I hummed a note of a song, and Efe sprang to her feet, alert and quivering. A fine line to dance with her, as I wanted her to look menacing without losing her mind. Efe had her own inner demons to battle as much as I did. I smiled, touching the spot behind her jaw to reassure her, making my own confidence clear. “The hand of Danu protects me,” I replied. “I have nothing to fear from you.”
He grunted. Flicked his fingers. As I’d expected him to do. I sank into the dance, drawing my sword as one of his men lunged at me. I allowed the serpent to rise, embracing her black and bitter fury, guiding her with silver bright lines. Clear mind. Clear heart. Eyes where you want to go. Efe would stay calm. I would kill this man, and this man only, and only if he forced me to.
It took only moments, though I retained a clarity of knowing that I hadn’t before, observing as the man swung the flat of his blade to knock me unconscious. I went low, sinking beneath the swing, coming up inside it. Snap kick to the unguarded groin with the momentum of my rising. Shallow slice across his ribs with my sword. Instead of offering a pearl, I lifted my left hand and put the point of my dagger at the pulse point of his neck. The man froze and I kept my eyes on his face, contorted in fear of me, and spoke, ice in my voice. “Tell him to stand down, or I’ll kill you all.”
“Desist,” Master Tamrat ordered. He looked at me, new respect in his eyes as the man backed away. “I accept your offer,” he said, almost placatingly. “Let’s document this truce.”
Somewhere, if she looked down on me, I thought Kaja might be proud. Possibly my mother, too.
* * * *
I rode Efe out of the gates again, leaving my curse with the diamond behind me forever. I carried with me Master Tamrat’s vow—written in blood, mainly because it amused the cruel empress in me to torment the man a little—to prevent all further attacks against their neighbors. I promised to return and take him to pieces if he failed, starting with his cock and working up. He believed that, too.
As if as an afterthought, I indicated Efe’s burden, saying I brought food for relief of those affected by the floods, and inquired where I might leave them to be honorably distributed. I suggested that if Danu was pleased by the recommendation Master Tamrat gave me, then more would be sent their way. He didn’t exactly respond eagerly—the plight of the common folk barely concerned him—but he brightened when I suggested other favors would come his way. I casually gave him a pearl as I spoke of it, pretending I had no idea how valuable it was.
Easy to do, as once I hadn’t known. But now I did. I’d grown up a great deal in a short time. Master Tamrat’s guard escorted me to a storehouse staffed with people frantically managing a long line of supplicants looking for food. The people had hollow eyes and their ribs showed through their flood-ruined clothing. Counting up the numbers for Palesa and Thanda, I resolved to help them gather and send more than what I’d brought. The people there welcomed the bounty I unloaded, though it greatly confused them. I simply told them the goddess Danu offered them Her help and suggested how they might honor Her in return. Beginning with their elephant kin.
My mother had been right, in a way. I’d learned from her and found power in what she taught me. Better, what I’d found came from me and not my family, not who I married, not who I obeyed. Thus unburdened, Efe and I left Chimto again.
Clear mind. Clear heart. Warrior, priestess, and woman. All parts of me. All one. I’d found the power to free myself, and the family I’d found. Now I would turn my gaze to building the power to free my sisters. One day, I would enter the Imperial Palace as greater than any emperor. And I would bring Danu’s bright blade and unflinching justice upon them.
But not yet. The time would come. Until then I would savor all I’d hoped for.
I put eyes where I wanted them, and Efe and I headed home.
~ Epilogue ~
“Ela, Efe!” I urged. The elephant responded with liquid grace, wheeling about and meeting Capa’s charge with ease. I tagged Kajala with my blunted weapon, neatly unseating her and sending her to the dust. Efe trumpeted and I cheered. Capa only wagged her head and Kajala threw me a rude gesture before scrambling to her feet.
“It’s not fair that you can come around that fast,” she complained.
“Nevertheless,” Ochieng said sternly, “you should treat your mother with more respect.”
I leaned onto my belly, hugging Efe’s head. She’d grown somewhat bigger over the years, now that she ate regularly and suffered less anxiety. The same could be said of the both of us. After four children and all the years of Ochieng’s diligent nurturing, I was no longer the slip of a girl I’d been when I first arrived in Nyambura. Fortunately I’d maintained my training routines and I sported as much muscle as Kaja had, so long ago. I kept myself in peak warrior condition, never forgetting that the day would come for me to keep my promises.
