by Linda Kage
“I cannot answer,” Nalini said regally, straightening away from Wicket and squaring her shoulders as she lifted her chin. “And you two…” She pointed between me and Quilla. “Aren’t permanently leaving the Outer Realms. End of discussion.”
“The fuck if it is,” Quilla sputtered. “I’ll be doing exactly as I please.”
“Which will be staying here and making a child with this man.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I said, gaping at her. “I know the curse came along after you, so you’re not afflicted by it, but you know what her having children will do, don’t you?”
She stared at me steadily. “I know exactly what it will do.”
I sniffed. “Then you’re not here to help us.”
Eyes narrowing and jaw hardening, she snarled, “If you’d just trust me—” Pausing suddenly when the child Bewler began to tug at her hoop pants, she blinked at him when he started to motion with his hands, communicating with her.
“What?” she said slowly. “Fecunditate careant?” Shaking her head, she gaped incredulously as the boy kept signing to her. Then, clutching her chest, she moaned, “Magicae utero clausa. No! No, no, no, no, no.” Piercing Quilla with a deadly glare, she snarled, “You used magic to close your womb?”
Quilla gave a single nod. “I did.”
“How could you?” Jerking as if she’d been struck through the heart with a deadly arrow, Nalini backed away from us slowly. “You can’t reverse that. Not in this world. You’ll never have children now.”
“I know,” Quilla said. “I did it to protect the Outer Realms.”
“But—” Moaning as if in pain, Nalini pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and slashed her head violently back and forth, shaking it in denial. “Then you’re not the pair,” she announced suddenly, dropping her hand and stiffening her shoulders. “You can’t be.” Narrowing her eyes, she muttered, “I can’t believe I wasted all this time, placing my hopes on you two. Neque frustrabor!” she hissed.
And then, just like that, she popped out of existence, her soothsayer and bloodhound disappearing with her.
Before Quilla, Melaina, and I could even process what had just happened, the ferry gave a mighty, jarring lurch as it bumped against the opposite bank of the river, landing us safely on the other side.
Chapter 21
Quilla
“Well, she was no help,” Melaina muttered. “And I didn’t even get in on a threesome with her and her hot, young lover before she left again. Rude.”
Ignoring her, Indigo glanced my way. “Please tell me I wasn’t the only one who thought that was really strange.”
I didn’t answer, not sure what to say. But I was left rattled. My great ancestor thought it imperative that I have a child. With Indigo. But she was forbidden to say why.
It had to have something to do with the Graykey family curse, didn’t it?
Could a child who was the product of Indigo’s love mark and my Graykey mark somehow cancel the curse out and break it?
Except no. That couldn’t be true. Grandma Circe had been a High Clifter with a love mark on her face. If that were the case, her firstborn—my own father—would’ve broken the curse when he’d come into the world.
But he hadn’t.
So what would make me and Indigo coming together so special to Corandra Graykey?
Maybe it wasn’t even something that would break the curse and save us. Maybe it was something to make it worse. Just because she was my ancestor did not mean Corandra, or Mydera, or Nalini, or Bridget, or whoever she was calling herself these days, had my best interest at heart. Enflaming the curse hotter and making it more severe might help her in some way.
The reapings were a way to gain more power, and she seemed to have a lot of power—many magical abilities, in fact—maybe she grew stronger with each reaping. And learning that we couldn’t provide her with a new generation that would ensure more reapings hadn’t settled well with her.
“Quilla,” Indigo said softly, making me realize I hadn’t answered his question. I looked over to find him smiling gently. “I can feel your mind spinning from here. You have a theory, don’t you?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but the ferry master called to us, interrupting the moment.
“Alright, you three,” he said, turning to us and not at all surprised that Nalini and the other two were gone—because she’d made him forget about their very existence.
“Thanks for your business. I hope you choose to ride the Malcolm Ferry Service again. Hey!” He blinked and pointed at Holly, who was in the form of the brown mare again, as she whinnied and reared up on her back hooves, greeting us from the bank. “How’d that horse disembark already?”
“She’s a sneaky one,” Indigo answered, giving the man a tight smile as he hurried toward where his unicorn was waiting so he could check Holly over and make sure she was okay.
