That sounded terribly alarming. In Dasnaria, such an accusation would be followed by an order of execution, but Zyr simply shook his head. “I have no wish to lead anyone, King Rayfe. I never have. You should know that. I follow you and Queen Andromeda.”
The king nodded, accepting that at face value. “We appreciate your loyalty. So, you two are lovers then.”
Not a question, and I’d been better trained than to speak to a king without being asked a direct question, but I choked a little, my face going hot. Zyr glanced down at me, an inscrutable expression on his face. Still, I thought he enjoyed my embarrassment, so I narrowed my eyes at him.
“We are not lovers,” he said in a neutral tone that carried a hiss of frustration beneath, “nor ever will be, so I’m reliably informed.”
“Ah.” The king seemed to mull that over. “Not that I don’t believe Zyr, but Karyn, would you verify?”
“Your Highness, we are not lovers, it’s true. Nor ever can be.” I wished I’d planned that statement better, because with that phrasing it sounded like I would’ve liked it to be otherwise.
“Call me Rayfe,” he told me, leaning around Zyr to study me with an intense gaze that belied his casual tone. “That’s a command, by the way. I understand Dasnarians pay a great deal of attention to commands and etiquette.” He paused expectantly. “Is that so?”
“I suppose so,” I replied, not quite able to bring myself to call him by his given name aloud.
“Harlan, my heart-sister’s consort, is Dasnarian,” Rayfe continued. “But he and his Vervaldr have relaxed their rigidity on such things considerably from being forced into company with us.” He looked amused. “Such is the influence of Tala informality. Ah, here comes Andromeda.”
Indeed, Her Highness Queen Andromeda emerged from a shaded stair that led from one of the first level balconies of the cliff city. She slowed as she spotted us, but she’d clearly been hurrying. Rayfe said nothing more until she reached us.
“I never thought I’d complain about not being able to shapeshift,” she commented, smiling generously, though her gaze remained sharp on Zyr, then moved in a thorough assessment of me. “But it takes forever to get down to the beach walking on human feet. Hello, I’m Andi.” She held out a hand in the Thirteen Kingdoms greeting.
No amount of etiquette training could have prepared me for this. I ended up taking her hand and kind of awkwardly bowing over it, like I might be intending to kiss it, then I jumped back in case I’d given offense. “Your Highness,” I mumbled, hoping to just get through this… whatever it was. What was going on?
“Oh, please,” Queen Andromeda rolled her eyes. “We’re not in court. Everyone calls me Andi.”
“Except Rayfe,” Zyr spoke up, showing a bare hint of his usual mischievousness for the first time since his wild rage.
“Yes.” The queen gave her husband a long look. “Because he’s unreasonably stubborn on the topic.”
“Andromeda is a beautiful name,” he retorted.
“It sounds like something you’d name a star, not a person,” she shot back with a saucy smile, one he returned. Though they didn’t touch, I felt as if I’d witnessed something intimate. Maybe even wonderful—and what I’d been longing for ever since I found out my marriage would never be that. “Now, ‘Karyn,’” she continued, “that’s a lovely, simple name. And we haven’t gotten to talk yet. Walk with me?” An echo of Rayfe’s earlier command, and no more optional for being phrased as a question.
With easy camaraderie, the Queen of the Tala looped her arm through mine and guided me into a stroll. Making me realize that both Zyr and I had been deftly managed. By the King and Queen of Annfwn no less, who surely must have more important concerns. With a glance over my shoulder, I noted that Rayfe had indeed put a hand on Zyr’s shoulder and bent his head close, obviously in intense conversation.
“He’ll be all right,” Queen Andromeda patted my hand. “Rayfe is adept at managing our wilder citizens. Tell me about yourself.”
I had no idea what to say, or how to process that statement. “There’s not a lot to tell.”
The sideways look she gave me implied she didn’t believe that. “I imagine it’s hard, being in a foreign land, surrounded by new customs, new languages. I’ve been that person.”
“You have, Your Highness?”
