by Melle Amade
“Where did you live before you went to Dublin?” Riordan asked me.
“I’ve always lived in Dublin,” I said, not telling him the truth. I had lived in Dublin for as long as I could remember, but I had no idea where I came from or who my parents were. The clan in Dublin was the only family I had ever known. And now they’re gone. Whatever thin shell I had around my heart was cracked and falling away. Underneath it was a raw muscle that I didn’t know how to use.
I lost everything in that massacre. Everything except Siobhan.
“When will your father send a team up to Dublin?” I couldn’t let it go. I’d been praised for my persistence before, but the tension in my voice isn’t welcome. Riordan’s eyes darken.
“Soon,” Riordan tilted his head towards me. “But if those Hunters just wiped out your clan, it can’t be safe, and we’ll need some time to strategize.”
“Sounds like you aren’t sure you want to attack,” I said, trying to goad him into a response. But he wasn’t having it.
“Rushing in without a plan is no way to win.” His shoulders lifted. “It takes time.”
“I guess time is easy to find when you are living in a glamoured fortress,” I said. “Maybe it’ll be good for your Ravensgaard to have a real enemy to focus on.” The words come out like a barb, but he deftly ignores it. I bite my tongue to make sure I don’t hammer the point home that its time they got the cobwebs out of the Ravensgaard army.
Once I had rested up, I’d go to their training grounds and see what these guys were made of.
6
The glowering overcast sky let loose rain as we approached the stables. We jogged the last few yards to get under the awning before the torrent started.
“What was it like to grow up here, where the stable is three times the size of a normal house?” I asked.
“It wasn’t as nice as you might think,” Riordan said.
I clapped my hands over my mouth. Crap! I didn’t mean to said that out loud. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t control my mouth?
“There was a lot of distrust and confusion when my father took over,” Riordan said, unlatching the door and pushing it into the dark interior of the stables. The smell of horse manure and straw wafted out over us.
“But I thought it was a boon for the Ravensgaard when you took over,” I lied. “At least that’s what I was told.”
“Yes, and it was,” Riordan said. “The Grand Dame of House Cavanagh, Lady Oonagh, was running the place into the ground had no stomach for warfare. She didn’t understand how to keep the Ravensgaard prominent with the other clans and the Order. She was always sitting in her attic and playing with things. It was a relief to everybody when she died.”
“Playing with things?” I asked.
“People said she was a dabbler,” Riordan said.
“You mean a dabbler in the arts?” I asked. “In magic?”
“Yes,” Riordan said. “But it wasn’t all bad. You see, it’s her magic that keeps this castle hidden.”
“Even now after she’s dead?” I wondered. “I’ve never really completely believed in magic, although I know it exists. Otherwise how else could we shift into animals? But the type of magic that can do this… I thought it died out when the caster died.”
“Apparently not,” Riordan said as he moved to the first stall.
“What the hell is that?” I asked staring at the humongous red animal sitting at the back of the stall, its eyes bold and brown and deep looking back at me.
Riordan laughed. “What? You lot don’t have horses up in Dublin then?”
“The bobbies ride them on their rounds,” I said. “But they don’t look like that. That thing isn’t a horse, it’s an elephant.”
Riordan looked at me sideways with a crooked smile on his face. I wasn’t sure what the smile was about, but there was something gentle and kind in his black eyes.
It made me think of Keith, Siobhan’s brother. Keith cared. I pressed my lips together and massaged my shoulder with cold fingers. How could Riordan possibly care? I’m just a straggler from Dublin.
“So, what do you use the beast for?” I asked, diverting his attention from me.
We both looked at the monstrosity in the stall.
“Maggie?” He blew a quick breath out through his lips, sounding a bit like a horse. It almost brought a smile to my face. “We don’t do anything but feed the old nag. We’ve had her ever since I can remember. She’s probably almost as old as me. She’ll die any day now, but she’s one of my father’s prized possessions. She’s the descendant of the descendant of the descendant of somebody’s massive war horse back in the day. Her blood is something that’s belonged to the Ravensgaard forever.”
