The Shadow Queen bj-7

by Anne Bishop

  “May I remind you that you have seven males,” Theran said, shifting so most of the men couldn’t see that he was getting angry. “You need twelve to form a court. If you dismiss these men now, you may not get any of them back.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  *Walkies!* Vae shouted. *You males will go for walkies now. You can mark the trees. Human males do that sometimes. And I will teach you how to play fetch.*

  Vae leaped from the platform and sailed over the men’s heads, landing in the middle of the room—an impossible thing to do without Craft. She disappeared for a moment, then popped up shoulder height, her tail smacking faces as she began herding the men out the door.

  Theran was angry. This audience hadn’t gone as he’d wanted, and by turning the Warlord Princes away, she was taking the risk of not being able to form a court. If she couldn’t form a court, whatever favors he had called in would have been wasted, so she couldn’t blame him for feeling upset.

  Ranon, on the other hand, looked more relaxed as he came up to stand on her left side. Baffled, but more relaxed.

  “She’s a relentless little bitch, isn’t she?” Ranon asked, tipping his head to indicate Vae.

  The knot in Cassidy’s stomach eased as she watched Warlord Princes obeying a dog because they couldn’t figure out how not to obey the dog. That, at least, felt like home.

  She smiled at Ranon. “Of course. She’s a Sceltie.”

  CHAPTER 11

  TERREILLE

  Gray pressed himself against the big stone gardening shed, his limbs trembling, his heart racing, as if his body were still trying to outrun the nightmares that had filled his sleep last night.

  There was a Queen at Grayhaven. He could feel her presence, even out here. She would be living in that suite of rooms, in that room, doing . . . things.

  His back muscles, which had never fully healed on the left side, tightened in response to his fear, threatening to spasm and leave him helpless to run, to hide until she lost interest in looking for him.

  I’m Grayhaven. I’m Grayhaven!

  Theran’s blade. He never betrayed his cousin, had protected Theran in the only way he could. Even when the bitch did those things to him.

  He couldn’t remember that. Couldn’t. Theran was living in the mansion now. With her. No secrets. Not anymore. She knew Theran was the real Grayhaven.

  He couldn’t get near the house. He had tried because Theran was in there, but he couldn’t get near the house. Talon had brought him food last night, and the men who worked in the stables had let him use their toilet and shower so he wouldn’t have to go near the house.

  Her presence tingled under the land, even here at the edge of what had been the formal gardens. He didn’t remember that happening the last time. The gardens had been as close to a safe place as there had been when he’d been a prisoner here. The Queen had him shackled and staked to a long chain, like a pony being put out to graze. Let him stagger around the old gardens—or crawl when his tortured body couldn’t do more. Left him where he could see the dead honey pear tree, the symbol of the Grayhaven Queens who had stood against Dorothea SaDiablo. Dead like their bloodline. Dead for so many years, but kept as a reminder that those Queens had not endured.

  Jared had given that honey pear tree to Lia, who had tended it all her life.

  Who could say if it was the same tree? But everyone believed it was, and that was all that really mattered.

  Hope. Life. Love. All dead, like the tree.

  That’s what the last Queen had taught him.

  Then Talon had found him, rescued him. And with Talon’s help, Theran had done what he could to help Gray rebuild some kind of life.

  He wasn’t what he should have been. He knew that sometimes, could sense that something had been lost.

  He would stay here because Theran was here, and Talon was here. But . . .

  He felt her presence, felt her psychic scent as a heat against his skin.

  But it was a pleasant heat, like beams of sunlight coming through a window on a day in early spring.

  He peered around the corner of the shed and saw her walking toward him. But not looking for him. No, she was looking at the land.

  Her scent said “Queen,” but she didn’t look like a Queen, wasn’t dressed like a Queen. She looked . . . friendly. And her hair . . .

  He watched as she pulled the pins from her hair and it tumbled around her shoulders and down her back.