“Smaller can be better and faster,” I reminded my daughter.
“Yes,” Ochieng agreed. He helped Kajala to her feet, then came over to pat Efe, and run an affectionate caress over my calf. “But you were careless. If Kajala had paid more attention—as I expect her to do next time—she could’ve hit you with an arrow as you passed. Run it again.”
I made a face at him, glancing at the late afternoon sun. “It’s almost time for a dip in the river.” I blew him a little kiss. “Or a soak in the bathing pool. If we quit now, we can beat everyone else there and have it to ourselves.” At least one of our children had been conceived there, possibly more.
He gave me a long, intrigued look, eyes heating for me with desire, even after all these years together. “You make a tempting offer, but I’d like to make sure this new technique is perfect.”
I had to agree. The years had been good to us, but they’d also brought others envious of our bounty. My truce with Master Tamrat had bought us a number of years. But, as Ochieng always says, we can count on things to change. New powers rose, in Chimto and elsewhere. They often turned their greedy gazes upriver and we continued to harshly disillusion them. It wasn’t an ideal world, but for the most part we lived in peace and prosperity.
I couldn’t help but think that Danu had a hand in bringing those tests to us, reminding me always to improve my skills. Between us, Ochieng and I, and our larger family, had amassed and refined a fighting force to be proud of. We led a coalition of free villages all up and down the river—and beyond—well trained forces ready to heed our call.
And if my sons and daughters had grown up knowing how to be warriors, then better that than being slaves. They knew their own power and how to use it to protect those without it. Now that Kajala was nearly as old as I’d been when I married the first time and our youngest, Shaharlan, had reached the age of manhood, my eyes turned often toward the setting sun, thinking of my sisters.
Lately Danu whispered in my dreams of setting the balance back to rights. The time had nearly come. I only awaited a sign.
“All right,” I agreed, kicking Ochieng’s hand away in mock irritation. He only grinned at me and stepped back. “Kajala, honey, mount up and—”
Efe roared, rearing up, and only long habit kept me astride. The other elephants trumpeted the same, a deafening chorus. It wasn’t only Efe’s dance—the ground itself seemed to undulate beneath us. Ochieng staggered, then caught himself, gaze snapping up to the sky.
I followed the direction of his gaze, gasping at the streaks of color shooting through the previously clear blue. I half-imagined shapes of winged creatures flew through the air. In the distance, thunder rolled when there should be none, so long away from the rainy season. It wasn’t only the sky, however. The grasses seemed to rattle, and the river churned an unnatural shade of violet down below the lagoon.
Efe calmed, though still making querulous sounds, and I lowered my eyes to meet Ochieng’s. “What was that?”
He held up his hands, palms up, and the light seemed to gather there, radiating out. He
smiled slightly, delight and apprehension mingling. “That, my Ivariel, was magic returning to the land.”
I gaped at him, having not at all expected that answer, and yet knowing in my heart he spoke the truth. “Magic,” I echoed.
“How and why?” Kajala demanded, a dagger in her hand, her young woman’s body poised to fight.
“Put your dagger away,” Ochieng chided her. “I don’t know how or why. Only that it has. As foretold.”
I slid off of Efe and went to him. “I suppose this is the sign I’ve been waiting for.”
He nodded, somberly. “That we’ve been waiting for.”
“What are you two talking about?” Kajala demanded.
I glanced at her. “You know how you, your sister, and brothers have been nattering at me all these years, wanting to know about where I came from and wanting to see the world?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Yes…”
I cupped her cheek, all the love in my heart overflowing for her. She and her siblings possessed all my grace and agility, but none of the soft helplessness. I couldn’t have been prouder.
Nodding at her dawning understanding, I kissed her forehead.
“The time has come.”
About the Author
Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook. Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas the Facets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera.
A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves in May 2014 and book one, The Mark of the Tala, was nominated for the RT Book of the Year. The sequel, The Tears of the Rose, was nominated for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2014, and the third book, The Talon of the Hawk, won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2015. Two more books follow in this world, beginning with The Pages of the Mind (which won the Romance Writers of America’s Rita Award in 2017). A fifth series, the erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, started with Going Under, and was followed by Under His Touch and Under Contract.