“Does she have any children?”
His laughter was full and rich and filled the dusty barn. “Children?” You really are from the city, aren’t you?”
If I had any more energy, I’d roll my eyes. “Baby horses,” I said, my voice stale. He was lucky I even had a conversation with him. I don’t know what the hell all this farm stuff is about. Even so, I dug in my brain trying to find the word. The mare snorted my hand as I petted her nose. Her lips turned up and stretched out, all muscle and black. I pulled away. “There’s nothing here but fingers,” I murmured to her.
“Foals,” Riordan said with a grin. “The boys are colts, and the girls are fillies.”
“Thanks for the animal husbandry lesson.” I tried to keep the biting tone out of my voice. My goal was to win him over to help influence his father, not piss him off and push him away. I had to remember that.
I took a deep breath and tried to get a smile on my face, but it only worked halfway. Probably looked like I was smirking as I turned to him. “So did your father have her bred to keep the line going?”
“Indeed, he did. I thought it was kind of a waste. We don’t need horses anymore, but Father’s a bit superstitious. He didn’t want to turn over too many things the Grand Dame was doing.”
“Why don’t you call her the queen?” I asked.
He looked a little puzzled. “The queen? She wasn’t a Queen. She was the ruler of House Cavanagh.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know who you’re talking about, but, well, I don’t know about the people at Castle Brannach, but everywhere else she’s referred to as the Ravensgaard Queen.”
“Well, not to my face she isn’t,” he said. “My father wants to honor her, but he doesn’t allow her to be called a queen. It would upset all the other shifters. I mean, if we have a queen, how can we be sworn to the Eagles? It wouldn’t make sense.”
“But she doesn’t have any descendants,” I said.
“Correct,” he said. “So, my father became Master and we are sworn to the Eagles.”
Maybe I should’ve gone to the Eagles for help. The Eagle castle, Muiderslot, in Holland isn’t that far away. Or, if necessary, I could have figured out a way to get to their power seat in California. Mabye the Van Arends would help my cause against the Hunters. Though California was so far away. Who knew if they even had hunters there?
“Well, it seems like it’s taking something away from the Ravensgaards by not calling her queen,” I said. “That’s what she was called when she was alive.”
“If you want, you can take it up with my father,” Riordan said. “But you probably don’t want to do that. He gets quite irritable at the mention of her. I don’t think he’s fond of magic.”
“Yeah, he’s not fond of magic except when it protects his arse in his castle,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Where is the other horse?” I asked. “The descendent of Maggie?”
“Well she’s had several. In her prime she foaled every year,” he said. “There’s two now. She’s out-lived almost all the rest of them. You can see them down there at the end.” He gestured towards the back of the dark stables.
I made my way through the expansive barn. The smell of straw, piss, shit and animal hair were overwhelming. It wasn’t terribly dirty, but it st
ill reeked of beast. I struggled to collect my thoughts as Riordan’s hand landed on the small of my back, edging me around a dip in the dirt floor.
My gut tightened. It clenched in a way that annoyed me. It was like no one had ever been kind to me before, which of course wasn’t true. It was more that everybody who had ever been close to me, besides Siobhan, was now dead. I crunched my teeth together and swallowed hard. This was not the time to think about them. My fingers traced the scar on the inside of my wrist. The single line flared out then tapered to a jagged point. Three sharp angled marks ran underneath the top line. A nearly perfect drawing of a wing.
I always figured whoever dropped me on the cabal’s steps in Dublin wanted them to know I was a shifter, so they didn’t hand me over to an orphanage. A familiar pain shot through the line and I pressed my thumb against my lips, grimacing.
“Are you all right?” Riordan asked, reaching out for my elbow.