  He’d never seen red hair. He’d read stories where people had red hair, but he’d never seen anyone in real life. And she had spots on her face. Why did she have spots on her face? Such pale skin. What color were her eyes?

  With his heart pounding, Gray stepped away from the stone shed and walked toward her slowly, fearfully. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t. But he wanted, needed, to see the color of her eyes.

  Cassidy watched him walk toward her. A good-looking man with a strong physical resemblance to Theran, right down to the dark hair and green eyes. Family, perhaps?

  A well-toned body of a physically active adult male. But his psychic scent said “youth,” even “boy,” which was a sure sign of something wrong, and that wasn’t good because inside that body . . .

  Warlord Prince. Wild. Wounded.

  Mine.

  The thought startled her, made her heart pound because it seemed to recognize something about this man that her mind wasn’t ready to acknowledge.

  This wasn’t the same feeling of recognition that she’d had with the Warlord Princes who were now in her First Circle. This was different. Personal.

  So wounded inside. She could see it in his green eyes now that he was close enough. He looked like he was ready to run, and yet he kept moving toward her as if he couldn’t help himself.

  “Hello,” she said quietly. “I’m Cassidy.”

  He stopped at the sound of her voice, shifting his weight from one foot to another, not sure if he should get closer or step back.

  “I’m Gray,” he finally said, taking another step toward her.

  His eyes roamed her face. When he got close enough, he reached out, almost touching her cheek. Then he snatched his hand back, like a boy who had almost touched the forbidden.

  Wondering what he saw that baffled and intrigued him so much, she touched her cheek to see if something was on her skin.

  Oh. She wrinkled her nose. “You’ve never seen freckles?”

  “Freckles.” He said the word softly, as if it were a fragile gift. “Are they just on your face?”

  She knew her cheeks flamed with color. She also knew that, despite the man’s body, it was a boy asking out of curiosity. Still . . .

  “I don’t know you well enough to answer that.”

  He nodded, accepting.

  He was half a head taller than she, if that. It would have been easy enough to look him in the eyes if his own weren’t so busy roaming over her face.

  “Did you come out to look at the gardens?” she asked.

  He cringed, as if she had scolded him for doing something wrong.

  “I tend the gardens. It’s my job now. I don’t stay in the big house. I’m not in the way.”

  Who said you were in the way?

  His voice had risen to a kind of desperate keening and he looked ready to bolt, so she turned toward what might have been a flower bed at one time. “Well, you’ve certainly got enough work. This land hasn’t been loved in a long time.”

  Something changed so suddenly, she gasped in response to that flash of strong emotion. She couldn’t decipher the look in Gray’s eyes, couldn’t get a feel for where he was now, mentally or emotionally. Which wasn’t good because even if he was diminished in some way, he was still a Warlord Prince and he outranked her. She couldn’t tell if the Purple Dusk power she was sensing was from his Birthright Jewel or his Jewel of rank, but either way, it was darker than her Rose.

  And then, oddly, she had the feeling that some broken piece inside him suddenly settled back into its rightful place.
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  A moment after that, it was as if nothing had happened. Except that Gray seemed a little less like a boy.

  “No, it hasn’t been loved for a long time,” he said.

  Too many feelings. She’d come out here to walk and get away from all the feelings, to do something to settle herself before she went back to the next group of males who would be disappointed in the chosen Queen.

  “Do you have a basket or a wheelbarrow?” she asked.

  “We have both.”

  “Good. I have an hour before the next meeting, so that’s enough time to clear a bit of ground.”

  “Clear ground?”

  “Weed the flower bed.”

  His eyes widened. “You can’t weed.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “But . . . you’re the Queen.”

  “Yes.”

  He rocked back on his heels, clearly at a loss.

  “I’m the Queen who lives in this house now, so these are my gardens, right?”

  “Yes,” he said warily.

  “So these are my weeds. And since I’m the Queen, I can pull weeds if I want to. Right?”

