by Jenna Glass
They strolled in silence, surprisingly companionable, until they were out of earshot of the guards who had resumed their posts outside the doorway.
“I’ve heard a very interesting rumor,” Zarsha said with a hint of a smile on his face.
She gave him her most innocent look. “What rumor might that be?”
“That you’ve been looking for a precedent for royal marriages between first cousins.”
She laughed and shook her head. Semsulin was a fast worker. She’d have thought it would take at least a week for him to plant the seeds of that rumor and at least two for the seeds to take root. “Where did you hear that?”
“Uncovering rumors and secrets is what I do best.”
“You sound like a spy,” she teased, and though Zarsha smiled at the joke, she could have sworn she felt a faint tensing of his muscles, which quickly relaxed. Had her joke perhaps hit a little close to home? Zarsha was Nandel royalty, but he seemed to spend very little time in his homeland. By all rights, he should have returned home after their engagement fell through, and yet here he still was.
“Is it true?” he asked. “Are you entertaining thoughts of marrying Lord Tamzin?”
“And now you sound jealous.”
“That’s not jealousy. That’s fear for your safety—and your sanity.”
“You being the avowed expert in court intrigue, why don’t you tell me if the rumor is true or not?”
He stopped walking, and she took that opportunity to withdraw her hand and turn to face him. He peered into her face, blue eyes seeming to pierce through her skin and see everything that lay beneath. There was something so knowing in his gaze that she was tempted to look away, but she was not a coward.
After a long moment in which her pulse sped up with anxiety, Zarsha’s face relaxed into his more customary expression of genial humor.
“We’ll make a queen of you yet,” he said with a rakish grin.
She glared at him, remembering why his humor had always rubbed her the wrong way. “I am a queen. I don’t need you or anyone else to make me one.”
He sobered and bowed his head. “Forgive me. That did not come out how I intended.” He met her gaze once more. “You are every inch a queen, and you have given everyone who expected you to fail a rude surprise. I suppose what I meant is that you are gaining skill as a courtier. When you first took the throne, you were honest and forthright to a fault. You’ve learned a great deal of subtlety since then.”
Ellin would have liked to stay offended. Zarsha’s praise was even more uncomfortable than his perceived insult. She would never have imagined that one day she would earn praise for being deceitful.
“Does that mean you don’t believe the rumor?”
“It means I believe you’re behind the rumor and therefore also behind Lord Tamzin’s suddenly more positive opinion of you. I also believe you would sooner marry a venomous snake.”
She couldn’t help smiling at the image. “That sounds about right, though I hope Lord Tamzin and his followers won’t see through me that easily.”
“They won’t,” Zarsha assured her. “To be a good observer and to see through subterfuge requires an ability to understand other people, which requires one to actually care about other people enough to understand them. That is something Lord Tamzin is incapable of doing.”
“And yet with few exceptions, you and I are the only ones who seem to see that about him.”
“People see what they want to see. He is rich and handsome and powerful, and he is the grandson of a king. The perfect storybook hero. People need little encouragement to assign him that role.”
She had to agree with this assessment. And it was clear Tamzin would be a problem for the entirety of her reign—and very likely the reign of her future husband, should she choose to marry after all.
Zarsha’s voice dropped to little more than an unnecessary whisper. “There may come a time when to protect your throne, it will be necessary for Lord Tamzin to suffer an unfortunate accident.”
She shivered and clutched her shawl tighter around her shoulders despite the warmth of the sun through the windows. She could not deny that the thought had occurred to her. It had probably occurred to Semsulin as well, though unlike Zarsha, he had the tact not to mention it out loud.
“But we are not there yet,” Zarsha said, as if that could somehow erase the ugliness of his words. “For as long as you can keep him hoping he can take the throne without resistance or bloodshed, he will be at least marginally cooperative, although I don’t believe he will stop altogether in his efforts to undermine you.”
“No,” she agreed. “The weaker my grip on the throne appears, the greater the need for me to name a husband and set a wedding date. Preferably on the day my mourning ends.”
“There is a solution to all of your problems,” Zarsha said, and something about the tone of his voice warned her she would not like this solution. “You could marry me.”
She made a sound of exasperation and rolled her eyes. “We’ve been through this before.”
“But let’s examine it again,” he pressed. “If you marry me, you would not only ensure the renewal of the trade agreements, but also gain a significant amount of military support. What do you think Prince Waldmir would give to have his brother’s grandson on the throne of Rhozinolm?”
She glared at him. “If you think I’m handing over my throne to you—”
“I said grandson, Ellin. Our son. Your council will not be able to resist that kind of military alliance with Nandel as long as they don’t have to put a Nandel-born man on the throne. And they would know that with the strength of Nandel behind you, neither Tamzin nor Kailindar could raise sufficient forces for an effective rebellion.”
She shook her head. “How many times do we have to have this conversation? I’m not marrying you.”
