[2018] Reign of Queens

by Melissa Wright

  Magic? It took longer than it should have to realize I’d unwittingly camouflaged myself. This whole thing was going to take a while to get used to.

  “Tomorrow,” Chevelle answered. “Dinner?”

  Junnie grinned as she reached an arm back, her cloak moving aside as she drew a bow from beneath. “I’ll get my own, thanks.”

  He nodded, a knowing smile stretched across his face. They turned in opposite directions, each disappearing behind the trees and rocks that strewed the mountain, as I stood alone and confused. I sat, shaking my head as I stared down at the bark of the tree.

  Chevelle returned quickly with two small, furred animals slung over his back. As his gaze reached the log that lay in front of me, it burst into an orange flame, thin branches forming a spit as he skinned and attached the animals. The process was so smooth, I couldn’t say exactly what had happened.

  Chevelle was changing. Or, more likely, he was becoming more himself. He wasn’t as formal. He seemed relaxed, and apparently magic, quick and powerful, was intertwined into his every routine. He didn’t need to do much by hand; I would have spent hours trying to build a spit and skin an animal.

  An old question came back to me and I asked, “How do you hunt?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You don’t have a bow,” I explained. “What do you use to hunt?”

  He hesitated, as if deciding what to tell me. “I use magic, Frey.”

  He looked like he was waiting for me to be upset. “Oh.” I contemplated his answer. “I thought maybe you had a knife.”

  He smirked. “Yes, well, that would have been easy enough.”

  “And Junnie prefers to hunt… for sport?”

  He had that look again and I wondered why he would be so cautious. Because I was dangerous? A practitioner of dark magic? “No. Some prefer the meat not to be tainted by magic. They feel it is more… pure.” He pronounced ‘tainted’ with an edge.

  “Is it? Tainted I, mean?”

  “I have lived on it for—” His words caught midsentence and he said, “Well, it doesn’t seem to be, but to each his own.”

  He turned back to the fire.

  Junnie came back into view, a large animal slung over her shoulders, bow in hand. She dropped her burden on a smooth gray rock near the fire and whispered a short thanks before removing the arrow to skin the animal. My gaze moved between the sizeable carcass and her lithe form.

  “I’ll be traveling fast and far and don’t intend to stop and hunt. I will pack the extra with me.”

  I managed a sheepish smile. It seemed like I needed things explained a lot lately. “Where will you go?”

  “Back to the village.”

  “To council?” I breathed. “They sent you to find me?”

  Her bright blue eyes flicked to Chevelle and back. “No, Freya. They will not know I saw you.”

  “They are looking for me?” Terror crept into my voice. I was Chevelle’s captive, but he’d given me some sort of reprieve. The thought of council brought the danger of my situation to the forefront.

  “No. They will not risk it.”

  “They are afraid,” Chevelle said from his spot by the fire. Junnie shot him a warning glance.

  “Afraid?” I asked, doubtful. “Afraid of what?”

  “The mountains.” Junnie’s answer was curt as she returned to her work on the gazelle.

  They were quiet the rest of the evening, but as I dozed by the fire, their conversation restarted in hushed voices. I tried to listen, but exhaustion won out and their words began to meld into dreams.

  I could hear them as I was drifting, floating in a great shadowed lake. My white gown spread around me in the water, now-dark hair swaying with the ripples on the surface. I rose above, peering down at myself, and the image turned into my mother, the dark water going black, the ripples transforming to wind. I recognized the scene as her pendant began to glow, the wind howling, screams piercing my ears.

  It was the same dream, but different now. I glanced around to find a village I didn’t know. Someone was coming toward me, an expression of fear and sadness on his handsome face. His familiar face. He reached out to me and I stepped toward him, tears streaming down my cheeks.

  He wrapped his arms around me as I turned again to see my mother. A howl of rage escaped her and I started to go to her, but he held me. He was restraining me. I thrashed against him as I tried to scream, to tell him to let me go, but I had no voice. She reached her hand out and I could not move, could not help her, though I knew she was dying. I was imprisoned there, unable to move… unable to scream… unable to save her.