  He wasn’t quick to agree. Well, he was a Warlord Prince. They were never quick to agree about anything. Unless it was their idea in the first place.

  Finally he said, “You’ll get dirty. It rained last night.”

  “I know it rained. Which means the soil will be softer, and the weeds will be easier to pull.”

  “But you’ll get dirty.” He frowned at the hem of her skirt, which had already picked up some moisture from brushing the top of the grass.

  “I can”—she looked toward the stone shed, saw him stiffen, and looked the other way—“change clothes behind those bushes while you get the wheelbarrow.”

  Not giving him time to argue, she hurried behind the bushes, vanished her good clothes, then called in the old shirt and trousers she usually wore for gardening. As she stuffed her legs into the trousers, she caught a heel of her shoe in the hem and hopped for a few steps, saying words her father pretended she didn’t know.

  “Should have used Craft, Cassie,” she muttered as she finally got the heel clear of the hem. “Pass the shoe through the cloth and you’re less likely to topple over and fall on your ass.”

  Once she got the trousers on, she buttoned up the long-sleeved shirt, and quickly braided her hair, using Craft to secure the end of the braid.

  “Good enough,” she muttered as she hurried back to the flower bed, returning at the same time Gray arrived with the rattling wheelbarrow.

  “These are a bit rusty, but I found a couple of short-handled claws that are good for loosening soil and digging out weeds,” he said. He hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he kept glancing at her face and then looking away.

  Finally he said, “Your skin is very pale.”

  Cassidy wrinkled her nose. “Pale skin goes with the red hair.” Unlike her brother Clayton’s, her skin never changed to that soft gold color when she spent time in the sun. It just went from milk to cooked lobster.

  “Your eyes aren’t brown, but they aren’t green either.”

  “The color is called hazel. Doesn’t anyone have eyes like that here?”

  Gray shook his head. “Brown and blue mostly. Some green. None like yours. They’re pretty.”

  A little flutter of feminine pleasure. The only man who had thought anything about her was pretty was her father, and fathers never saw daughters in the same way as other men, so Poppi’s opinion didn’t really count.

  Which wasn’t something she would ever say to Poppi.

  Gray took a step back, as if he was leaving.

  “I know you have other work to do,” Cassidy said, “but could you stay a few minutes and point out some of the good plants?” She wanted him to stay. This place didn’t feel as lonely now that she’d met him.

  Another hesitation. “You want me to help?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “No, I don’t mind.” He seemed to be mulling over a lot more than spending an hour weeding a flower bed. “You should wear a hat to protect your face.”

  “Oh, I . . .” He was right, of course. But somehow in the past few minutes he’d made some transition from scared younger boy to bossy older boy. Politely bossy, but she remembered a childhood afternoon visit with her cousin Aaron, which had been her first experience with being around a Warlord Prince of any age, and she still remembered that particular tone of bossiness that no one but a Warlord Prince could achieve.

  “Don’t you have a hat?”

  “Yes, I have a hat, but . . . You’ll laugh at my hat.”

  “I won’t laugh,” Gray said quickly, putting one hand over his heart. Then he thought for a moment and added, “I’ll try not to laugh.”

  Good enough.

  She called in her gardening hat and plunked it on her head. It was a simple straw hat with a wide brim that kept the sun off her face and neck.

  Gray didn’t laugh, but his smile kept getting wider and wider as he studied her hat.

  “Why does it have a chunk missing from one side?” he asked.

  “Because my brother was teasing me last summer and holding it behind his back—and didn’t notice when the goat snuck up behind him and took a bite out of it.”

  His smile got even wider. “Shouldn’t it have ribbons?”

  “I use Craft to keep it in place.”

  Nodding, and still smiling, he handed her one of the short-handled claws. “I’ll show you what doesn’t belong in this garden.”

  Where in the name of Hell did she go? Theran scanned the weed-tangled mess of raised beds that framed a terrace before he headed for the rest of the formal gardens.