I pulled my sleeve down over the scar. “Yeah, just a scratch,” I dismissed his concern. There had been a dull ache in the lines ever since my clan was murdered. I squatted down to catch my breath and put some distance between myself and Riordan.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.
But my discomfort was forgotten. There was something odd on one of the giant wooden posts.
“What’s that?” I leaned in closer, trying not to let my surprise show.
There was a burn mark low on a wooden pillar. It was way down where no one could see it. Riordan followed my gaze and frowned as he ran his finger over it.
“Interesting. It’s the mark,” he mused. “Father had most of them removed but must have missed this one.”
“Removed?” I glanced up at him, my red bangs falling forward.
“He didn’t want people to see them.”
“Okay, but what is it the mark of?” My voice trembled and I didn’t look at him. I traced and retraced the mark on the post. The mark was flat and smooth, but the edges were scarred splintered.
“The last house.”
I turned back towards the carved pillar, not wanting him to see the confusion in my eyes. The last house. The royal family.
“Looks like somebody was trying to hack the image out of the wood and couldn’t,” Riordan squatted next to me, his fingers touching the post next to mine. “Maybe it’s protected by magic. The gouges on the edges are pretty deep, so they must have put a lot of force into it. But this post holds up the roof, so maybe they were afraid of damaging it.”
“What do you mean by the last house?” I gauged my words carefully, completely aware no one around here liked to talk about the royal family.
Riordan leaned in slowly and carefully. “This is the mark of the Grand Dame.”
“Don’t you mean the Queen?” My voice was quiet. I could barely get the words out. The air was being pushed out of my lungs.
He shook his head. “No. No I do not.”
I didn’t push the issue.
“What’s her family mark still doing here?” I wanted him to think I was on his side in this.
He stood up. “I didn’t realize there were any. But looks like they couldn’t remove this one. I’ve been in the stable hundreds of times and never seen it. My father was smart to have them removed to show our loyalty to the Order and the Van Arends.”
“Or make it look like her family never existed?” I couldn’t stop myself. Whoever saved me and put me in Dublin was clearly loyal to the Queen’s house. I owed them something.
Riordan shrank slightly from my tone. “It’s my father’s job to keep the Ravensgaard safe and carefully embedded within the Order and the Van Arends,” he said stiffly.
“If you want to keep us safe, then he needs to get rid of Hunters. And maybe he should’ve invested a little bit more in the magic the queen was working on.”
He visibly cringed when I use the word queen. But I didn’t care. Because my fingers traced the mark on the post, completely familiar with the lines. I had traced them a thousand times in my life. The black jagged wing was the exact same scar someone had carved into my skin. Only, until this moment I had never known it was the crest of the Ravensgaard Queen.
As we stood up to leave, I saw Walsh, the gray butler, slip out the side door. This place was creepy enough, but he made it doubly so. No doubt he was going to report to Master Murtagh that I’d discovered the crest. Let’s just hope he hadn’t seen the matching scar on my arm.
7
It was almost impossible to sleep. My dreams were haunted by the death of my cabal and the revelation of the scar. Riordan had seen the scar also, when I pushed open the door to the stable to get out. He’d asked about it, but I shrugged it off. I told him it was a birthmark. But there had been something deep and thoughtful in his eyes as he nodded and ignored it with me. I didn’t know this guy, but it was I could read him well enough. And I was pretty sure by his sideways glance, he could read me, too. We both knew I bore the mark of the queen. But we kept the truth in silence and headed back up to the manor.
Siobhan had gone down to supper, and I knew I should too if I was going to continue to petition Master Murtagh and impress him with my capabilities, but I simply couldn’t. Every time I looked at food I thought of Mrs. O’Leary and the rambunctious dinners at our home. Those dinners would never happen again. I rolled into my bed, crumpling into the fetal position.
Days passed in the dark castle and I kept to myself and searched for the symbol. I didn’t tell anybody what I was doing and avoided Riordan as I waited for another audience with Master Murtagh. The symbol had been almost perfectly eradicated. In fact, in over a full week I only found it in two other places.
