by Ann Denton
I grabbed Connor’s elbow and turned to the first person on my right. I needed a distraction. The first person I saw was the ambassador from Sedara, Declan’s home country. Meeker had been our ambassador for years. He was a short, bushy-haired old man with a thick accent and he was quite upset that a pegasus team had been shot down and captured in Cheryn. The two countries had been poking one another for the last five years, often trying to drag Evaness into their conflict.
“Two injaared animals. And they won’t evaan speak to us. Probably they are breeding them as we speak,” he swigged his orange juice as if it were spiked. “Those bastaards will do anything to steal our magic.”
I didn’t ask why Sedara had sent a pegasus team to fly over Cheryn. It was easy enough to guess. It had either been an aerial attack or a spy mission. Either way …
“I’m sure we could speak to the Cheryn ambassadors about the release of your pegasus. Connor is an excellent diplomat,” I smiled widely. “He’s always had a golden tongue.”
A picture of Connor’s tongue between my thighs appeared in my head and I stiffened involuntarily. Then his tongue turned to gold. And dragged his jaw down so his face smacked the floor. He tried to swallow, but the golden tongue grew longer.
“Are you alright, darling? She had a hard day yesterday. I’m not certain she’s feeling better,” Connor turned my face to his and flashed a warning with his eyes. He gave my hand two squeezes.
That was our signal. Shite. I’d said something wrong. And then my brain had gone and fritzed, seeing things. I restored my face to calm. “Just a little light-headed. Probably tired from travel.”
“Travaal will do me in. Gives me the shits, too,” Meeker nodded at me. “Go get some raast, Princess. I’ll talk to your man here about the horses and those blimey baastards.”
I was being dismissed from the conversation. As if I was nothing. Not the crown princess. As if this conversation were for men.
I bristled and opened my mouth to argue, but Connor swept me into a hug. “Shut your mouth and let me fix this shite you stirred up. Sedara’s already been hard enough to calm down recently because of some stupid stolen chains or something. Damn Bloss. Setting me up as the go-between for countries on the brink of war? Really? I’ll get another sitter summoned so you can ruin someone else’s morning.” He snapped for a page and told the boy to summon Declan.
Was I that bad? I was hallucinating …
Quinn appeared at my side mere seconds later. Had he been in the room? I hadn’t noticed. Shite. One day at the palace and one little injury and I’d become passive. Next thing, I’d forget to have my food tested for poison. Wonderful. Not to mention whatever I’d just said.
Maybe Connor was right. Maybe I’d ruined his morning.
The picture of Connor letting out a giant trumpet fart filled my mind. I had to shake my head to clear the image.
Quinn offered his elbow as he escorted me out of the room.
We paused at the door, so that everyone could turn and bow. I gave them all a smile and a nod.
“Can you take me to Avia’s chambers, please? And can we somehow repeat the set up from last night? So that one of you can work in the next room and I can rest? I really don’t feel well.”
Quinn nodded briskly. He walked me straight down the hall. Unlike Connor, he didn’t stop to acknowledge anyone. He didn’t smile. He just strode with purpose, cut through the crowd. He had shite to do and no time to be bothered. When I’d been younger, I’d have been scared witless about offending someone. But after several hours of mindless chatter, it was refreshing. Freeing.
I held onto his arm a little harder than I’d intended as I realized that. But he didn’t seem to mind. Quinn closed his big hand around mine and he pulled me into his side.
It was odd. I almost felt happy.
Here.
In the palace.
With a stranger.
When we reached Avia’s door, I pushed off Quinn’s arm. “Thank you.”
He escorted me into her bed and helped me sit. One of her ladies-in-waiting helped pull off my slippers and get me under the covers.
Declan dipped his head in the door shortly after I laid back.
“Same routine as last night?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” I called, and Quinn nodded.
Declan ducked out and I heard the door next to ours creak open.
Quinn stared down at me while he waited for Declan to get into place.
