by K. A. Tucker
“You’re going to be careful, right?” I have no idea what this beast is that they’re hunting, but if it’s anything like a daaknar … Plus, Adley will be on the hunt with them, armed with weapons. Concern pinches my heart for the man I’ve shared a bed with for the past several nights.
“As careful as a pack of fools hunting down an otherworldly beast.” Atticus strolls in as Basil slips out. Boaz and Elisaf trail him. “We should depart soon, to make the most of the daylight.” My stomach tenses as he heads toward the weapons table—toward me—with his typical arrogant stride, his gaze steady and unperturbed, as if I didn’t just drop a bomb on his head. He must realize how I know. Zander is going to be furious with me when he finds out, but at least I have my answer.
“Gully’s Pass or Hollow Falls?” Zander asks, too far away to sense the tension whirling inside me.
“Gully’s Pass is safer for the horses.” Atticus stops on the other side of the table, directly in front of me.
I avert my attention to the map to search those two locations. “Safe is good.”
“Safe is what we all want.” Atticus tests the weight of a bow.
I hesitate but finally look up to find somber eyes on me.
“Regardless of mistakes I have made in the past,” he whispers, “I will always protect my brother. I swear it on my life, and on Islor. You believe me, right?” The sincerity bleeding from a voice that normally dances with wry humor is startling, and I find myself nodding numbly. Whatever Princess Romeria and the prince shared, I can see now it was not loathing for Zander.
“Let us finish our attack plan,” Boaz pushes, drawing a finger across Gully’s Pass. “We will enter here and …”
Attention thankfully drifts to the map, allowing me the chance to sneak away. Several karambits gleam on the table. I only know what they are because one of Korsakov’s guys carried that knife and the idiot sliced his own radial artery open. They had to rush him to the emergency room before he bled out.
I pluck the closest to me from the table. Tucking it into the folds of my dress, I innocently shift to the settee with my apple treat and hide the blade beneath the corner of the rug.
With a weapon for safekeeping, I collect the paper and graphite from the table and busy myself with a sketch of the king’s handsome face until Zander announces it’s time for them to leave.
I frown at my personal bodyguard, who has strapped a small arsenal to himself. “Elisaf’s going with you?”
“Yes, Elisaf has been pacing outside bedroom chambers and minding a princess around the clock for weeks. He needs a break and is going to join the fight,” he mocks with a grin, answering for himself in third person.
“Fair enough.” I raise my hands in surrender. “But what about me?” I look meaningfully at Zander.
“Do I still need a guard to keep you in line?”
“Well, no, but …” What about Saoirse and the others? I want to say. Surely, she’s just waiting for the opportunity to pounce.
He leans in, slips a finger beneath my chin, and tips my head to lay a languid kiss against my lips. “Don’t worry. None of them will come anywhere near this tent with Abarrane here.”
“Abarrane!” I hiss. “Why her?”
“Because she must be receiving punishment for something, though she does not yet know what.” The Legion captain materializes out of nowhere and steps from behind a room-divider screen to my left. How long has she been here?
“We will see you in a few hours. Play nice.” Zander disappears into the drizzle, along with the rest of them.
“Be careful,” I murmur as an afterthought. My dread swirls at the thought of an afternoon with a woman whose résumé boasts torture techniques. At least I won’t have to deal with any ambushes, though. I eye her warily. “I’m sure you could still catch up with them if you leave now.”
“Why, when I could spend the afternoon here with the Ybarisan princess who aims to be our queen?” Her braids tumble off her shoulder as she stoops to collect the hidden blade from beneath the rug.
The blood drains from my face.
“This is quite the choice to pilfer from the weapons table. You’ll stab yourself within minutes.” Her lips pull back with a wicked smile. “Shall I show you how it works?”
“What are you, a newborn foal? Fix your stance.” She swats my calf with the flat edge of her sword, making me jump. “Shift your left foot back to strengthen your balance and bend your knees.”
