by Amanda Joy
The Hunter’s eyes met mine. “I swear it.”
I drew the blade down my palm in a sinuous line, wincing as blood welled.
Baccha slipped one of the rings, half bone and half gold, off his hand. He took my bleeding hand and slid the ring onto my thumb. It was too large, but Baccha tapped it twice. I gasped as it shrank until it fit snugly around my finger. “This will reinforce our connection, as well as allow me to track you if you’re ever in danger.”
Baccha didn’t flinch as he carved a circle in his hand. He tucked the blade back into his belt after wiping it on his pants. The black hid blood well.
He shuddered once and held out his hand, narrow rivulets running into the creases of his palm. We joined hands. For a moment, I felt nothing but the singular sensation of our skin sliding through a thick coating of blood.
“Now,” Baccha murmured. “Picture your mindscape, picture yourself there.”
I conjured the lake. It hardly required any concentration to find myself at the lake’s edge. Black water lapped at the shore. I imagined my bare feet planted in the damp mud. I could hear the rushing of rapids somewhere beyond this place and I knew it was the Hunter’s magick.
I gave a start as Baccha appeared beside me at the lake’s edge, our hands still clasped.
Wind slammed into us, making Baccha’s hair spin into a tornado of gold. The lake of magick began a slow churn, not the intense boiling of two nights ago in the alley, but a slow building of power. Water lapped at my ankles, threatening to pull me under.
Suddenly my hand burned like I’d pressed it against a hot iron. I clenched my teeth around a scream and tried to pull away, but Baccha held me fast, and only the calm on his face kept my panic at bay. The ground quaked beneath us as my lake and his river became one. Trees surrounded us, growing from saplings to ancient in a blink. Above us, night birds careened through their branches.
As abruptly as the wind had started, it stopped. My lake was still again.
Baccha’s voice floated through my mind. In this place, we can communicate easily, but only when we’re here together.
What’s next? I tried thinking it at him.
Baccha cringed, dropping my hand and massaging his temples. No need to scream, Princess. Next we test the waters.
I held my foot over the water. As I tried to dip my toes in, there was a moment of resistance. I pressed forward, and the ground dropped off completely. I fell into the lake.
The water was utterly black as it closed over my head. I was a strong swimmer, but that didn’t seem to matter here as some unknown force pulled me to the bottom of this underwater chasm. I sank like a stone. Even knowing the illogic of drowning inside my own mind, I panicked. Kicking wildly and choking on that black water, I fell even faster.
I tried to scream Baccha’s name, choking on more water, until finally I hit what I thought was the bottom of the lake. Instead I was lying on top of a barrier. It was translucent, flexible, moving with the water in the lake. I tried to push through it, but burning pain spread through my body. It consumed me—there was no thinking around it. I couldn’t remember where I was or how I’d gotten there. Finally my hand dropped from the barrier and it all came rushing back. I tried to swim away, but my body was sluggish, still reeling from the pain.
Come back, Eva! This isn’t real. Return to your body. Baccha’s voice sliced through my terror.
I opened my eyes and found myself back in my father’s office. I still held Baccha’s hand. I pulled it from him. The wound had healed, leaving a faint scar.
“What was that, Hunter?”
Baccha looked shaken, eyes wide and unfocused. “I told you to test the waters, not swim right to the bottom. Human magick can be volatile.”
“I would’ve appreciated that warning beforehand. I didn’t swim, Baccha, I fell,” I bit out. “And I couldn’t even reach the bottom of the lake. There was some sort of boundary.”
“I know. And that is only the second thing that went wrong.” He squinted at me. “Can’t you feel it?”
I closed my eyes and felt around in the back of my head. There was the lake, as always, dark and deep and full of magick, now connected to a pocket of awareness that was Baccha’s river of magick. My thoughts stretched toward it; the sensation was like dipping my hand in rushing rapids, like I could be swept up in the current. A sudden, rather sharp annoyance poured through me, but the feeling wasn’t mine. It was Baccha’s. “What did you do?”
“It’s a . . . side effect of coalescence. The emotional exchange is rare, but happens from time to time. I thought your guard mentioned it when he expressed his discontent.”
“He said it could create a bond, not whatever this is.”
“This is the bond—it’s an emotional bond. We will . . . experience each other’s emotions.”
“You should have told me. You want your secrets, fine, but if it involves me, I want the truth, plainly stated.”
“My apologies, Princess,” Baccha said. “In my defense, I truly didn’t expect it. The bond usually occurs only when two people who know each other well coalesce.”
“Then why did this happen?”
“I’m not sure, Princess,” he said, the sharp points of his ears going pink.
I groaned, poking at that new awareness. “And you can feel . . . everything?”
“If I concentrate, yes, but usually only the strongest sentiments come through.”
“I don’t like this, Hunter.” I had no desire for anyone to be in my mind but my own self, feeling, reading, knowing my emotions. It was a horrible prospect; I would have preferred a stroll through Ternain without a stitch of clothing than be laid so bare.
“If you would like to end your lessons prematurely, I can reverse it. Though I fear that might make the other problem worse.” I could feel his confusion coming through the bond. “Did you know that someone put a binding on your magick?”
