A River of Royal Blood

by Amanda Joy

  Through our bond, I could feel his avidity, tart as mazi fruit in the spring.

  I dropped the coin on the table. “Before we begin, tell me how you came to have this.”

  Baccha tensed. “I thought you’d agreed to let me keep my secrets, Princess.”

  “I did, and that agreement might’ve held if you hadn’t lied.”

  “Oh?” Baccha murmured. “And when was this?”

  “You said you spent the last hundred years in Dracol. Mira said every coin in your possession was stamped like this. Why didn’t you mention traveling through the Roune Lands?”

  “The next time,” he said tightly, “one of your people invades my privacy, these lessons are done.”

  “They won’t need to after you tell me the truth. Why are you here, Baccha?”

  “There are things in my past that I am not . . . allowed to speak of. You’ll have to be satisfied with not knowing. Remember at Court I told you of oaths made in blood. I was bound three times over: in my own blood, in that of my kin, and in the blood of the Queen who first held my leash. The oath cannot be broken. This, speaking of it plainly, is as much as I can reveal without—” He broke off with a twitch. “Please, Princess.”

  His pain was like acid, reverberating through the bond. I watched that fine-boned face, those ancient honey-brown eyes that never seemed ancient, the gold color of his skin, and the utterly inexplicable nature of him. He was paler now, his face thinned out with pain, but he was still Baccha. And with him, I’d come farther, come closer to survival than I ever could have alone.

  “Isn’t there some way we can break it?”

  “Short of killing me, no. You’ll recall that I am immortal,” he said with a sardonic smirk.

  “How can I trust you, then?” You can’t, my thoughts whispered. You can only trust yourself.

  “You have my oath that I will never hurt you. That is all I can offer.” He hung his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Is any of this connected to Raina?”

  “Only tangentially. I can speak of her freely.”

  “Good, I want to hear her story now. I know she must be next.”

  “She is, though I won’t tell her story as I’ve told the others, since in this case I was actually there myself. In those days, the Queen chose three handmaidens—fey, human, and bloodkin—after the tradition started when the fey and khimaer nation became one. They were chosen from among the finest Houses in the Queendom. Often, if the Queen favored one of her maidens, she would arrange her marriage to one of the khimaer nobles at Court. It was considered a great honor, marrying into a noble khimaer tribe. It was Raina’s dream to be chosen as handmaiden. Her family was one of great wealth, but of only middling stature at Court. And as humans, they held little power. The Queen wouldn’t have considered them at all, but Raina and her sister, Amara, were prodigies.

  “Amara could use her magick of wind and flame to take flight. Raina’s gifts, though, were less palatable to the Court. She knew the magick of strangers whenever she met them, and she could close wounds just as easily as open them. She treated magick as a Sorceryn would, tattooing her skin every time she discovered a new ability. But in the end, the Queen chose Amara. I met Raina two years after that; she was nineteen, teaching magick at a small school on the outskirts of Ternain.

  “When I wasn’t working for the crown, I tracked any intriguing magicks so that I might eventually learn them. Raina was a stubborn thing, and troubled. Sometimes she was aloof as a house cat. Other times she wanted to know every detail of the goings-on at Court and if it included news of Amara, even better. I didn’t think she would agree to instruct me, but one day she sought me out and agreed. All she asked was that I bring her to the Queen’s Palace as a guest. I should have considered the night she chose, but I underestimated her, thought her small. She was scheming from the first time we spoke.

  “It was a festival night, and the Queen was hosting the nobles. At the end of the gathering, the Queen toasted Amara and announced her betrothal to the Queen’s brother. Raina didn’t flinch. The Court dispersed; I lost sight of her and knew then that I’d made a terrible mistake. By the time I found Raina, she’d already killed the Queen and her sister.

  “That was the night,” Baccha finished, “the Great War began.”

  “So we’d come to this land, sworn fealty to its rulers, and then betrayed them with the very gift they gave us at every turn.”

  I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud till Baccha answered, “Yes, you’ve summed it up quite succinctly.”

  He pushed the box to the center of the table. “Now shall we begin your lesson?”

  “Wait, I want to know more about Raina. Why did she do it? Were you in Ternain during the war?”

  “Because she didn’t like being denied power. And no.”

  “Then where were you?”

  “In the mountains, helping people fleeing the country because of the war.” He tapped the box. “Open it.”

  “What is it?”

  “The horns. I thought we would have to wait until we returned to Ternain to make something of these, but I found a serviceable jeweler among the artisans here who had what I needed. I had a couple coins melted down, and, well . . .”

  I lifted the top. The thick bottom parts of the horns were attached by a gold chain and the tips were coated in gold.

  “Hold your hand above the box.” I did as he asked. “Close your eyes.”

  This sounded like some grand setup for a joke at my expense, but I closed my eyes without complaint.

  “What do you feel?”

  Gentle warmth spread out from my palm, tingling in my fingertips. My pulse sped and the pounding at the base of my neck—a symptom of the lingering headache I’d had since the raid—lessened.

  The warmth suffused through my limbs until I felt lighter, relaxed, and well rested.