I follow her instructions, ignoring the fact that I’m in a gown.
“Now, jab.”
With my fingers curved around the blade’s handle in my palm, I make a sweeping motion with my arm.
“Not bad. Back to position. And again.”
We’ve been practicing this one move since the hunting party left, interrupted briefly by Annika who, upon seeing my company, quickly fled. That earned my babysitter’s grin of satisfaction. I think she prefers to be feared.
Despite my tutor’s abrasive nature, I find I don’t mind her teaching style.
“You are getting sloppy,” she mutters, nodding toward the settee. “Take a rest.”
I drop the knife onto the table with a groan—my arm aches—and flop into my seat. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I intended to do with it?”
“I know what you intended to do with it. Nothing,” she sneers as she paces. “You are surrounded by enemies who did not want you on the throne before the attack, and their hatred has only grown. You saw an opportunity, and you took it. It is what I would have done in your place, too, so perhaps you will not be entirely useless.”
I think that’s a compliment, but I don’t want to assume anything, especially coming from her. I hesitate, afraid I’m going to regret this. “Would you be willing to teach me how to fight?”
She spins on her heels to face me. “You want to be trained as a Legion soldier?”
“No. I would just like to be able to defend myself.”
“I do not train for defense. I train for war. I train Legionaries.”
“But you just trained me with that.”
“That was not training,” she scoffs, roping her braid around her fist. “That was a simple lesson because I was bored. It would be a waste of my time. I doubt you could fend off a puppy.”
“I could if you trained me. Zander already mentioned …” My voice fades as I watch her eyes flare with rage.
“No. I do not train princesses, or Ybarisans.” Her tone bleeds with scorn.
I hold my hands up in surrender. “Okay, fine. Zander said you were the best of the best, so I just thought—” Shouts sound from outside. They’re soon followed by shrill screams.
Abarrane moves for the tent’s flap, her sword drawn. I grab the karambit and follow her out into the rain.
The quaint meadow has tumbled into chaos. Two of the bell-shaped tents have collapsed, and servants are fleeing the main rectangular tent where one side has caved in. The screams from inside are earsplitting and steeped in fear.
“What’s happening?”
A second later, a beast leaps out from the tent’s opening, a man’s limp body dangling from its maw, and I have my answer.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Stay here.” Gripping the hilt of her sword with both hands, Abarrane eases forward in a crouch with stealthy steps, a predator stalking its prey—except she is a petite female warrior, and the prey is a massive creature on four powerful legs. Its shoulders reach ten feet in the air, and its back is coated in blue-tinged scales, the rest of its sinewy form in matted, oily fur.
It swings its unsightly head toward us, and I shudder under its intense stare. A sickening crunch sounds, and the man’s body falls from its mouth in pieces to land in the grass like debris. It lifts its upturned snout in the air. It’s sniffing, much like the daaknar did that night when it was scenting Annika.
With a deep roar, it charges.
My heart is in my throat as I watch it gallop forward, its jutting tusks curved like the blade i
n my hand and twice the length, ready to gore anything in their path. The bloody sheen coating them proves it already has.
Several soldiers with swords approach cautiously, while others hang back. Two fire bolts at the beast’s back using crossbows. They bounce off its scaly armor like toothpicks.
“If your affinity is anywhere within you, I suggest you find it now,” Abarrane hisses.
I assume she means my elven affinity. “I haven’t been able to!”
“Then you will surely die today.” She shifts her position and readies herself to meet the beast head on. It’s moving too fast, and she’s too small. There’s no way she’ll be able to stop that thing, and when she fails …
A surge of adrenaline and terror seizes me as I grip the handle of my weapon, which seems even more pointless and puny than the one I stabbed the daaknar with.
Abarrane dives away from the beast’s thrusting tusks but is back on her feet in an instant, swinging at its haunches. Her blade slides across the back of its hind leg, spraying inky-blue blood.