  And then I couldn’t see her. Something was covering my eyes. I struggled yet again but my body felt like lead—heavy, useless. Darkness enveloped me and I was underwater, struggling to reach the surface, desperate for air.

  “Frey.” A husky voice woke me. It must have been early dawn. The faint light revealed worry on Chevelle’s face as he stood over me. A look of fear and sympathy. The memory smashed into my chest like a thousand-pound ram, stealing my breath.

  “You,” I hissed. He backed away as I sat up and glared at him with fire in my eyes. “You. You held me back as my mother died. You held me and made me watch her die.” I could almost taste the acid in my voice. He was still backing away, holding his hands in front of him palms out. A wordless hiss escaped my throat as I felt the fire coursing through me light in my hands. He would burn for this. Burn.

  I was standing now, walking step for step toward him as he backed away. He said nothing, his face calm as the fire flared and I raised my hands to strike.

  And then everything went black.

  That was when I heard the chanting. My ears had been roaring with anger, but all that was left was a soft recitation. “Gian Zet Foria. Gian Zet Foria. Gian Zet Foria.” Junnie. Junnie was chanting something.

  I was engulfed with an empty, lethargic feeling. My eyes batted open and I was lying on the ground, looking up at Junnie and Chevelle. Junnie’s words ran together as Chevelle mumbled. “Gian Zet Foria Gian Zet Foria Gian Zet Foria.” It seemed so familiar. Like Georgiana, Suzetta, Glaforia. They stopped simultaneously.

  “Frey.” Junnie was talking slowly. “Stay calm and lie still.” I tried to convey my incredulity as I lay there, unable to move. “Explain to me what happened.”

  All the anger and excitement turned numb. What came out sounded no more than a statement of fact. “Chevelle held me back and made me watch my mother die.” Junnie didn’t have the outraged look I expected. I sifted through the dream—the memory—searching for a way to explain so she would be stunned and infuriated.

  They stared at me, and I was suddenly sure they were the reason I was lying on the ground incapacitated. They had control over me. My thoughts shifted, running through it again, going backwards from where I was. Their faces, the chanting from behind me, Chevelle backing away, the dream. The water. I remembered being trapped underwater just before waking, but I hadn’t been drowning. It wasn’t a dream.

  I was horrified as more of the memory returned. The cloaks who had surrounded my mother, killed her, had been circling me. I knew they’d intended to destroy me, too, though I couldn’t see why. Chevelle had held me, pulled me into the water. He had tried to keep them from finding me as they attacked, tried to keep me from calling out to her. The look of fear, the look of sympathy. He’d held me back to save me.

  Tears streamed down my face and my body began to release from the dead weight. Chevelle had saved me from my mother’s fate. How long had he been my watcher? In the memory, he’d fought to keep me from seeing, tried to cover my eyes. And later, he’d pulled me from the water, dragged me away as we fled. I shook with sobs and a pair of arms wrapped around me, supporting me as my limbs became heavy, my body and mind spent from the stress or whatever trauma the spell had caused. I couldn’t say which, because I was pulled from consciousness into a black, dreamless sleep.

  Chevelle was still holding me when I woke in the late morning. I wo
ndered if he’d slept at all. Cradled in his arms, I reached up to rub my bleary eyes. As I glanced up at him, it struck me how close we were. My hand dropped from my face to fall against his chest. That didn’t help. Heat rose in my neck; I could feel the corded muscle beneath his shirt.

  I had to look away. He must have thought I was searching for Junnie. “She left just after dawn, when she knew you were safe.”

  “Oh,” I breathed. Perfect. We were alone in the middle of nowhere and I was sitting in his lap. My flush deepened and I hastily stood to straighten my clothes.

  He watched me fidget.

  “Um, so I guess we should get going?” I stammered.

  “No.”