  “What is that?” I said with a gasp.

  “The bone claiming.” Baccha hooked a finger around the edge of the box and pulled it from under my hand. The warmth lessened gradually until I felt cold, weak without it. “These horns hold both the energy you expended claiming them and the antelope’s energy. It’s a heady mix.”

  “But it didn’t make me intoxicated, Baccha. I felt . . .”

  “Energized? Better than you’ve felt in weeks?” I nodded. “That’s marrow magick. While blood magick is used on your foe, marrow magick affects your body. That energy is what will give you an edge over your opponent.”

  Baccha pulled another box from his jacket pocket. It was much smaller than the first. “I had the jeweler make another trinket.”

  Inside sat two round gold bracelets. They were too small to fit around my wrist and much too wide to be rings. Baccha curled two fingers around the bracelets and lifted them from the box. The bond began to hum. “He shaved off a bit from the bottom of each horn and I used a bit of my blood and yours—”

  The skin on the back of my neck prickled. “And where did he get my blood?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that, Princess. Anyway, he made these—”

  “Baccha!” I shook my head. “Actually, never mind. I’d rather not know.”

  “When you were ill in Ternain, I retrieved a sample. Blood is always useful.” He smiled, the very picture of innocence. He handed me one of the bracelets and slipped the other onto his hand. I watched as it stretched around his knuckles, and then shrank back down to fit around his wrist. “Go on, put it on.”

  I slid the bracelet over my fingers; it ran like liquid metal over the back of my hand. A cord of light appeared, wrapped around my wrist, connecting Baccha and me. I tried to grasp it, but it dissolved when I touched it. Even so, I still felt the cord, a gentle tugging, pulling me toward Baccha. “If I left the room, would I still feel it?”

  “With concentration, yes. You could go anywhere and find me, just as long
as we were both wearing them.”

  “But why, when I have this?” I held up my thumb with the ring Baccha had giving me during our coalescence on it.

  “Because with this, we can communicate both ways. If you should need me, just give it a tug.” Baccha ran a finger over the edge of the bangle and I felt a lurch in my stomach. “I will know. It is simpler.”

  “Thank you, Baccha,” I said.

  Baccha leaned back and rubbed the golden stubble along his jaw. “Well, I thought they would be useful. After the raid, I thought you should have a proper way to summon me. Now onto using the horns. What do you and the antelope have in common?”

  “Speed?”

  He tilted his head to the side and thought for a moment. “Hmm, no. The antelope is swift, but its speed is purposeful—a different purpose than, say, a cheetah’s. Consider the antelope’s life. It is prey; it spends most of its life running from cats in the grasslands, dodging death at every turn. The weakest antelopes are killed early in life, but the strongest—one strong enough to live so long that it grew such horns—what do they have?”

  “Survival?” I murmured, almost to myself. I didn’t love this idea of me as an antelope being chased by a host of she-lions. “They’re survivors.”

  “Yes, exactly. This is why I chose the antelope for your first claiming. This part of yourself—your ability to escape death—is of great value. Victory is about survival— knowing when to cut and run, knowing what wounds you can take and which you cannot. Leaving Ternain after that last attack was smart—it was survival.” Baccha paused, fingers tracing the edge of the box again. “You will take well to these bones, Eva.”

  I didn’t think it was so much my ability to survive, but a strange combination of luck and other people’s abilities. While I had survived on my own the night in the Patch, only Aketo’s skill kept me from death just a few days later. But why argue this? Perhaps I would take to the bones. I hoped so; they were lovely and I wanted to lose myself in that hum—that current of magick looping from me, to the horns and the creature I slew to claim them, and back again.

  “Can I use them now?” I asked.

  “They are meant to be worn hung around your neck.”

  I reached into the box and lifted the chain, feeling that warmth flow back into my hand.

  I waited for any pain to build in my head, but there was nothing. I grinned and twined them around my neck. The points swung down to my stomach, and considering how heavy they were in my hands, I couldn’t help but wonder how much these would impede my movement.

  “How can I fight wearing these?”

  “I wouldn’t worry. Claimed bones have a way of moving out of the way when you need them to.”

  “If you say so. What’s next?”

  “Marrow magick is best in hand-to-hand fighting because it doesn’t require the constant use of your tattoos.”

  “So, what, we go down to the Fort’s Sandpits and fight?” He wasn’t carrying a sword today—he rarely did—just lots of small knives.

  I rather liked knife fighting. When I came to Asrodei, it had been a part of Anali’s training. But Baccha was so long and quick and full of casual grace . . . I did not look forward to trying to best him.

  “No, in here will do. I plan to mostly chase you.” A knife appeared in his palm. “Aren’t you going to run?”

  “You can’t expect me to run around this room,” I said. The broad chamber was split into three sections, with a large four-poster bed on one side, low sofas for hosting guests in the middle, and the table where we sat now on the other end. There was more than enough room for him chase me, but the sharp edges on some of the furniture worried me just as much as Baccha’s knife. “I could slip and break my neck.”

  “The antelope has amazing footing—hopefully so does the Princess.” He leaned forward and the knife slid along the table, brushing the edge of the box. “And you did call yourself quick earlier.”