It roars in agony and spins to lunge at her again. She deflects it with her blade and darts out of the way, stabbing at the beast’s side as she rolls. It snaps at the air, showing off a mouthful of fangs that make the daaknar’s seem paltry.
I watch in horror as it catches Abarrane’s shoulder with its tusk, cutting through flesh and bone. She lets out an agonizing screech—I have a good idea of the pain tearing through her insides right now—but she swings her sword against its neck, using the momentum to pull herself free and stumble away. She makes it five paces before she falls to the grass.
With another sniff of the air, it shifts its attention to me.
I’m paralyzed as it stalks forward. Clutching my tiny blade, I know I can’t outrun this thing, and my meager lessons won’t save me.
My elven affinity to Aoife. To water.
I need it now.
As if in response, the gold begins to burn against my skin. My heart races. Finally, it senses I need help.
Annika said I could have used the river that night to defend myself instead of saving her, but there is no river here, and I wouldn’t know how to use it if there were. No one would teach me.
The nethertaur is a mere thirty feet away now, gaining speed despite its wounds. The trampled grass reaches up and lashes out at its legs, as if attempting to coil and tangle, to slow. It’s Annika, I realize, using her element as she runs this way, yelling something that I struggle to hear over the blood rushing in my ears.
“Use the rain!” I finally make out.
The rain. I peer up at the crying sky. “How!” The only way to stop this thing is with a comparable beast.
The next few seconds seem to move in slow motion.
A surge of adrenaline bursts from somewhere deep inside me, and then I watch as the raindrops pull from every direction, taking shape as they rush toward the nethertaur, forming a body and legs and a head, until a duplicate of the beast but made of water charges forward.
I’m doing this, I realize. This is me, manipulating an element.
They collide head-on, the water beast exploding on impact and the nethertaur collapsing in a daze, long enough that Abarrane hobbles over to embed her sword between its eyes. After a few twitches, the beast stills.
I bend at the waist, waiting for my heart to slow and my shock to settle. For a moment, I’m sure I’m about to hurl. I stopped it, though. I used this elven affinity I can’t even find, and I stopped one of these otherworldly beasts.
A bubble of delirious laughter rises in my throat.
Abarrane limps toward me, her face a ghostly white, wiping the inky-blue blood from her blade onto her pant leg. “Fine,” she huffs. “I will consider training you.”
“Why would the nethertaur leave the depths of the forest and come all the way here, into the meadow?” Zander paces around the tent. “Especially when we had a caster to attract it?”
“I do not know.” Wendeline is perched on the settee, her eyes bloodshot from healing as many as she could. Four soldiers and six servants were killed by the nethertaur, another five were mauled—two far beyond the priestess’s skill. The few female aristocrats remained mostly unscathed, save for a few cuts and scratches. A wicked part of me was disappointed that I didn’t see Saoirse’s body among the heap thrown into the wagon, but I heard she leapt onto a horse and galloped away at the first sign of trouble.
Bena was among the perished. When I saw her body, I cried.
A messenger raced out to carry news to the hunting party of the attack. They arrived back to camp a half hour later, the horses’ mouths were frothing from exertion, Zander’s and Atticus’s faces pale.
Zander won’t accept Wendeline’s answer. “It went from tent to tent, as if searching for something. Or someone. Why would it do that when we had the only caster in the forest? That was intentional for that reason.”
“Maybe it sensed Clyda had been here.”
“We would have crossed paths and drawn it away.”
“There is another possibility.” She swallows. “There may be traces of Margrethe’s caster magic on Romeria. It could have somehow sensed that.”
“This long after?” he asks doubtfully.
“I am no expert in the nethertaur, so I cannot say for certain. But it’s the only reason I can think of.” Wendeline’s eyes flicker to me briefly.
Other than the truth. The beast could sense my caster magic, tucked behind whatever firewall Sofie created and bound to this ring. It came out of the forest’s depths to find me. Bena—and all those other people—died because I was there.
