by Amanda Joy
Before I could ask exactly what that entailed, Falun protested. “That cost is too high, Eva. Coalescence would tether your magick to his. He would have full access to your magick.”
Baccha looked at Falun through thick eyelashes. “And she to mine, love. What is the problem?”
A rosy flush swept over Falun’s cheeks as he turned to me. “May I speak with you alone?”
I practically hauled Falun to the front of the chamber. “What are you doing? I nearly had him.”
“I don’t like this,” Falun whispered. “Coalescence is a fey technique. We used to do it in times of war to increase our power. I’ve never heard of a human and a fey using coalescence together. I assumed it only worked with fey because our magick is compatible. Who knows what the effects of combining your powers with Lord Baccha’s could be? Even between fey the results can be strange.”
“Strange, how?”
“They say it bonds people for life, even after their magick has been detached.”
That was just the sort of vaguely ominous warning I couldn’t afford to worry about. Besides, I could use a connection to Baccha. He would impress the Court, and my mother, and could potentially help me gain more fey allies. Just as long as I kept him on a tight leash, which, considering earlier, would be no simple feat.
“What other choice do I have? He knows how to use my magick, Fal. And he’s Baccha. How can I say no to that? Even if he doesn’t agree, I have half a mind to call down every soldier stationed in Ternain to capture him.”
“I know.” Falun’s hands flexed, inching toward his sword. “But he’s dangerous, Eva.”
Of course he was. “Then what do you suggest?”
“Take lessons with him, but don’t trust him until we know more. I’ll keep an eye on him as much as I can.”
Baccha was practically beaming when we returned. “Have you resolved your quarrel?”
I folded my arms. “I have one last question for you, Baccha. Why did you return to Myre? Why now, after hundreds of years?”
“Because an old friend asked.”
“Who?” Falun demanded.
“An old woman who doesn’t like young men poking into her business,” he replied smoothly. “I’m allowed some secrets, aren’t I, Princess?”
Sure he was, until we could uncover them. “Very well. Please, Lord Baccha, will you help me?”
“Until the summer ends,” he agreed. All his earlier mischief disappeared as he looked into my eyes. “Though don’t mistake me, Princess. The threat of the Queen’s interest does not worry me. I could disappear from this room without harming either of you, and you would never see me again. But having to avoid every soldier in the Queendom would delay my plans even more than waiting out the months till your nameday.”
Thanking the Gods for empty threats and Baccha’s sharp ears, I stood and gripped the table to steady myself. I was light-headed and wanted to let out a shout. I felt so much—exhilaration, shock, joy—over the absurdity of what I’d just managed, somehow enlisting a legendary Godling as my tutor.
It required all of my Court training to keep my voice calm. “Take a boat to the Gate of Moons at sunup tomorrow. Falun will retrieve you and I’ll see that you’re paid. We’ll have our first lesson in the morning.”
When I offered my hand to shake, Baccha pressed a chaste kiss to it instead.
CHAPTER 8
EVEN THE NEWS that I’d found a tutor did not soothe Captain Anali’s ire on the way back to the Palace. Hers was a quiet anger, but I felt every second of it on the ride back. I didn’t blame her. We’d returned to find them searching for me, afraid there had been another attempt on my life.
Nonetheless, once she learned of my forthcoming lessons, she resolved to meet Baccha with Falun in the morning. I knew she and Mirabel would want to take the measure of the Hunter themselves before trusting him alone with me.
Sarou let me borrow a short biography and a book on the Killeen bloodline, with promises to return them in a week. I declined the other two biographies she offered after flipping through the opening chapters. The writers seemed intent on deifying Raina, just as my tutors had done. Besides, why read a secondhand account when Baccha was a primary source?
It was late evening by the time we returned to the Palace. My rooms were dark, the only lamplight spilling beneath the door of Mirabel’s bedroom. Surprised to hear the murmur of at least two voices behind it, I knocked.
