplace referred to as the “training grounds” would call for leathers, not the silky sweep of a dress Rayfe pointed me to. My closet here apparently contained little else. Great for walking on the beach maybe, but not so much for scaling cliffs, if “up top” meant what I thought it did.

  “What about shoes?” I fretted.

  “I’m barefooted,” Rayfe pointed out.

  “Yes, well, you’re used to it.”

  “Fewer clothes are better when you’re learning to shift.”

  “I saw the soldiers shift with their clothes on. They were dressed when they came back, too.”

  “It’s an acquired skill and not easily won. The horses lost every
thing not part of their bodies, did you notice?”

  I hadn’t. Had I? I tried to picture it.

  “We’re hard on tack around here, so we don’t use much to begin with. The staymachs are innately magical, but their intelligence is more animal. We can suggest the forms they take, but not much more than that.”

  “I can just imagine.”

  “Best to take off your jewelry, too.”

  “Even my—your—ring?”

  His lips twitched with amusement. “Worried you’ll forget who your husband is?”

  I wrinkled my nose at him, snatched up the peachy silk, and flounced into the little dressing room with my best Amelia-style hair toss.

  I wiped myself down and put on the dress. It skimmed my bare skin like a cloud, perfect for the warm, moist air, really. I felt nearly naked, though. And nervous. I brushed my hair out, to soothe myself. Then set the pendant Dafne had given me and Rayfe’s ring in a little dish. When I emerged, Rayfe took my hand, lacing his fingers with mine with a half smile.

  “Now you truly look like a woman of the Tala.”

  “Yes, well, you can dress up a pig as a horse, too—that doesn’t mean you can ride her.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me but didn’t comment. Improbably, we climbed up the stairs to leave the house, instead of going down. I’d have to break my habit of thinking I needed to come and go by the front courtyard. My rooms weren’t on the highest level of the house after all, and several hallways led out into pathways that became roads. It was as if, at the edges, the place became community property again.

  “Not much security,” I commented. It felt odd to walk hand in hand with him like young lovers.

  “No,” Rayfe mused. “Nothing like what you’re used to. Really there’s not much call for it. We respect each other’s territories.”

  “And you rely on the barrier to ward off outside enemies.”

  He glanced sideways at me, some kind of foreboding darkening his visage. “That has long been the way, yes.”

  “Ursula would say that doesn’t give you much defensive depth.”

  “And what would you say?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not the soldier or the strategist—what do I know?”

  “More than you think, I suspect.”

  We walked along a narrow winding path now, that switchbacked up the cliff. The stones felt smooth and polished by many footsteps. No dwellings here. Brushy plants, touched here and there with salt from the sea breezes, clung to the dirt with enviable tenacity. Somehow I didn’t think I’d have this ability they all looked for in me. That my mother had sacrificed herself to get. Everything had been much simpler when I could just get on Fiona’s back and ride, ride, ride.

  “There’s no reason to be nervous,” Rayfe told me in a quiet voice. He met my gaze when I looked up at him. “Trust me.”

  Oh, yeah. Trust the guy who blackmailed you into marriage, changes into various large animals, and glibly promises you can do the same. Funny thing was, I found that I did. When he studied me with that deep-blue gaze, it seemed he saw me more clearly than anyone ever had. With him I was Andromeda, not the middle sister. Not invisible.

  Unfortunately, it seemed visibility came with a price.

  The training grounds turned out to be a stone-lined ring dug into the flat top of the cliff, circled with wind-twisted scrubby trees that laced together, forming an impenetrable fence.

  “I kind of thought there’d be a view up here.”

  “What we can’t see, can’t see us. This place is for privacy.”

  We entered the ring and Rayfe moved a hinged gate into place, closing the wall. A sharp sea breeze tugged at the silky dress I wore and I shivered a little. The sun had nearly set, casting long shadows.

  “Look there.”

  I followed the line of Rayfe’s finger. The moon, round and pink-gold, rose over the arena wall, glowing impossibly large in the shimmering blue evening sky, impossibly lovely.

  “Not quite full, but close enough.”

  “Enough for what?” I murmured, feeling spellbound. Rayfe pressed against my back and wrapped his arms around me. The heat of his body burned through the light silks we wore.

  “We draw our magic from the moon.” He kissed my temple. “From Moranu. You’ve always known this, just . . .”

  “Without really knowing.”

  “Yes.”

  “I feel it,” I whispered. “I feel something.” Something like the desire Rayfe woke in me poured sweet and hot through my blood. It seemed the moon sang. Promises and passion.

  “Yes,” Rayfe repeated, his voice rough.

  I turned in his arms and his mouth caught mine, feral and devouring. His manhood thrust against my belly, hard and insistent, and I dampened immediately, suddenly famished for his touch. I wondered if he’d make love to me right there on the stones. I hoped he would. Pressing the palms of my hands against his muscled chest, I returned his kisses with my own hunger laced into them.