“That barrier was a binding?” I rose from my seat and began to pace around the table.
Baccha went on. “Yes, unfortunately. A binding indicates—”
“You may have taken me for this empty-headed thing—this silly Princess—but I am not,” I snapped. “I know of bindings, Lord Baccha.”
A binding was one of the foulest uses of magick. During the Great War, Sorceryn put bindings on khimaer whenever they were taken prisoner, which stopped them from using their magick. They could be broken—magick won out, it always did—but not easily.
I thought of the pain I’d felt when I had pushed the barrier. How could I fight that? It had turned my thoughts to dust. If Baccha hadn’t called me back, I would’ve been lost there, stranded in my mind.
“Then you know a binding can only be removed by the Sorceryn who created it. I can only think of one circumstance where a binding could have been placed on you without your knowledge.”
My Harkening, the spell set upon every human babe in the realm to determine our magick. I wrapped my arms around my stomach, trying to hold in the panic.
“What I can’t fathom is, why would a Sorceryn put a binding on their Princess?” Baccha continued. “Especially the one favored—because of her magick—to become Queen.”
Whenever anyone spoke of my birth, they always recounted the length of time I had spent in the spell—ten days, which was five days longer than the average child. The binding must have been placed then. I knew one person who could’ve convinced the Sorceryn to do such a thing—my mother. She feared my magick enough to do it, but could she have resigned me to such a fate just after I was born? I couldn’t believe that of her, no matter how broken our relationship was.
I pushed those thoughts aside with difficulty. “But, Baccha, I’ve used magick twice before. I used it the night before we met. Shouldn’t the binding have stopped me?”
He asked me to recount the incidents. I explained both—the time I’d hurt Isa
dore and my killing of the assassin—without going into much detail. Still his pity effused from the bond, flowing into my mind as if it were my own. Baccha didn’t express the revulsion or scorn I expected after confessing that I’d taken a life, but then, he had no room to judge.
He shook his head. “Bindings can be created to block a specific ability, or to fade away over time, though I suspect yours is the former if you used magick when you were just a child. This is good news, though. We can still complete your lessons. We’ll simply have to avoid magick that strains the binding until you discover who placed it and get it removed.”
“How will we know what can and can’t be used?” I couldn’t stop the tremor that crept into my voice. Who could have done this? And why?
“Oh, you’ll know,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “What you felt when you tried to force your way through the binding . . . you’ll feel echoes of that pain if you put too much pressure on the binding.”
Part of me couldn’t help but see the upside to this. If the binding held something back, it must have been more terrible than the power I’d used to kill the assassin. It would be easier to learn the rest knowing there was something holding me back. But Baccha’s next words made my heartbeat quicken. “But we’ll have to be careful, Princess. If the binding breaks and you aren’t ready, your mind could be left tied in knots.”
No, I knew where I would end up. Trapped deep within that lake forever.
“How do you know so much about this, Baccha? None of your stories connect you to the Sorceryn.”
“It’s not a story you would know.” Baccha clenched his jaw, the river between us flowing with aching grief. “After the war, I was asked to remove the bindings on a family of khimaer before they were sent to the Enclosure. The Sorceryn who’d bound their magick died at the end of the war, so the task fell to me. The crown wanted the bindings removed because they were driving people to madness—and accidents. When a binding is ripped away by force, the magick that comes rushing out can kill not just you, but anyone close. I was only able to break the bindings in two of them.”
“And the rest?” I whispered.
He sighed, forcing a hand through his golden hair. “They died.”
We lapsed into silence. Standing by the window, I looked out at the grove below. Baccha had spelled it out quite plainly. If I didn’t find the Sorceryn who did this and convince him to reverse it, the same thing would happen to me.
* * *
After I left Baccha, I went to see my mother. I had planned to visit her today anyway, so that I could explain why I’d missed Court, but the binding made it all the more important that we speak.
The Queen’s Palace was like any other traditional Myrean akelae, but on a much grander scale. Instead of one central courtyard, there were four: the Throne Room, the Sun Gardens, the Silver Pools, and the Royal Courtyard. All of the royal suites overlooked our courtyard, and only the royal family and our guests were allowed in it.
I walked through it on the way to my mother’s rooms, hoping the gurgling fountains and flowering trees would calm me. The cobalt and white tiles shined in the high summer sun, and the air was warm and smelled sweet because of the fruit trees. Figs and sour oranges and blue mazi were all in season. Since returning to Ternain, I looked out on the courtyard often, but had never seen Isadore or my mother visit it. Despite the team of servants who must have worked to maintain the courtyard, it was still and deserted.
By the time I reached her rooms, Mother hadn’t yet returned from Court, but the soldiers guarding her rooms let me inside to wait. The Queen’s suite was much larger than mine, with several bedrooms, two bathing chambers, a formal dining room, and a salon with a wide balcony overlooking the Red River, its waters colored rust by the red-brown clay at the bottom.
I waited there, watching the river ships—swift cutters with colorfully painted hulls, and low-slung passenger boats, prows hung with colorful lanterns—sail past. Upriver, where the water was shallower, there was a floating market of narrow canoes piled with melons, bright citrus fruit, fish, and cut flowers.