  My breath caught and I forced myself to look at him, still edgy from the closeness the moment before. I convinced myself I was imagining the way he studied me as he sat against the downed tree. He had no idea what I was thinking. It was the furthest thing from his mind.

  “No?” I asked, unable to mask the tremor in my voice.

  “Magic first.”

  That wasn’t exactly a relief. It was obvious he saw my anxiety, but I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t enjoying it. He just remained sitting there.

  “What should I do?”

  A sly grin crossed his face and he rolled his hand out in front of him. “You are only limited by your imagination, Freya.”

  Great, so if I screwed up it was just a problem with my mind. I considered that, recalling what Steed had said about feeling it, thinking about what you wanted to happen. But what did I want to happen? I had to catch that line of thought before it spiraled out of control; I concentrated on finding something small. A tiny pebble lay on the ground at my feet. I focused on it hard, willing it to rise. When nothing happened I looked for Chevelle’s reaction.

  He watched me, his serene mask back in place. “Do you need motivation?”

  I was afraid of the kind of motivation he’d provide, remembering the fireballs flying at me in the meadow. “No.” My answer was too quick, and he laughed. I knelt closer to the gray rock. I thought it moved a little, as if trembling in fright, and the notion had me shaking my head.

  Chevelle stood. “You’re trying too hard, Freya. Let us play a game.” He held out his hand and a stone flew up from the ground to land in the center of his open palm. He closed his fist around it and when he opened it a moment later, the stone was floating a half inch above his palm, slick black and shaped to form a tiny hawk sculpture.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, moving to touch it.

  He held up his other hand up to stop me. “Take it.”

  I wanted to hold the trinket; I reached forward and concentrated on moving it from his palm to mine. It floated shakily across the space between us, which seemed so odd at first I thought Chevelle must have moved it. I squeezed my fingers around it, as if to verify it was real, but when I opened my hand again it was only the dull gray rock.

  Disappointment filled my face as I looked back at him. He tilted his head toward the stone; I would have to make this sculpture myself. I closed my fist around it, mostly because I had seen him do the same, and instantly I knew what I wanted to see. I opened my palm up, grinning triumphantly, and exposed my creation for Chevelle to see. Balancing there was a slightly misshapen but undeniable sculpture of a small black horse. Chevelle rolled his eyes.

  Still smiling, I looked back to the stone, but it had returned to its uninteresting round shape. Chevelle answered my unspoken question. “Yes, it’s… tricky.” He smiled a little at using Steed’s word. “You can’t change something’s makeup, but you can change the way it appears. You can move it, but only if you’re near. You can stop someone’s heart, but you can’t make them feel happy about it.”

  He hesitated after that last part, contemplating, and then continued, “You can manipulate the elements, move water, draw it from the ground, but you cannot easily make it appear from nothing… though one can usually collect moisture from the air. Fire is easier. It spreads so fast. You can pull a small spark from anywhere to create a flame, fueled by the air and…” He trailed off as I leaned closer to him, listening intently.

  Chevelle looked into my eyes, words forgotten. I didn’t know what he had seen there, but he blinked, shaking his head. “Let’s keep working.” He stepped a few paces away as he spoke. “You’ll need to think clearly and stay calm. The best fighters are the best thinkers.”

  “Fighters?” I asked, confused.

  He shook his head again, as if clearing it. There was a long pause as I waited for his answer. “I’d like you to practice just for protection.”

  “I have fire.”

  He picked up a fallen branch, long and jagged, and snapped the smaller twigs from its side. “Yes, but you should learn to think more openly. It is an important resource and should be familiar to you. You should have years of experience by now.”

  “Why don’t I?”

  He stopped. I could tell by his expression he hadn’t meant to say so.

  “Why can’t I use magic?” I clarified. “Why couldn’t I use it before?”

  There was another long pause and then he spoke carefully. “You were bound.”

  Bound? The word was so foreign in that context. All I could think of was the young children in the village, binding themselves to play the games of fairy children, who were unmagical until coming of age. I recalled seeing it in the documents in the briar patch—Francine Glaforia, bound against using all but practical magic.