One was on a small door hidden under the staircase. It was a very tiny mark, burnt into the wood and with scratches around the edges, like the one in the stable.
The other was on a bookshelf in the library. I was a little surprised to see the size of the library. The Ravensgaard were warriors. I never spent much time in books; too busy training. The library at the Castle, though was filled with masses of books from floor to the height of the two-story ceiling. There was a mezzanine level running all the way around the room. A narrow circular staircase led up to it and then a rolling ladder oved along the bookshelves.
It was phenomenal. Made me want to read every book in there. But instead, I scoured the place looking for more evidence of the queen’s crest. I wasn’t even sure why at this point. What was it going to prove? We used to have a queen. She used to live in this place. Her magic still protected it. Maybe it was coming from these symbols. But there didn’t seem to be enough. If these were wards, it seemed highly unlikely three small wards would hide the entire castle complex.
It confounded me.
Finally, when I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer, I told Siobhan everything I knew and brought her to the library to show her the crest. It was on the farthest corner of the mezzanine level, across from the spiral staircase. Carved into the lowest shelf, it was unlike the other two in that it didn’t have the scratches around it.
“No one has tried to remove it,” I said, tracing around the crest with a gentle finger.
“They must not have discovered it,” Siobhan murmured, her eyes flicking to the mark on my wrist. She reached forward and twisted my arm slightly, so it aligned with the crest. “It’s the Queen’s crest.”
I stopped myself from jerking my arm away. We both stared at the matching marks. “They look really similar,” I agreed, trying to sound casual.
“They aren’t similar, Davin,” Siobhan said. “They’re exactly the same. Maybe whoever left that mark on you was trying to tell us you were more than just a shifter. You were a member of the royal family.”
A nervous laugh erupted from me. “Right,” I said. “A lost princess.”
“You were dumped on our doorstep,” Siobhan shrugged.
“Thanks.” I elbowed her.
“And my dad did seem to take extra care of you,” she smiled as my heart clenched.
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“It’s impossible,” I said. “When the queen died, she was well over a hundred years old.”
Siobhan nodded. “Some said she was over twice that and used dark magic to preserve herself.”
“She died twenty-five years ago. Right around the time I was born. Even if she was still alive when I was born, there’s no way in hell she could’ve given birth. Even by magic she would’ve needed, well, a partner and probably to be at least less than a hundred-years-old.” I was rambling, my thoughts trying to understand.
My fingers traced the edges of the mark in the wood.
“Can you talk to Riordan about it?” Siobhan asked quietly. “He seems keen on you. Maybe he can help.”
“I’m not so sure he’s going to be able to provide any clarity.” I said. “He doesn’t even recognize her as the queen. When Master Murtagh came into the castle he expunged the crest to satisfy the Van Arends and the Order. It seems Master Murtagh isn’t a huge fan of the Ravensgaard Queen and doesn’t want her mentioned ever again.”
“Don’t confuse the son with the father,” Siobhan said. “I think Riordan might be kind of sweet on you.”
My heart skipped a beat because, he’s a little cocky and angular, but there was something about him I liked. In the last week he’d been constantly checking in to see if he could offer us anything we needed. But still…
“If he cared for me,” I said. “He’d be working a little harder to get his father’s attention and focus on Dublin.”
“You don’t know he isn’t focused on Dublin,” Siobhan said. “As the leader of Ravensgaard, he could be doing anything and not telling a couple of low levels like us about it.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. “Have you heard something?” I asked.
“No,” she said, but she must have seen my scowl. “Stay calm. My point is, we don’t know who they are or what they’re doing, but we are protected here. Did you think of that?”
“No. We never asked for protection,” I said. “And what has changed your mind. Your family was the biggest haters of the Murtaghs.” I glanced at her blushing face and see it in an instant. “Fintan. You like Fintan.”