“Thank you,” I mumbled. “I’m not sure what’s wrong.”
Quinn simply quirked up one side of his mouth in a half-grin and turned. He marched away with the same silent confidence he always had.
My eyelids fluttered closed as I waited for Avia to get back from lessons. And dark, naughty dreams drifted over me. I was naked, in a bedroom, standing on a plush rug. Ryan was behind me, his large arms wrapped around mine. He palmed my breasts and held me upright as Quinn kissed his way up my right leg, dragging his pointed tongue along the sensitive nerves on my inner thighs. Connor and Declan watched, hands on their dicks. Quinn’s mouth was just about to reach the pinnacle of my thigh when hands started shaking me.
“Are you okay?” Avia’s voice cut through my dream. “Why are you asleep so early?”
I cracked my eyes. “You just ruined an amazing dream.” I pushed her hands off my shoulders.
“You shouldn’t be having amazing dreams mid-morning. What’s going on? And why are you in my room?”
“I think I lost too much blood. I’ve been seeing things all morning. Also, my room is in a tower. We should switch. I can’t pull the man-behind-the-wall trick in my room.”
“What?”
I rubbed my face and stretched. Then I sat up in bed. “What part are you asking about? Rooms? It’s logical.”
“No. Why are you seeing things? What things are you seeing?”
“Well, weird things. I spoke to Lady Agatha—”
Avia groaned.
“Yes, I know. But the point is, I started seeing her naked. Barking and stuff. And then I said to someone else that Connor had a golden tongue and suddenly I was picturing … his tongue turning gold. Or random stuff. Like Connor farting, loud.”
Avia cocked a brow. “Were all of the things you imagined dirty or embarrassing?”
“Um … yes?” I had no idea where she was leading.
She sat on the bed so hard I bounced. “Lean forward,” she commanded.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
I complied. She dug her hands into my hair and started to tug.
“Ow!”
“Be still.”
“What are you doing?”
“Just a moment … ah! There!” She yanked a piece of my hair triumphantly.
Unfortunately, that piece was still attached to my head. “Ow!”
Avia didn’t apologize. She laughed instead. “Quinn marked you.”
“What?”
Avia fingered a small bead knotted into my hair. She held it up in front of my face. “You didn’t research the spy master who was after you? The one you were supposed to marry?”
“What research was I supposed to do in a wheat field or tavern disguised as a commoner? It’s not exactly as if they’re publishing tomes on him,” I retorted, snatching my hair out of her hand and examining the bead. It was a small brown bead and blended perfectly. If Avia hadn’t found it in my tresses, I’m not sure I’d ever have noticed it. It could have passed for a small knot.
“You know Quinn’s mute,” she said.
“No. He’s arrogant. Too smug to talk to the townspeople. Rubs his air of mystery in their faces. Just expects them to know who he is,” I muttered, thinking back to the complaints at the whorehouse in Tera. They’d also complained he’d never spent any coin with them.
“He’s mute.”
“He’s not. I’ve heard him,” My eyes shot to hers.
“You what?”
“I heard him speak when we first arrived. He called me
wife.”
“Are you sure this wasn’t in your hair then?”
“We’d just transformed, so I doubt it.” But I gnawed my lip. He’d fingered my hair. Had he placed it then?
“His power is thought transference. He can send his thoughts to you. And pick up on any thoughts you project loud enough,” Avia grins. “Its price is his voice. He just tries to put on a mysterious air.”
Her words caused my stomach to drop like a stone. A million images from the morning shuffled through my brain. The naughty thoughts. The dirty words. “That fat-kidneyed ass. He’s been putting dirty thoughts in my brain all day. I thought I was delirious.”
“Really?” Avia’s eyes glittered with mirth. “So, you pictured a naked Lady Agatha barking during tea?”
“All morning.”
She burst into laughter. “Ah! Of all your husbands, he’s my new favorite.”
I rolled my eyes. “Take him.”
“Oh no. I don’t want to deprive you.”
“Deprive me of what?”