She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards, and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine. Jeffe can be found online at her website, JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular Word Whores blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads, and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy.
Don’t miss Dafne’s adventure in The Pages of the Mind…
Magic has broken free over the Twelve Kingdoms. The population is beset by shapeshifters and portents, landscapes that migrate, uncanny allies who are not quite human…and enemies eager to take advantage of the chaos.
Dafne Mailloux is no adventurer—she’s a librarian. But the High Queen trusts Dafne’s ability with languages, her way of winnowing the useful facts from a dusty scroll, and even more important, the subtlety and guile that three decades under the thumb of a tyrant taught her.
Dafne never thought to need those skills again. But she accepts her duty. Until her journey drops her into the arms of a barbarian king. He speaks no tongue she knows but that of power, yet he recognizes his captive as a valuable pawn. Dafne must submit to a wedding of alliance, becoming a prisoner-queen in a court she does not understand. If she is to save herself and her country, she will have to learn to read the heart of a wild stranger. And there are more secrets written there than even Dafne could suspect…
And look for the Twelve Kingdoms trilogy that started it all!
The tales tell of three sisters, daughters of the high king. The eldest, a valiant warrior-woman, heir to the kingdom. The youngest, the sweet beauty with her Prince Charming. No one says much about the middle princess, Andromeda. Andi, the other one.
Andi doesn’t mind being invisible. She enjoys the company of her horse more than court, and she has a way of blending into the shadows. Until the day she meets a strange man riding, who keeps company with wolves and ravens, who rules a land of shapeshifters and demons. A country she’d thought was no more than legend—until he claims her as its queen.
In a moment everything changes: Her father, the wise king, becomes a warlord, suspicious and strategic. Whispers call her dead mother a traitor and a witch. Andi doesn’t know if her own instincts can be trusted, as visions appear to her and her body begins to rebel.
Three sisters. Motherless daughters of the high king. The eldest is the warrior-woman heir; the middle child is shy and full of witchy intuition; and the youngest, Princess Amelia, she is as beautiful as the sun and just as generous.
Ami met her Prince Charming and went away to his castle on the stormy sea-cliffs—and that should have been her happily ever after. Instead, her husband lies dead and a war rages. Her middle sister has been taken into a demon land, turned into a stranger. The priests and her father are revealing secrets and telling lies. And a power is rising in Ami, too, a power she hardly recognizes, to wield her beauty as a weapon, and her charm as a tool to deceive…
Amelia has never had to be anything but good and sweet and kind and lovely. But the chess game for the Twelve Kingdoms has swept her up in it, and she must make a gambit of her own. Can the prettiest princess become a pawn—or a queen?
Three daughters were born to High King Uorsin, in place of the son he wanted. The youngest, lovely and sweet. The middle, pretty and subtle, with an air of magic. And the eldest, the Heir. A girl grudgingly honed to leadership, not beauty, to bear the sword and honor of the king.
Ursula’s loyalty is as ingrained as her straight warrior’s spine. She protects the peace of the Twelve Kingdoms with sweat and blood, her sisters from threats far and near. And she protects her father to prove her worth. But she never imagined her loyalty would become an open question on palace grounds. That her father would receive her with a foreign witch at one side and a hireling captain at the other—that soldiers would look on her as a woman, not as a warrior. She also never expected to decide the destiny of her sisters, of her people, of the Twelve Kingdoms and the Thirteenth. Not with her father still on the throne and war in the air. But the choice is before her. And the Heir must lead…
Also available by Jeffe Kennedy
Fresh out of college, Christine Davis is thrilled to begin a summer internship at the prestigious Sante Fe Opera House. But on her first day, she discovers that her dream job has a dark side. Beneath the theater, ghostly music echoes through a sprawling maze of passageways. At first, Christy thinks she’s hearing things. But when a tall masked man steps out of the shadows—and into her arms—she knows he’s not a phantom of her imagination. What she can’t deny is that he is the master of her desire. But when her predecessor—a missing intern—is found dead, Christy wonders if she’s playing with fire…
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