Mirabel opened the door. “Good, you’ve returned.” She yanked me into the room and shut the door. “The new guard arrived while you were gone. I thought you should meet him before I sent him down to the barracks.”
“Mirabel, wait, I have to tell you about the library.”
She ignored my words, shoving me deeper into the room.
Mirabel’s bedchamber was mostly bare, with just a small sitting area, an armoire painted with lavender songbirds, and a four-poster bed. The round latticework window above it gave a glimpse of the royal courtyard. The room was fairly plain because Mirabel kept most of her possessions at her flat in the city.
A young khimaer man in travel-worn soldier white sat in a chair in the corner of the room; he stood at my approach. He was tall and lean, with russet skin, long dark hair in braids, and the spiraling black horns of an impala. Though not quite as tall as Falun or Baccha, he still towered over me. He looked young, no older than twenty, and had one of those infuriating faces. So ridiculously handsome that I wanted to roll my eyes. The sharp, stubble-shadowed jawline and full, downturned lips alone were worth a lingering glance, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Thick, sooty lashes framed eyes of limpid gold.
Gold.
Nothing muddled or common about the color.
He returned my appraising gaze, heat in his eyes sweeping from my face down to my thighs. My cheeks warmed as I smoothed damp palms across my hips.
A smirk curled one corner of his mouth before his expression smoothed into polite interest. I couldn’t believe two men had struck me speechless in one day.
“This is Aketo Jahmar, Eva, of the Sher n’Cai Enclosure.” Mirabel’s voice came from behind me, making me jump. Sher n’Cai, which meant “trap in the sky” in Khimaeran, was the Northern Enclosure. It was buried deep in the mountains far north of Ternain, near the Dracolan border.
Jahmar, I wondered. She couldn’t mean . . .
“Do you mean Prince Aketo Jahmar?” I asked.
Only two noble khimaer Houses had been allowed to retain their titles after the Enclosures were set up. One had died off and the Jahmars were the only ones left. Descendants of the last khimaer Queen, they were Princes and Princesses whose claim to the land would never again be recognized. So why would one of them want to serve me?
I turned to Mirabel, arms folded. “Does my mother know that the khimaer Prince has enlisted in the Queen’s Army?”
Her eyes slid past me toward the Prince. “Your father thinks we should keep that as quiet as we can for now.”
Of course he did. Mother would not be pleased if she found out.
I started to inquire exactly how we’d do that, but Aketo lifted his chin. “I enlisted under a different surname, Your Highness. It will not be a problem.” His voice was smooth and musical, if a little cold.
“Why did you accept this position? I know my father would’ve given you some choice.”
“We are lucky to have Prince Aketo here after everything that’s happened,” Mirabel chastened me. “He is known to be a skilled fighter. Ask your Captain.”
“It’s a fair question, but I didn’t accept the position. I requested it. This is the only place where I could have a khimaer Captain, and my father lives in Ternain. He’s the bloodkin ambassador to the Queen’s Council. As I’m sure you can understand, we’ve been able to see little of each other.” Aketo arched a dark eyebrow, gold eyes flashing. “Your Highness.”
Abashed, I bowed my head in apology. “It seems Ternain is the right place for you. Please call me Eva. Welcome to the capital.”
He nodded in thanks and left the room to meet the Captain. With the height of his horns, he had to duck to clear the doorway.
I would have to ask her to have a few of the guards keep an eye on him. If his welcome to the Queen’s Army was anything like the Captain’s, he would need allies nearby. From what I could tell, we wouldn’t get along, but I still had to see to his safety.
Even if he was arrogant as a cat.
Citing my hair’s current state, Mirabel followed me to my room. Riding always left my hair in a tangle; half of it was matted and the rest defying all sense by springing up in every possible direction. I settled down on the floor at the foot of my bed and Mira sat on the goose-down mattress, my head cradled between her knees. While she worked, detangling and twisting my curls into simple plaits, I told her about Sarou and Brother Jorin, saving Baccha for the end.