“The joy of revenge.”
A slow, evil smile made its way across my face. There would most definitely be revenge. I’d make Quinn Byrne suffer more than any spy he’d taken to the dungeons below. I went to the bell-pull next to the bed and rang for a maid. When one appeared, I gave her a grin. “My sister and I will need wine and glasses. We have some planning to do.”
Avia hopped in place and clapped her hands. “I love when you turn into the evil villain.”
I shook my head and looped my arm over her shoulders. “Not the villain. The avenging angel.” I winked. “Now, let’s plan a man’s downfall.”
Chapter Ten
Three glasses of wine later, Avia held quite a list in her hand.
She wrote the latest option with flourish, twirling the quill as she underlined it three times. “That’s it! Damsel in distress!”
I rolled my eyes and kicked my leg across the arm of the chair I sat in. “I still think lice in his undergarments is a good idea. Think of the crotch itch!” I closed my eyes and smiled, imagining Quinn having to wriggle through a state dinner, having to dance in front of others in the ballroom. I’d dance three dances in a row with him, just to keep everyone’s eyes on his hands. To draw out every time his knee twitched from the urge to scratch. The sort of twisted bliss that only comes from planning revenge filled me up. I floated around in it, a sea of evil fantasy.
“No.” Avia ruined my moment. “That could come back to haunt you. Too much. Damsel wins.” Avia stretched out on her plush pink rug in front of the cozy little fire her maid had stoked when the wine had been delivered.
Unlike Avia, I couldn’t curl up on the rug next to the fire. I was restricted to the far wall so that I’d stay within five feet of one of my husbands, whichever one had ‘wife watch’ currently. I’d tired of the bed and so Avia’s manservant had dragged over a chair for me before she’d shooed him away again. It wouldn’t do to have him overhear the princesses’ nefarious plans. Quinn might get word.
I jolted up in my chair. “What if he’s reading my thoughts right now?”
Avia scrunched her brow. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“You don’t think. But you don’t know. He could be. Blast!” We’d have to scrap all our plans. I’d need to improvise then. And come up with something new. Something better than yellow dye slipped into his tub water to stain his skin. Better than the teas hedge witches made for older men who still wanted to service their wives. Sard it all. Three hours of work gone.
I sighed. I wished I could pace freely, but I could only take two steps before turning around. This stupid five-foot spell kept me walking in a circle. I had to resort to chair acrobatics in order to move. I hooked my feet solidly around the chair leg before arching my back over the other chair arm and leaning back so that my hair swept the floor. “I’m going to have to improvise.”
“You can still improvise with the damsel idea. We didn’t decide exactly how it would work.”
“That one seems the hardest to pull off.”
“Why? Acting helpless? That’s not hard.”
“Maybe for you,” I retorted. “Some of us have actually worked.”
Avia’s threw her quill at me. If the feather on the end hadn’t been so large, it might actually have reached me. Instead, it drifted down softly to land near her feet.
I laughed, “You’re quite vicious, aren’t you?”
“Shut it,” she sat up and planted her hands on her hips. She took on the voice of our old nanny. “If you open that mouth one more time, Bloss Hale, I’m going to ask the healer to sew it shut. And if he won’t, I’m sure the hedge witch has a potion for it.”
I groan, “Remember how fierce that woman could look, even with that mole?”
“The one on her chin with the hair sticking out?”
“Yes! She should have been laughable. But she was completely terrifying.”
Avia laughed. “I always thought she was a hedge witch herself.”
“Ooh, maybe she was.”
“Or maybe she was a princess in disguise like you.”
“Maybe.”
“What was it like? When you were gone? What was it like as a commoner?” Avia sounded wistful. I glanced over at her, with her legs tucked neatly underneath her and her hands clasped in her lap, she looked like an eager student. Just like when she used to ask me what it was like to be born with powers. Only one in every hundred humans or so were. My mother hadn’t been. Avia wasn’t born with power. Some of my fathers had powers.