  “Hold that thought,” he murmured into my mouth. “Keep that feeling.”

  His blazing blue eyes drilled into mine. Deliberately, he bit down on his lower lip, dark blood welling up. I gasped a little and he shushed me.

  “Trust me. This will help.”

  I flinched a little, but he held me steady for the next kiss, the hot taste of his blood filling my mouth along with the desire that flared hotter and higher, consuming me. The beast in my heart roared in delight. Wanting to burst free.

  “Let her go,” Rayfe told me, slipping the dress off my shoulders so I stood naked, following it with his hot hands, caressing my skin. I purred under his touch, feeding off it. “Let her go,” he insisted.

  His words kept pricking me. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted him to touch me, to fill me. I needed to devour him.

  “Andromeda—focus.” Rayfe cupped my face in his hands while I tore at his clothes. “That hunger, that need—let her go.”

  “I want you,” I cried against his mouth, and he laughed, kissing me.

  “You’ll have me, I promise. As much as you like. Later. Concentrate. Relax. Let her go.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You don’t have to do anything. All your life you’ve restrained her. Tucked her inside. Let her go.”

  He caressed the tips of my breasts, and I moaned, his blood still in my mouth, in my veins. I writhed against him, losing my fear in the moment, in the building tension. He slipped a hand between my legs and I exploded.

  “Now, my love. Now, Andromeda!”

  I came apart as she broke free, leaping up and out of my heart.

  The world changed, shifting to shades of gray, layered and sharp. The stone arena looked both larger, with taller walls, and at the same time, more scalable. Hunger rode me. I needed to hunt. I could leap up on that wall, quite easily. My muscles bunched, full of power.

  “No, Andromeda. Stay here, please.”

  The man stood there, smelling delicious. Like blood. I wanted to devour him.

  I stalked toward him.

  Rayfe.

  I knew him. Something popped and I found myself naked and crouched on the stones, Rayfe grinning like a madman. He seized me by the arms and lifted me to my feet, running his hands over my skin and raining kisses on my upturned face.

  “Perfect. Just perfect. I knew you could do it. That you weren’t too old.” He clasped my head in his large hands and kissed me with fierce joy. “I knew it!”

  “Too old?” I repeated faintly. The bones of my skull seemed to vibrate. Panic shimmered in my stomach. They’d said that before.

  “Oh,” he brushed off, “a long-standing debate. A lot of nonsense, obviously.”

  “So . . . I did it? I shifted?” I felt . . . odd. Like I didn’t quite fit in my skin.

  “Yes, you surely did.” He beamed with pride, stroking my hair back from my face. “You turned into a large cat—as I suspected you might—and held the shape for a good several minutes. Well done, indeed!”

&
nbsp; “I didn’t mean to shift back, though.” Not much control at all, it seemed.

  “You were surprised when you recognized me through your cat eyes. That’s the most difficult part to control. When you start thinking like a person too much, it pops you back out into human form. We’ll work on that.”

  “That’s why you kissed me—to get me thinking more like an animal.”

  “Yes. And it worked. I told them it would work.” He clasped me to him, his mouth feeding down my throat. Instead of pleasure, I felt . . . irritated. “Now let’s do it again.”

  “Maybe not tonight.” I still felt unsteady in my skin. The beast’s bloodlust ran hot in me. Somehow I didn’t think that was right. I hesitated to ask Rayfe. Maybe I didn’t want to know how wrong it was. My blood—my part-blood—wasn’t good enough, I feared. The headache that had assaulted me at Windroven clung to the back of my skull.

  “You need a lot of practice. Try it again, while the feeling is still fresh in your mind.”

  I tried.

  It didn’t work.

  What had felt like a releasing, the first time, eluded me like a word I couldn’t quite recall. Now that I knew Rayfe’s technique, my mind kept drifting away from the pleasure of his touch to other thoughts. How did my body know to become something else? More important: how did it know how to get back?

  And Rayfe, arousing me in such a skillful way. I didn’t want it. Not like this. Not like the intimacy was a tool to get me to become this thing he wanted me to be.

  That maybe I couldn’t be.

  I tried to let go, but the surging of the beast frightened me and I found myself grabbing at my own familiar form again. How could my skin grow fur and lose it in an instant? What if I couldn’t get my human shape back again? I blew out a breath and let it go, trying to sink into Rayfe’s kiss. But the sick drop in my stomach lurched me back into reality.

  “You’re thinking too much,” Rayfe muttered.

  I wrenched myself from his embrace, biting my tongue on the twenty-seven things I wanted to say to him, and snatched up my dress. Sliding it back on over my head, I took in and released a deep breath. The moon shone smaller and higher now, lighting the sharp planes of Rayfe’s face with bright silver. How could I explain my queasy fear? I searched his face. What in Moranu was wrong with me? I’d walked into this knowing that I was only a means to an end for him, that I followed in my mother’s footsteps in wedding myself to the enemy.