“You taught me not to trust anyone until I know their motives. So I need you to dig up every detail of Baccha’s more recent past that you can.” As much as I was glad to have met Baccha today, simply stumbling upon him at the library felt too . . . convenient. I needed to know why he’d come back to Ternain and soon.
“A man like the Hunter may not like that.” Though I couldn’t see Mirabel’s face, I knew from the cunning lilt in her voice that she was intrigued.
I didn’t much care for what Baccha did and didn’t like, as long as his lessons proved fruitful. “We’ll just have to be discreet.”
“The Hound of Death is certainly worthy of study,” she mused, working at a particularly tangled knot. “But it won’t be easy.”
“He said an old woman asked him to return. It might have been a lie, but . . .” The look in Baccha’s face when he had said it indicated otherwise.
“I’ll start looking tomorrow since I have little else to focus on.”
So far she’d turned up nothing on who might’ve removed the assassin’s body. “I’ve no doubt that you can manage the workload. You’ll find something, Mira. You always do.”
“I hope so.” She wrapped my hair in a scarf and made for the door, dousing the lamps around the bedchamber. I fought a jaw-cracking yawn. “Did you know Papa was sending Prince Aketo to Ternain?”
“No, if I’d known about the Prince, I would have tried to change the King’s mind, though the Gods know I’ve never been able to convince your father of anything he’s already set his mind on.”
“Why would you have tried to change Papa’s mind?”
“If any courtiers actually know something of khimaer, he’ll be discovered. Only those born to the noble families have such long, beautiful horns.” There was a yearning in her voice. With a sigh, she put out the last lamp. “Have a care with him, Eva. I’m sure Prince Aketo can be a resource to you. That’s probably why your father sent him.”
After Mirabel left, I didn’t fall asleep for hours, my head too full of Hunters and Princes and Kings. Eventually I dreamed that I was back in the Patch, drumming a beat while all three danced at my will, but whenever my song stopped, I found puppet strings tied to my ankles and wrists. No matter how long I searched, I could not find who held them.
CHAPTER 9
I HAD MY first lesson with Baccha the next morning in my father’s office at the Little Palace. The cornflower-blue home was flanked by rows of orange and lemon trees, with even more fruit trees and date palms in the interior garden. Anywhere else, it would have been a sizable estate, but in the shadow of the Queen’s Palace, it looked as small as a cottage.
It was traditionally used as a residence for the King’s family, but had sat unused until Papa and Mother became estranged and Papa moved out of the Palace. Though eventually even that distance hadn’t been far enough, because he left for Asrodei the following summer and I ran away to join him shortly after that.
An unseasonably cool breeze blew through the window that stretched the length of the office, ruffling the map spread across the oval table in the center. My father’s desk was shoved into a corner on the opposite side of the room, a nest of crumpled parchment, myrrh candles stuck in pools of dried wax, overturned inkwells, and porcelain cups with dried kaffe grounds stuck to the bottom.
When Mother called for my return to the capital, Papa had given me free rein to use the Little Palace as I pleased. I hosted dinners for my guard here and walked the citrus grove when the gardens around the Queen’s Palace were too crowded with courtiers. Until now I’d barely used this office, and hadn’t had the heart to clean off the desk. I wasn’t harboring any hopes that he’d return to the capital permanently. After all, if I didn’t want to be here, why should he? The desk simply reminded me of him—of long rides over frost-crusted hills, sword-fighting lessons at dawn, and late-night card tournaments over cups of mint tea.
Baccha was bent over the larger table when I arrived. Like yesterday, his hair was unfettered, hanging to mid-thigh. I approached and found him inspecting the tiny jade and onyx paperweights atop the map. He held up one with a tiger’s head and the body of a crocodile.
“Do you know what this is, Princess?” I shook my head; the set was my father’s. “Dracolans call it a tirimsho, a river spirit.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, voice deceptively light. Of course Papa would have a set of paperweights from Dracol. He collected all sorts of things in his travels across the realm.