My mother had insisted each of my husbands be gifted with magic. They had been carefully selected for their powers and their capabilities to protect Evaness.
I pondered Avia’s question and my answer carefully. How could I sum up the four years I’d spent on my own? The struggle to hide and survive, to blend in, to quickly adapt to new situations, to always be on the alert … I didn’t think she’d accept exhausting as an answer.
Before I could decide what to tell her, the fire spiked and a log rolled out of the fireplace.
“Ah!” Avia jumped and ran to grab the poker, so that she could roll it back in.
But the log didn’t stay still. It wiggled. The log had a tail. And four little legs ending in claws.
I fell off my chair. My hands and knees smacked the floor as I flipped head over heels. I scurried to my feet just as the flaming monster touched the rug Avia had been sitting on.
Whoosh.
The rug burst into flame.
“Sard! It’s a fire salamander!” I screamed.
The flaming lizard flicked its tail and then ran, directly at my sister.
Fear turned my stomach. I felt light-headed. Sick. No! Was this the creature? The one I’d heard about in the forest? Had someone sent this thing after Avia? “Run!”
My sister turned on her heel and ran, her blue skirts billowing out behind her, chocolate curls streaming through the air like ribbons as she rushed away, screaming.
I tried to run toward her, but the stupid distance spell yanked me backward. I landed flat on my back, hitting my head. Hard. I clambered to my knees, woozy. Where had Avia gone?
I spotted her at the far end of the room, waving the fireplace poker wildly.
The salamander was scuttling toward her like some evil, enchanted living torch. Its nose touched the edge of a tapestry and flames shot up the wall hanging. Smoke started to coat the ceiling in an ominous black cloud.
“Move! Move!” I screamed. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find, my empty wine glass, and threw it in between them. The glass shattered on the floor, startling the creature for a moment.
Avia darted toward me. “We need water.”
I glanced at the pitcher on her washing table. It was across the bed. I leapt onto the bed, hoping I could reach without—I strained. My fingers were just shy of touching. Sarding distance spell! I screamed at the wall. “Come on!” But whoever was behind the wall moved the wrong way. I was dragge
d backward over the bed.
I looked toward her servants’ entrance. The creature was scrambling toward us. Where were Avia’s handmaids? Why hadn’t anyone come?
Shite. Another rug was set ablaze.
I scrambled all the way off the bed and shoved Avia behind me; I pushed her toward the far wall. “Go through the secret passage. There’s nothing but stone there still, right? Nothing can burn?”
“But—”
“Do it!” I shoved her again, not hard enough to trip her, but hard enough that she ran as I’d said.
Avia activated the secret seam the palace mage had created by tracing her finger over the stones. A door handle appeared. She pulled open the door and turned back, “Come on!”
I didn’t bother to tell her I couldn’t, that I was tied to a stupid husband on the other side of the wall who was clearly oblivious to our screams. I was too busy staring at the sarding living flame darting toward her. The animal was clearly fixated on her. That’s exactly what those men had been plotting. They’d said the beast would go straight for her—
Fury rose in me like a storm. I fought against it. I couldn’t react the way I had with Ryan. I couldn’t blast power. This was one tiny creature, not a part-giant. My heart didn’t care. This thing had threatened my little sister. I reached out my hand. I’d never tried to stop a creature before. Only humans. I struggled internally to control the dose. I pushed out a small pulse of peace and the lizard swayed, as though dizzy—
The door burst open.
“What the hell is—” Declan’s scolding tone cut off when he saw the fire.
Avia froze in the doorway of the secret passage.
I looked back at Declan and yelled, “Multiply sand!”
At the same time, he called out, “Water!”
It was as if someone dumped an entire rainstorm on us at once. The water gushed down in sheets. The fires were doused, and the orange fire salamander went limp; a little hiss of steam escaped him as the fire on his body went out. The water swept him up in a wave. Rather than let him disappear, I scooped up the little monster. He was still so hot he burned my hand.