  Bound.

  They must have known not to trust me. They must have known. My knees gave out and I crumpled to the ground. How many times could the earth be pulled from beneath my feet? Chevelle took a step toward me and I held up a hand to stop him. Bound against using magic. Assigned a watcher. My anger toward him returned, swift and unforgiving. He had been a volunteer. “Let’s just go,” I said coldly, looking up the mountain.

  We rode wordlessly on as I chewed over this new knowledge. As my watcher, Chevelle would have been involved in the binding by Council. Maybe Fannie should have been punished for whatever she had done, but how could they assume I would follow in her footsteps? So I’d killed a bird, stolen a few papers from the council library.

  My argument faltered, so I went back to anger, betrayal that he had lied to me. And not just him. The entire village must have known I was bound, known I couldn’t perform magic, as they sat and watched me try. Sending me to Junnie for lessons, allowing Evelyn to taunt me without recourse, giving me the blame for everything that happened. Because they expected me to turn.

  The horses slowed to a stop, irritating me further. I didn’t even have control over that. Chevelle stepped down and started a fire. When he walked away, I recalled what he had said earlier in the day, that you could stop someone’s heart. It hadn’t occurred to me that might be how he killed his prey.

  He made his way back over the scrubby brush, two small rabbits in hand. He dropped them and a branch covered in fat, blood-red berries by the fire, and I posted myself on the edge of an uneven rock to watch.

  He didn’t speak, but I couldn’t tell if he intended to give me my space or was just indifferent. I had, after all, apparently been guilty of the charges. I was a criminal.

  I silently wished Steed was here to build me a shelter so I could crawl in and hide until morning. I wasn’t about to try to build one on my own and risk embarrassing myself in front of Chevelle.

  A gust of wind pushed the flames beneath the spit, causing them to writhe and jump. They formed shapes that pulled at my memories. I tried to follow them, but couldn’t seem to get my thoughts to cooperate. I could remember my dreams, the wind and fire surrounding my mother. But the memories that came back when I woke from those vivid nightmares were dull. The harder I clutched at them, the more they drew away.

  When recognition dawned, I leapt from the rock, cursing Chevelle. He turned to me as I yelled, “Give it back!” He didn’t appear to know what I was talking about, but I was so angry I was having trouble formin
g the demand. “Give my memories, my mind back!”

  His confusion cleared, but Chevelle didn’t offer a response. The fire in me itched to burn him.

  I seethed. “Unbind my thoughts.”

  “Freya.” His voice was smooth. “You don’t understand.”

  I fumed, “Well, I’m sure that has nothing to do with you rummaging around in there.”

  He shook his head and his complete lack of agitation caused me to take pause. I supposed it was possible he actually couldn’t free my thoughts. If the council had bound me, likely all of them would need to reverse it. And they wouldn’t do that. Because they had convicted me.

  I might have asked how the process would work, but I was too furious to pursue conversation with any kind of composure. And it didn’t matter, because they’d already counted me guilty. I was staying bound. I let out a frustrated growl, clenching my jaw shut. He was one of them. I had to remember that.

  I might have run back to the village right then, but they would never release me. I had nothing. I glanced down the mountainside. I couldn’t have found my way back if I’d wanted to. I had no idea where I was.

  I stared at my palms, some spell-bought map carved into my skin, and was hit full force with the knowledge that I didn’t even know where I was going.

  I was about as low on options as I could get. If not for Chevelle’s desire to skip out on Council business for a few days, or whatever we were doing here, I’d already be imprisoned. I could hope that with the dreams, with the mountains, with wherever my family’s map was taking me, I could remember more, could break some part free. It was all I would have in my captivity. It was the mountains or nothing. I could see no other way.

  It was days before I spoke to Chevelle again, though he didn’t seem to mind the lack of conversation. He simply rode as he always did, with intermittent glances in each direction, as if I weren’t even there. In truth, he hadn’t appeared to notice my behavior at all.