“I spent the better part of the last century in Dracol.” He returned his attention to the map of Akhimar, tracing a jagged line from Myre’s western coast up through Dracol, the small human Kingdom in the North, beyond the A’Nir Mountains.
Thirty years ago my grandmother Queen Eryna had one of Dracol’s Princes assassinated after she learned of his plans to declare war on Myre. Since then, Dracol’s current monarch, King Lioniten the Fourth, threatened revenge often. They had not forgotten the assassination, but since war with Myre, a nation more than double the size of Dracol, would likely end in defeat, their hostility came in the form of raiders burning farmland on their way in and out of Myre. The incursions had become increasingly deadly for soldiers stationed in the North. As a result, Mother had closed the border, not allowing any of the Dracolans who lived in Myre to return to their homeland. There were whispers around the Queendom that we were on the cusp of war—the first since the Great War two centuries past—but Papa and Mother wouldn’t enter a conflict without true provocation.
The news that Baccha had lived in Dracol sank like a stone in my gut. His loyalties could have changed, which had the potential for danger. I couldn’t imagine Baccha working for the King of Dracol, but I also hadn’t imagined that he was still alive, so anything was possible. I would need to tell Mirabel about that and every other detail he let slip. “But why? Dracolans fear magick and hate us.”
“Of course I wore a human guise,” Baccha replied softly. “You would be surprised, though, Princess. Many Dracolans are tolerant to magick.”
Having watched my father tally the dead from Dracolan raiders, I ground my teeth. “Whatever they believe, soldiers are dying on the border every day.”
“Yes, they are.” His expression was troubled, but he smoothed it away and straightened, returning the figurine from Dracol to a map of the Kremir Sands. He gave me a quick once-over, and then frowned. “No escort today? Your Falun seemed rather enthused at the prospect of keeping an eye on me for the duration of my stay.”
I failed to hide a grimace. Falun was waiting outside, likely listening in on our conversation. He’d asked to come inside, but I refused to have an audience for my first lesson. Or the second, third, and fourth for that matter.
“A pity,” Baccha mused.
“I’ll make sure to convey your disappointment, Lord Baccha.”
He rolled up the map and we sat across from each other. “Now, in order for our m
agick to coalesce, I must first know the place where your magick lives.”
When I stared blankly at him, he took on a look of long-suffering patience. “Your mindscape, Princess. The place in your mind that offers up the magick.”
“Like . . . my lake?” I always saw one when I thought of my magick. And when I’d killed the assassin, it had offered me power.
“Yes, exactly like that. Everyone visualizes differently. When I first became aware of the magick inside me, it took the form of a river running through a vast forest. There I found my wolves and the wind, among other gifts.” Baccha rummaged in the pocket of his coat—black leather again—and produced a dagger with a bone hilt carved into the shape of a wolf’s head. “For our magick to coalesce, we must merge mindscapes. It shouldn’t be too difficult to combine your lake and my river.”
He slid the dagger across the table. I studied its wolf hilt. Its teeth were bared in a snarl, and like his jewelry, it was highlighted with hints of gold. “And why do I need this?”
“Coalescence requires a bit of your blood and a bit of mine.” He sat back, waiting for me to begin. “Believe me, Princess, you will be fine.”
I pulled his dagger from its sheath, and hesitated. “Baccha, yesterday you said you would have access to my magick.”
“I did.”
“Will you be able to control it?” I swallowed. “Can your control stop me from hurting someone who doesn’t deserve it?”
He bit his lip. “I could do that, but, Princess, I wouldn’t worry about such things. All magick is dangerous—”
“I want your promise. That if I do this—develop my ability to use my magick—you’ll stop me if I ever lose control of it.” If only I could trust this to someone I knew well. All I had to go on of Baccha were the stories about him. In them, he was half rogue, half hero, forced to execute the Queen’s will, often mourning even those he was forced to kill. Who knew what secrets lurked in his recent past, but I trusted that he would not revel in the death of an innocent.