  “Please be serious,” I said, though I was inching my chair back, preparing to jump out of it at any time. It wasn’t as though I feared the knife. It was just that, well, every other time I had thought Baccha was joking about an element of our training—my hurting him repeatedly, the horns sawed off with only the moon to guide me—he’d been completely serious.

  I surveyed the room behind him—noting the low settee in the back corner, the narrow table in front of it, and the surprisingly delicate chairs on either side—and then a gust of wind came from under the door.

  Baccha vaulted onto the table in front of me. “Come now, Evalina. Run.”

  One of Baccha’s pale eyebrows arched, matching the mischievous twist of his lips, and that was all the provocation I needed. I kicked back the chair and stepped away from him. His eyes followed me, teeth sharp and shining between his lips. “Good girl.”

  It occurred to me that spending so much time with Baccha was like walking a lion on a leash and forgetting that the lion had teeth and sometimes liked to swallow men whole.

  Still: I thought, I hoped, I could take him. “Good girl?” I said.

  He inclined his head. “Very good, Lady Princess. You’re finally understanding the hands-on nature of our lessons.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Tap into the magick in the horns—they’re meant for more than that warm energy buzzing through you now.” Another knife slid neatly into the palm of his hand. He tested the edge on his thumb. A fat bead of blood welled from the cut and he stuck his thumb in his mouth. “See what they offer.”

  “That’s all the instruction you’re going to give me?”

  Baccha leaned forward so quickly that I took a step back, even though I was well outside the range of his knives—unless he threw them. “If you manage to draw my blood, the exercise will have ended, but . . . until then.”

  Wind stirred my hair, sending a spike of fear into my chest.

  I concentrated on the horns, my fingers resting slightly on the golden tips, but was only greeted with the same current of energy as earlier. I darted into the corner, wanting to put more space between us as a wild laugh sprang from his throat.

  My knee banged against the smaller table on my way across the chamber. I squeezed the horns and a surge of energy pulsed through my limbs, chasing away the pain.

  I turned and nearly yelped as Baccha’s knife flashed like silver flame barely an inch from my face. I fell backward, the bones in my wrists grinding as I caught myself, scrambling away from Baccha.

  I climbed to my feet. “Damn you, Baccha.”

  I looked around the room, trying to spot him. Shadows appeared at the corner of my vision, but as soon as I turned to face them—nothing. I called out his name, embarrassed to hear tremors in my voice. “Baccha, this isn’t chasing. This is just you trying to scare me.”

  “Is it working?” he whispered in my ear.

  The thing was, Baccha made more music than he realized. Each time he came near, I could hear his jewelry spinning through the air and the soft rustle of his hair. He moved dramatically, wildly, but even so, he was too quick for me to catch.

  Wild laughter rang out, racing around the room on the wind. At least he hasn’t summoned the wolves, I thought. Then I realized he might if I didn’t figure out something soon.

  What did he expect from me? I hooked my fingers around the horns again, trying to pull some power from inside them. Energy came easily; stumbling around the room hadn’t tired me, neither did there seem to be any lasting tenderness from my many falls. But there was nothing that made me a match for a half-visible Baccha. I squeezed them tighter, the twisted edges digging into my palms.

  “Run,” Baccha barked into my ear, startling me from clear across the room. “Run, run, run.”

  Pain stabbed at the center of my head as I ran. The horns must have only been able to chase away my headaches from the binding for a short time. I found
myself leaning against the larger table.

  How had I gotten across the room so quickly?

  Baccha was sitting on top of the overturned settee, legs splayed lazily as he nodded with satisfaction. “See, I said antelopes have good footing. Well done, Eva. Now, again.”

  It was the horns, I realized, making me so much faster that it was dizzying.

  Baccha blurred before my eyes, disappearing, then reappearing inches away. Time slowed as the silver flash of his blade swung toward my neck. I ducked under the knife, punching him as I ran back toward the jumble of furniture on the other side of the room.

  Suddenly Baccha was behind me. “Better, even better, and you weren’t holding them that time.”

  I didn’t think about the speed, the careful footing of an antelope—just felt the force of my annoyance at him. And bloody, bloody magick, the pain in my head was causing spots to swirl across my vision.

  I drove my fist up under his ribs and plucked one of the knives from behind his back. I slashed it across his face. Blood leaked down the edge of his slackened jaw.

  Baccha wiped it away with a casual swipe of his hand. “Again?”

  Instead of answering, I attacked again. We danced through the room, twisting and jabbing, flowing around each other, time slowing and stopping until I could hardly breathe. When we stopped, my hands were shaking.

  “Enough,” I gasped. I removed the horns and then sat down upon the floor. I was at my limit.

  “I told you,” he murmured, “it’s a heady thing, marrow magick.”

  Yes, and it wasn’t at all like blood magick, which pleased me. If I could use these two powers in tandem, I would be more than a formidable opponent for my sister.

  I would be a threat.

  CHAPTER 22

  I FOUND A note left on the small desk in my bedchamber when I woke two days later. Just one line. Care to dance in the Pits?