“Why?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out. Because she had no good answer to that question. In the beginning, it had been because she thought she despised him, but now she knew better. She also had never taken seriously the possibility of staying on the throne. As long as her husband would be king, she had an easy excuse to turn Zarsha down as many times as he asked. But now keeping the throne no longer seemed as ridiculous an idea as it once had, especially with Semsulin’s sly hints that he would support her if he thought she was good for the kingdom…
There was no good reason to reject him any longer, at least not without careful consideration.
“Is it because of that secretary of yours?”
The question took her so much by surprise that she couldn’t even begin to formulate an answer. Nor could she stop the flush of color she felt rising up her neck and into her cheeks. Despite their clandestine meetings and the promotion she’d given him, she’d been sure she and Graesan had been entirely discreet in their relationship.
“Don’t worry,” Zarsha said. “As far as I can tell, no one else suspects. And believe me, if anyone suspected, I would know about it—as would every one of your courtiers.”
Her stomach gave a sick lurch, and she cursed herself for not having prepared for such an accusation, no matter how unlikely she’d thought discovery to be. She could deny any impropriety with all the earnest sincerity in the world, but after her initial shocked reaction, Zarsha would never believe a denial.
“Is that a threat?” she asked in a voice raspy with incipient tears.
“No!” Zarsha said with enough vehemence that she believed him. “Why are you always so ready to think ill of me?”
Ellin might have felt more chastened if her mind weren’t still reeling with the realization of how disastrous Zarsha’s observation could be. “When I first met you, you were fully prepared to force me into a marriage you knew I did not want. Now you are once again in a position to force my hand, and you wonder at my suspicion?”
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair in evident frustration. “Do you imagine my uncle solicited my opinion when he decided a match with you would be beneficial to our principality? Because if so, you have no understanding of the mechanics of royal marriages at all.”
It was ridiculous, but Ellin felt stung. “You didn’t want to marry me?”
“Not once I knew you didn’t want me. My uncle’s last two brides openly wept at the altar, with good reason. That is not what I want for my bride, and not what I want for myself. I was given no more choice in the matter than you were, and I have no intention of blackmailing you into accepting my offer now.”
He reached out and took both her freezing cold hands in his. She’d have pulled away from the overly familiar touch if she hadn’t been seduced by his delicious warmth. He squeezed her hands and peered earnestly into her eyes.
“I did not bring up your secretary to blackmail you. I brought him up because I want you to know that I know about him and want to marry you anyway. I’m genuinely fond of you, I hope you know that, but our marriage would still be a business arrangement rather than a love match. I would not insist you give up your lover, as long as you continued to be entirely discreet—and as long as you are willing to bear my children instead of his.”
For no reason she could name, tears sprang suddenly to her eyes, and her throat became so thick she could not speak.
Zarsha’s offer was too good to be true. She knew that. Once they were married, he would never truly agree to share her with another man. She might be naïve, but she was not so naïve as to believe that. And could she honestly be sure she would bear children with Zarsha? She was well aware of the story of Princess Shelvon, who had many very logical reasons why she would wish to give her husband an heir, and yet had not become pregnant since the earthquake. Everyone kept saying it was a matter of time, that it had only been a couple of months, but Ellin had read the late abbess’s letter. There was a subtlety to the woman’s magic that Ellin suspected many others had so far failed to fully comprehend.
And even if all these other objections could be resolved, Graesan deserved better.
She was possibly the most selfish woman in all of Rhozinolm, holding on to a man she could never marry. The only truly decent thing to do was to set him free. If she weren’t still stringing him along, surely Graesan could get on with his life, find a good woman who could make him happy and give him children. And who could love him openly and without shame.
“Just think about it,” Zarsha urged. “Marrying me can solve a great many of your problems all at once.” He flashed her a self-deprecating smile. “I may not be the man you want, but I do hope I’ve proven to have one or two redeeming qualities.”
Ellin tried on a tremulous smile, though she still felt as if she could burst into tears at the slightest provocation. “I suppose I must concede that.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and the tears receded far enough into the background that she could steady her voice and her smile. “I promise I will think about it.”
“That’s all I ask.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Alys carefully pulled the stable door open, wincing as the hinges creaked. She didn’t think the sound would carry all the way to the servants’ quarters that adjoined the back of the stables, but she herself was aware of even the smallest sound. The chirp of a cricket, the swaying of branches in the wind, the call of an owl…Each sound set her heart racing, her mind scrambling to call up the lie she had created to explain why she was creeping around the grounds of her own manor house at this hour of the night.
It was nearly pitch-dark in the stables, though a little moonlight filtered in from the high windows. Alys slipped inside and closed the door, then stood still and waited for her eyes to adjust. Her pulse hammered in her ears, but it was only in part because of her fear of getting caught. If she were being completely honest with herself, she had to admit there was a high level of excitement mixed in with those nerves.