There was a soft knock at the door. It was one of Mother’s maids, a pale woman in her middle years with bowed shoulders. “Her Majesty will receive you in her bedchamber, Your Highness.”
Exactly what I’d hoped she wouldn’t do. I hadn’t entered my mother’s bedchamber since I was still a child. All of my memories of it were bitter.
When I stepped inside, I was surprised to find it was smaller than I remembered. Still larger than mine, but not the palatial cavern my mind had made it into. The room smelled of orange blossoms and instead of light coming from the lamps hanging from the ceiling, tall, pale blue candles burned on every table. They smelled of the sea. The walls were painted a soft gold, with gilded friezes across the ceiling. Mother sat at a teak desk in the corner, reading a stack of reports. In a heavily embroidered silk robe, with her white-blond hair falling softly around her face, she looked much younger than she did sitting upon the throne every morning.
I approached the desk, head bowed. I would have to do this very carefully. Mother liked me contrite, but not weak. “Thank you for seeing me, Mother.”
“Well?” She glanced up, bottle-green eyes meeting mine, before turning back to her work.
“I . . . came to ask your permission to miss Court for the next few weeks.”
“You come to ask after missing two days.” Her voice was emotionless. Her eyes continued to scan the page. “When you returned to Ternain, you agreed to obey me. I see, despite your father’s assurances, nothing has changed since you left. You are as willful as ever.”
“As anyone who hopes to be Queen should be, Mother.” At this, she arched an eyebrow, but nodded for me to continue.
“I missed Court yesterday because I met someone who can teach me magick,” I said. “Our first lesson was this morning. I thought you would agree that the development of my magick took precedence.”
That at least drew her attention. She sat up, pinning me with a sharp gaze. “Who?”
“I fear you won’t believe me if I say. He is new to the city. A fey bone-worker from the North.” I held my breath, hoping she wouldn’t dig further. I had bluffed in my first meeting with Baccha. If my mother became aware of the identity of my teacher, no convincing would keep her from ordering Baccha away.
The Queen wasn’t supposed to play favorites, but my mother did. She had put Isadore’s needs over mine for as long as I was old enough to remember. If she thought Baccha would jeopardize my sister’s chances of becoming True Heir, she would take him from me.
“A fey bone-worker. Only you could find such an improbable thing,” she murmured softly. She folded her hands on the table, nails long and lacquered bright blue, with rings on each of her fingers. The smallest was a small gold wedding band. I was surprised to see she still wore it. “Very well. Bring him to Court at the end of the week. You may miss Court until then.”
She returned to her work without another word.
“There is one other thing,” I said quickly.
“Evalina, you know that I am busy. I have a Council meeting in an hour.”
“I wanted to ask about my Harkening,” I blurted. “You never told me about it and I am curious.”
She sighed, massaging her temples. “Your father could tell you more than I can. I lost a lot of blood during your birth. I was sick for days afterward; even the healers had trouble keeping me alive. I’d barely recovered when your magick was announced to the city.”
My heart thumped in my chest. Was that why she seemed so averse to my presence? I’d nearly killed her coming into the world and then I’d been born with magick that threatened the daughter she loved long before I came around. No wonder our relationship always chafed. “I never knew, Mother.”
“You never asked, dear,” she said coldly.
I blinked away tears before they c
ould fall. “But the Sorceryn, Mother. Did you choose them? Do you know who they were?”
“No, your father handled all of that. He always saw to everything with you.” Her stoic mask fell away, but whether her eyes were shining with sadness or fury, I still couldn’t tell. “He brought you to the Temple after you were born. He left in the mornings to visit with me, but otherwise he stayed at the Temple all ten days until it was done. Now, if that is all, Eva . . .”
I wasn’t sure what words I said as I backed away from her desk. My hands curled into fists to hide their trembling. I shut the door behind me and sank to the floor.
It made no sense. My father couldn’t have done this. Why would he make efforts to keep me from my magick and then spend the last three years searching the Queendom for a tutor? I’d gone on many of those journeys. We’d gone to Korsai, the peninsula jutting into the Fair Sea, and Soli Port, and a dozen different villages where elder Sorceryn retired. He could have told me—would have told me—at any time.
No.
There must be another explanation. Something Mother didn’t know, or had left out, to torment me.
CHAPTER 10
I WALKED WITH Baccha through the citrus grove outside the Little Palace. The branches were heavy with lemons and bitter oranges. Already sweat clung to my skin. In a few hours the heat would be intolerable. It was the sort of high summer day where everyone retreated from the heat in the afternoon. Even Baccha had exchanged his leather coat for a black silk one embroidered with gold leaves.
I was late in meeting him. I’d barely slept last night. I couldn’t think of a single explanation for what Mother had told me. If Papa had stayed at the Temple for my entire Harkening—with Mother sick at the Palace—he must’ve had a good reason. There had to be some explanation, some justification. I considered sending a raven north, but this wasn’t the sort of question I could ask in a letter. He was supposed to return to Ternain for my nameday ball in the coming weeks, but how could I afford to wait that long?