“Andi,” she replied firmly. “Save the titles for formal occasions, of which there are vanishingly few in Annfwn. One of its many charms. You’ll grow to appreciate that about it, once you settle in.”
“Thank you… Andi, but I don’t plan to stay in Annfwn.”
“Don’t you? Well, you’re a free woman, obviously, so you may do as you wish. And yes—when I came here, no one who wasn’t Tala born and bred had even been inside the magic barrier that sealed Annfwn off from the world. Rayfe was my enemy, and I only married him to stop a war.”
I’d had no idea. “But you’re happy with him?”
“Oh, yes—now. Even early on.” She frowned a little, thinking. “It’s hard to explain, but even as I fought the attraction, though I knew in my head that agreeing to marry him would be betraying my family, my realm, somewhere deep inside I …felt it would all work out as it should. Does that make any sense?”
“Of course,” I replied.
“You don’t have to lie.” She laughed, shaking back her dark hair, the curling waves glinting with bloodred highlights in the sun. “Half the time I can’t explain it to myself. But there’s something you should know about the Tala—and I’m speaking as a partblood who grew up in a decidedly nonmagical realm—though the Tala seem as human as you or I, they’re not, entirely.”
“Not human?” I echoed.
She made a sound of frustration. “There’s not a good word to describe it. Yes, they’re human and we can make babies together, so we have a great deal in common, but they’re also… other. Do you know about First Form?”
“I’ve heard it mentioned,” I said, unwilling to commit to more.
“The Tala will tell you—and the Tala are a cagey lot, so they don’t explain much—that their human personality tends to be influenced by their First Form. That’s the animal they shift into intuitively for the first time, often as infants.”
I tried to absorb that, unable to imagine what that would be like for a mother to deal with. Regular babies were difficult enough. Andi nodded at me, and I realized I must’ve made a face. She squeezed my arm in sisterly commiseration.
“That was my reaction, too,” she said. “So, what the Tala don’t tell you—and sometimes I think they’re so close to it that they don’t understand this about themselves—is that it’s more than that they’re influenced by that animal First Form. It’s almost as if they’re as much the personality of that animal as the person. And the shapeshifters who can take multiple forms, well, they all have their favorites, and extensive time spent as those animals influences them, as well. So, under stress, they tend to revert to the instinctive responses of those animal beings.”
Ah. I suddenly understood the purpose of this cozy conversation. I stopped, slipping my arm from the queen’s and faced her. We’d come a ways down the beach, and many people now teemed in various activities. I couldn’t make out whether Zyr remained where he’d been. Not close enough to overhear, regardless.
“Excuse me for my bluntness, Your Highness. Are you telling me that Zyr acting so wild just now came from some sort of animal reaction?”
A hint of amusement quirked her mouth, though it didn’t reach her eyes, dark gray and stormy as summer thunderheads. I could almost imagine flickers of lightning in the threatening cloud bank, making the small hairs stand up on my arms, though the day continued in its balmy warmth.
“What happened today is somewhat unprecedented, but it matches what I sensed and is essentially how Rayfe assessed it. We didn’t have a lot of time to discuss before Rayfe shifted to intervene,” she added drily.
“So the king is talking Zyr down and your job is to handle me?”
I hadn’t meant to be so terse—not to mention rude—but the emotional turmoil of the morning was getting to me. I had sand in my drenched clothes, my cheek throbbed, I’d failed utterly in any number of ways. If I hadn’t left Dasnaria, I could be still living on the family estates. Forever a virgin and never realizing more of a life than that, yes, but not dealing with so much chaos and strangeness. At least there I hadn’t worried about my next meal or why some half-wild shapeshifter lost his mind. If I’d remained Kral’s wife, I would’ve outranked this barefoot queen.
The queen cocked her head, studying me. “You’re no fool, Karyn. I understand you could have become Empress of Dasnaria, that but for a moment that went one way instead of another, you would have been.”
For a moment I thought she’d read my mind—but of course she would know that about me. She would have discussed me with her sister queens. She said I wasn’t a fool, but perhaps I had been, thinking that I’d been forgotten and ignored.