  She’d said she wanted a little air and would be back shortly. That had been over an hour ago. A meal, and the men, were waiting for her return so they could get on with the rest of these meetings.

  Considering how bad everything looked, what could Lady Cassidy find out here that would amuse her for so long?

  The answer punched his heart. He lengthened his stride as he headed for the big stone shed. It had held the groundskeeper’s office at one time, but had become a catchall for unwanted tools. He’d helped Gray clear out the smaller room in the shed and put in a cot, a small chest of drawers, and a bookcase.

  Gray was used to living rough. So was he. But here, with the mansion in sight, it seemed . . . meaner, coarser.

  It was all Gray could tolerate.

  If Cassidy thought she could play with a damaged man just because Gray wasn’t able to fight back, she’d find out the truth quick enough. He, Theran, wasn’t fifteen anymore, didn’t—wouldn’t—hide anymore. And Gray wasn’t standing alone anymore, facing something that terrified him.

  He spotted Gray and hurried toward his cousin, no longer caring if he found Cassidy. A wheelbarrow full of weeds was on Gray’s left and someone—he caught a glimpse of a straw hat—was on the other side of the wheelbarrow.

  “That’s called pearl of wisdom,” Gray said, pointing to a plant. “See? The flower has a sheen like the inside of a shell, and the seedpod looks like a pearl. The flower only blooms for a couple of weeks in the spring.”

  “Gray,” Theran called, wondering what servant had befriended his cousin.

  Gray looked around, a queer wariness in his eyes before he spotted Theran.

  “Theran!” he said happily.

  From the other side of the wheelbarrow, a husky voice said, “Oh, shit. Theran.”

  When she popped up, it took him a moment to recognize her. She was the only person in Dena Nehele who had red hair, but it still took him a moment to recognize her.

  Not a Queen. Despite her caste, she was not a Queen.

  “Has an hour gone by already?” Cassidy asked.

  “And then some. We’ve held the midday meal, thinking you would be back soon.” He couldn’t keep the tightness out of his voice, couldn’t even keep it on the right side of respectful.

  “M
y apologies, Prince Theran.” There was a tightness in her voice too as she stood up and vanished that stupid hat. “I’ll wash up and join you as soon as I can. Please tell the men not to wait for me. They shouldn’t have to eat cold food just because I lost track of the time.”

  “We live to serve,” Theran said.

  She winced and wouldn’t meet his eyes as she hurried back to the mansion.

  Theran watched her for a moment, then looked at Gray. “Are you all right?”

  That queer wariness was back in Gray’s eyes. “I’m fine.”

  What did she do to you? He couldn’t ask, but he knew something wasn’t quite right.

  As he turned to go back to the mansion, Gray said, “Theran? She knows the land needs to be loved. The Queens who have been living here haven’t cared about that.”

  A message there, but Gray had always had a sensitivity to the land, being more aware of it than the people around him were. That sensitivity had heightened after he’d been rescued.

  I’m glad you’re not afraid of her, Gray, Theran thought as he walked back to the mansion, but what kind of Queen cares more about digging in the dirt than taking care of the people?

  It took most of the afternoon to meet the Warlords who wanted to be considered for the court. Three belonged to her and were suited to serve in her First Circle. The others wanted status, safety, something else. Whatever it was, they wouldn’t find it with her.

  Several Warlords who lived in the town of Grayhaven would be an asset in one of the other twelve circles that made up a court, and she hoped they would accept the offer when the Steward made it on her behalf.

  Once she found a Steward. And a Master of the Guard.

  And with every man who wasn’t accepted, Theran tensed a little more.

  Toward the end of the afternoon the first, and only, Prince arrived. A middle-aged man whose skin sagged as if he’d once been hefty but hadn’t eaten well in quite some time and whose left hand had been broken and badly healed.

  “What do you want, Powell?” Archerr asked in a challenging voice.

  “I would like to be considered for a position in the court,” Powell replied courteously, looking at Cassidy. “I’m good at organizing schedules and duties.”