For weeks after her disastrous attempt to work the first spell in her mother’s book, she had followed the instructions to a tee, double- and even triple-checking each element to make sure she was using the correct ones. It hadn’t taken long for her to realize she could see elements that were not included in her mother’s book, and a quick, stolen glance at Corlin’s primer had confirmed her suspicion that most of them were masculine elements.
Although her mother had anticipated that she might be able to see some masculine elements, there seemed to be no lessons in the book about how to work with them. Certainly there was nothing about combining masculine and feminine elements into the same spell, and Alys hadn’t been able to resist seeing what would happen if she did. It was perhaps foolhardy to attempt to craft her own spells—especially in such an unconventional manner—when she had so much still to learn about magic, but it also seemed wasteful not to take advantage of her unique ability to see elements of all genders.
Every spell Alys had so far learned required the use of a potion as a means of delivery. Healing potions, vanity potions, love potions, even magical poisons. Potions were the cornerstone of women’s magic. One of the masculine elements Alys could see was Tyn, which was used in a great deal of men’s magic to create spells that could affect a human body without the need of ingesting a potion. It was Alys’s theory that adding Tyn to some of the potion spells might make them take effect via touch rather than ingestion. And tonight she planned to put that theory to the test.
When her eyes had adjusted as much as they were going to, Alys crept forward across the stable floor. The dozing horses had all awoken at her entry, but aside from a little shuffling and shifting, they remained gratifyingly quiet as she crossed to Smoke’s stall. The gray stallion looked at her with listless eyes, and she struggled against a surge of guilt that she would risk the poor creature’s life to test her spell-crafting abilities. However, if he were to expire mysteriously during the night, she doubted anyone would be too surprised or think there was anything odd about it. Smoke had aged about ten years in the less than two years since Sylnin’s death, and it was perhaps surprising he had survived as long as he had.
Alys stroked the horse’s muzzle and took a deep breath. There was no reason to think her spell would kill the horse. It was a modified version of a women’s sleeping potion, and while a sleeping potion made with too high a concentration of the feminine element Von could be deadly—a poison that would put its victim permanently to sleep—she would begin her experiment with only the three motes used for a mild potion and build up from there. If the spell worked at all, Smoke should fall asleep long before the concentration of Von became deadly.
Reaching into the small sack she had brought with her, she drew out the ring that contained what she hoped was a touch-triggered sleep spell as well as a pair of tongs she’d liberated from the kitchen. Holding the ring with the tongs so its spell wouldn’t affect her when it was activated, she opened her Mindseye and added the Rho she needed to complete the spell. Then she touched the ring to Smoke’s neck. She had to close her Mindseye to see what had happened and was disappointed to see the horse still blinking placidly.
So began an increasingly disappointing cycle. Open her Mindseye, add another mote of Von to intensify the spell, close her Mindseye, and see the horse still wide awake. She almost gave up when she reached a total of ten motes of Von, because that was the level at which sleep potions turned to poison. But she reasoned with herself that it would take more motes to affect a horse than a person, so with another apology to Smoke, she continued trying.
When she fed in the fifteenth mote of Von, she opened her Mindseye to see Smoke’s eyelids drooping. With a sigh, he sagged downward until his belly hit the stable floor. His eyes closed. She opened the stall door to check on him, putting a hand to his ribs to feel the steady thump of his heart and the gentle movement of his breaths. His skin twitched under her ha
nd, but he did not awaken. It was all she could do not to jump up and down and let out a victory whoop.
She could imagine any number of ways a touch-triggered sleeping spell could be useful. Some of them were completely benevolent—she remembered a time when Corlin had been sick for a week with a stomach ailment that kept him vomiting at night and thought how useful it would have been if she could have helped him sleep without him having to drink a potion that would instantly come back up. Then there were a great many other, less benevolent ways it could be used. Ways that might help should Delnamal ever manage to turn their father completely against her and her children.
She caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye and whirled in that direction. She choked on a startled yelp when she saw the shadowed figure of a man standing by the stable door. The kitchen tongs fell from her hands, releasing the ring, which bounced and rolled across the floor.
Falcor stepped forward into a shaft of moonlight. It was enough illumination to show her his identity, but not enough to let her read his facial expression. The ring came to rest near his feet, and he looked back and forth between her and the ring.
How much had he seen? And, more important, was he likely to tell anyone what he’d seen?
Falcor bent down, and Alys realized he was about to reach for the ring. Which meant he hadn’t seen her put Smoke to sleep with a touch. The horse seemed unharmed, but she had no way of knowing what a sleep spell built with fifteen motes of Von might do to a man.
She had a split second to make a decision. It would be safest for her and her family to let Falcor touch the ring. There would certainly be a lot of questions asked if he were to be found dead in the stables when the stable hands rose in the morning, but those questions were unlikely to lead anyone to her.