“I have no rank now,” I replied. “I am no one.”
Her mouth quirked and I almost imagined her hair rustled, as if stirred by a breeze—though the day had gone still. “You will never be no one,” she said, and it had a final feel to it, as if she knew more than I did. “I know something of Dasnaria, and quite a bit more than that about how future rulers are raised, even those of us one or two down from inheriting a throne. Do you expect to fool me into thinking you understand nothing of delicate political situation we’re in?”
I closed my lips carefully over several replies to that. “It’s none of my concern,” I finally offered, hedging. “I’m not here as a political actor, only as myself.”
She nodded, considering that, the look in her eye saying she didn’t believe me. “Why are you here then?”
~ 7 ~
“I’m not a spy.” I bit out the defense, not having meant to. Something about the way she made my skin crawl had me speaking more than I’d intended. Could she be working an enchantment to force truth-telling? Zynda had some skills as a sorceress, which she’d called small ones. A statement like that indicated a scale on which someone else possessed much greater talents. The practitioners of Deyrr were said to be able to influence minds—why not the Sorceress Queen of the Tala? Who watched me with stormy eyes, waiting me out, wanting an answer to a question for which I had nothing substantial to offer. “I had nowhere else to go,” I said, stiff in my admission.
“Oh, I know that part,” she replied. “After all, I’m the one who told Ursula you could stay here.” She smiled at my consternation. “You’d hardly expect her to take you to Ordnung, seat of the High Throne of the Thirteen Kingdoms. We are in your debt for saving Jepp—make no mistake but that we deeply appreciate it—but we’ve had experience with a priestess of Dasnaria and little enthusiasm to go through that again.”
“I have no affiliation with Deyrr,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster, given the implied insult.
“Good to know. So, what is your plan? You said you have no intention of staying in Annfwn, but that you also have nowhere else to go.”
“My only plan is to find a husband,” I explained, feeling foolish and exposed. “I gave up a slim chance at being Empress for the possibility of having a normal life, with a family.”
“Meaning children,” she inserted leadingly.
“Children would be nice, but mainly…” I felt like a silly girl saying it aloud. “Love.”
“Love,” she echoed, sounding genuinely astonished. Probably few things surprised a mind reader.
“I would like to find someone who will love me.” I tried to make it sound logical, but it came out wistful. “You’ve never been married to a man who didn’t love you,” I explained in a rush. “You can’t know what that’s like. I’ve had my fill of it. I did my duty to my family, emperor and empire; I remained a chaste virgin in a loveless marriage so my husband wouldn’t threaten the stability of the empire. Now I’m a free woman, as you say, and my husband loves another. I am determined to find someone for me this time. So, you see, you can keep your politics, and your war, and your suspicions. I don’t want any of it.”
“And yet you train with the Hawks.”
“To earn my keep. I don’t have any protector, and no other skills to offer.”
“I doubt that.”
“Have you need of fine embroidery then?” I retorted, feeling quite bruised by this point.
A slow smile spread across her face, a true one that made her eyes lighten and sparkle. “Ah, I feel I’m at last meeting the woman I see in my visions. So, this search for true love—that’s why you won’t be lovers with Zyr?”
I struggled past my confused startlement over her reference to seeing me in visions, then slammed into more of it. She hadn’t been there yet when Rayfe asked Zyr and me about our status. More sorcery?
“I was listening,” she confirmed, reading that in me, too. “I can’t shapeshift and risk jeopardizing this pregnancy, but I have other tricks for keeping up with what’s going on.”
I hadn’t realized, and had to work not to stare at her belly, looking for the evidence. The stark envy was almost more than I could bear. “It’s not the way of things,” I explained, sounding stiff, but better that than full of raw envy. “A woman of my rank who gives herself to a man not her husband can expect to suffer terrible consequences.”
“But you are no longer in Dasnaria,” she said, with a gentleness I hadn’t expected.