I tamp down the guilt. Zander must not know. Not yet. “The important thing is that it’s dead, right?” Its reeking carcass was loaded onto a wagon so that it may be hauled through Lower Market Street as a prize.
“Yes, I suppose.” Zander pauses, and a slow smile curls his lips. “And it was the future queen of Islor who defeated it. That is something to celebrate.”
The last thing I feel like doing is celebrating. “I had help.”
“Merely a finishing strike. Come.” He curls an arm around my worn, frazzled body. “You need to be at the head of that parade.”
“Stop fidgeting.”
“I haven’t moved an inch. Ow!” I wince at the sharp poke from the pin Corrin slid into my hair.
“That was the last one.” She steps back to admire her creation—a complex weave of braids and coils that pulls half my hair back while leaving the rest tumbling over my shoulder. “Go on, take a look at yourself.”
I ease out of my vanity chair and stand before the full-length mirror, shifting from side to side to appreciate the dress Dagny dropped off late last night, flustered and bleary-eyed, as if she hadn’t slept. The stitchwork is pristine, the fit flawless, the style poised and yet sexy.
If I’d known what I would be wearing it to, I would have asked her to make me a sack.
“I’ve done my best,” Corrin declares. “If the king is not pleased, it will be because you chose a style that is entirely out of fashion.”
“Since when does the king pay attention to women’s clothes?”
Corrin harrumphs.
“Besides, doesn’t the queen set trends?”
“So you are willing to play the queen now?” She smiles smugly.
I enjoy playing his queen, the one he comes to at night, the one he wakes to in the morning, unclothed and welcoming. It has been that way every night since our first together, our evenings fraught with passion, our mornings lazy and sensual repeats, before he slips out to tackle his day of kingly duties and Corrin barges through my door.
I just can never play his queen in the nymphaeum, that relentless voice in my head reminds me.
I need to tell him.
And yet every time it’s on the tip of my tongue, I bite it back, afraid it will ruin what we have.
I stretch my leg out, watching the slit part and the gauzy material cascade around my thigh. Sexy stilettos would suit this d
ress, but there is nothing of the sort in Princess Romeria’s closet or, dare I say, anywhere. Still, we managed to pair the dress with gray satin-and-leather heels that don’t match the color but complement it nicely. Together with the complex weave on my head, I hardly recognize myself.
I don’t know if it’ll be strong enough armor to face a day of death. “You’ve done well, Corrin.”
A knock sounds on my closed bedroom door.
“That must be the king, here to escort you.”
My nerves stir.
“Remember, chin up, back straight at all times,” she coaches.
But it isn’t Zander waiting for me. It’s Dagny.
“Oh, Your Highness, I just had to come and see you before you were off.” Her grin is wide as she takes me in from head to toe, her hands clasped at her ample bosom. “Isn’t she breathtaking?”
Even with my swirl of trepidation about bearing witness to today’s events, my smile for the effervescent seamstress is genuine. “You are a marvel, Dagny.”
“Oh.” She waves away my compliment. “I’m just fortunate enough to dress the future queen. I brought you another capelet.” She pulls the fold of fabric tucked under her arm and thrusts it into my hand. “I heard it’s supposed to cool off tonight something fierce. Thought you might need it. The silk was a gift from a friend at the market.” Dagny’s eyebrows rise knowingly. “It’s been made ’specially warm.”
I recognize the silky indigo material within my grasp immediately. It’s the one Bexley was intent on when she told me about the seer.
“She can’t wear a capelet with that dress,” Corrin scoffs, shaking her head. “How utterly silly she would look.”
“Oh, fates, you’re right, Corrin. You’re always right. I’m a daft woman,” Dagny blathers, ringing her hands. “Might as well keep it, though. Perhaps you might find use for it.” She winks at me.
No, Dagny isn’t so daft after all. “Thank you. I appreciate it.” My heart thumps. Bexley said she would find a way to pass along information, and she has—through my seamstress. Dagny might not be the most clandestine with her hints, but they easily pass over Corrin’s scrutiny.