“No, but I am still Dasnarian and I won’t bring shame on my family. Certainly not for a fling with flirtatious shapeshifter.”
She went utterly serious, that earlier menace returning to glint sparks from her eyes, the crackle of warning thickening the air around us. I had to steel myself not to step back. Or run. “Do the Tala revolt you then?”
“The Tala are not my people,” I pointed out diplomatically.
“But neither are you likely to find a Dasnarian husband now.”
“Surely there is something between,” I argued.
“Because Zyr is beneath your notice.”
“No,” I replied carefully. “Zyr hasn’t made an offer of marriage, nor will he ever. He’s made that clear. And,” I inserted as I saw she was about to argue, “we don’t love each other and I have no intention of settling for another sham marriage.”
She considered me a moment longer, then lifted a hand, waving all of that away, along with the sense of the threatening storm. “All of this is moot, and perhaps I’ve gone about this the wrong way. Allow me to explain.”
That would be helpful, I thought—and by the twitch of her generous mouth I thought she’d read the sentiment in me.
“Zyr’s First Form is the gríobhth,” she said bluntly, and with great significance.
“All right,” I answered, then waited.
She sighed out an impatient puff. “Have you ever seen a gríobhth before today?”
“No, but Annfwn is full of things I’ve never seen before,” I snapped back in the same tone.
To my surprise she laughed, rolling her eyes. “Fair enough. I once felt the same. We have a lot in common, I suspect.”
I doubted that, but didn’t want to say so.
“It’s highly unusual for a shapeshifter’s First Form to be a mythical creature. Usually they have to work at those forms,” she explained.
“Zyr said it’s not mythical, that the creature had to exist at some point in time for him to become it.”
“Did he now?” She studied me, that uncomfortable gaze seeming to look through me. “Zyr confided a great deal in you—talking about intimate Tala topics, showing you his gríobhth form, then giving you a ride. I said you’re not a fool, and I stand by that—you seem observant enough—but you are a foreigner to more than Annfwn. I’m wondering if you understand the extremity of the situation. How very unprecedented this is.”
I must not, because I felt as if I must be drowning in the surf still. It said something, that I felt a twinge of preference for being held under wa
ter by Tays and his casually brutal strength over writhing under the too-prescient gaze of the Tala’s sorceress queen. My parents hadn’t raised me to capitulate to intimidation by foreign royalty any more than they’d have wanted me to back down before a challenge. And yet, I had trouble stiffening my spine.
“I’m afraid I must plead ignorance, at best,” I replied to her with as much dignity as I could muster, “and lack of intelligence at worst.”
She shook her head slightly, as if impatient—with me or herself, I wasn’t sure. “Suffice to say that Zyr revealing himself to you this way means he’s…Well, you have influence over him that we’d rather you didn’t.”
“I didn’t conspire for this outcome. Nor did I even ask for it,” I returned, much of my heat coming from embarrassment at the insinuation that I’d deliberately attempted to seduce my way into Zyr’s bed. And maybe a bit for the heady sensation of having power over Zyr’s attention.
“Sometimes—even very often—what we receive is not what we ask for. Or what we thought we asked for.” The queen looked through me again. Then her gaze focused, crystal bright. “They return to us now, so the time for our confidences is over for the moment. Rayfe will have a proposition for you. I’m advising you to accept it, for all our sakes.”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound ominous,” I muttered, turning with her to see the two men advancing toward us down the beach. They might have been brothers, in their similar build, the same arrogant tilt to their heads.
“And here Zynda told me that you apologize too much,” Andi muttered back, in exactly the same tone. “I don’t find you overly humble in the least.”
I couldn’t account for that, except that it had been an exceptionally long morning. “I apologize, Your Highness Queen Andromeda.”
She snorted out a laugh and—absurdly—I had to fight down my own smile. Bizarrely, I felt as if we almost had become friends over the course of the uncomfortable conversation. I knew better than to pretend any such thing to myself, but it made me feel marginally less alone that this foreign queen and I at least understood one another. To some extent.
The Arrows of the Heart Page 7