I watched as he leaped onto the dock and hurried down the ramp to meet her, petting her nose and laughing when she urgently sniffed him over, probably making sure he was okay. Or looking for a sweet treat. The man definitely had a way with charming animals.
Shaking my head, I turned my attention toward my own horse, and I slowly made my way ashore.
The next half hour kept us busy with sorting out supplies, preparing for travel, and getting back on the road to head toward the canyon pass. The brief visit from my ancestor who had looked younger than me was put aside and forgotten, especially when Indigo decided to renew his objections about taking the toll road through the pass.
“We’re traveling through the pass, and that’s final,” Melaina told him.
“Oh, I’ve stopped arguing that point,” Indigo shot back. “Now I’m just saying, if I’m already going to be wearing manacles, I should be the prisoner with a glamoured Graykey mark on my arm. I want Quilla’s arms free to use in defense if things go awry. And besides, if the guards decide to get rough with the prisoner, it’ll be me they go after, not her. You two should pose as the guards.”
Melaina shot Quilla a grin. “See. Didn’t I tell you he’d come in handy?”
I grunted in non-response. I wasn’t a huge fan of the canyon-pass route either, but I wasn’t going to be a coward and avoid it just because it was too risky either.
All life was a risk. I could quarantine myself in my home all my days to avoid the horrors of the outside world, only for someone else to come along and burn it down around me, killing me inside. The only assurance we had was the inevitability of death. And when death came, it came. I’d fight against it accordingly, no matter how scared I was.
Indigo squinted at me. “What’re you thinking? Your mood turned very grave and finite just now, as if you’d just come to a doomed conclusion.”
Shaking my head, I scowled at him, irritated for about the millionth time over the fact that he could read my emotions.
“Nothing,” I muttered and glanced toward Melaina, dismissing him. “If this is the way we’re going to play it, then you might as well change us now. The road’s going to get busier the closer we get to the pass.”
“Whatever. Fine.” My aunt twirled her finger in a bored gesture, and the crawling sensation started as my transformation began.
“I will never get used to this,” Indigo grumbled from atop his unicorn/brown horse. I glanced over to see him become my cousin Qualmer, or at least an aged version of him from how I’d last seen him when I was twelve. She’d even put an eyepatch on him.
Recoiling in horror, I spun to gape at Melaina incredulously—who had finally disguised herself this time as well. “Really?”
She gave an unconcerned shrug. “What? He said he wanted to look like a Graykey.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Indigo spoke up in concern patting his face but unable to feel the change in his appearance. “What do I look like?” He looked down at his shackled hands, only to flip his forearm over and shake his head as he pulled the Graykey cursed mark closer to his face to inspect it. “So weird.”
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I rode closer to Melaina so I could hiss, “What the hell? I told you Qualmer killed his parents.”
I couldn’t imagine anyone would want to go around, posing at their parents’ murderer.
Melaina notched her chin regally high. “So what? It’s what the High Clifter deserves.” Then she lifted her voice so Indigo could hear her. “Because I’m still miffed at him for outright telling Corandra Graykey, of all people, that we were looking for her amulets. Seriously…” She cast him a telling glare. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking she’d know where her own jewelry might be more than anyone would,” he countered.
“And you thought she’d just hand them over to us?”
“To save her own great-whatever-granddaughter from succumbing to a curse that had been plaguing her family line for centuries?” he shot back. “I don’t know! Maybe. You’re the one who told me all those generous, sympathetic legends about her, making me think she might actually have a selfless, caring bone in her body. What could it hurt to ask her about them?”
“It could hurt if she didn’t want us to have them and then went to her own powerful lengths to purposely keep them from us, now that she knows we actually do want them. God. You’re so stupid. Because that’s exactly what she told us she didn’t want! And how dare you let the stories I told you sway your mind about her, you idiot? I told you she was the one who wrote them all.” Shaking her head, she hissed, “Fool.”
But Indigo wasn’t done arguing his case. “She knew who we were. She knew where to find us. She knew my mark had discovered Quilla as my mate. And she was riding with a goddamn soothsayer. If she hadn’t already realized we were looking for the fucking amulets, she was going to find out eventually. Why not just go ahead and ask about them?”
“Are you two going to wrap this argument up soon?” I asked as the looming chasm between the mountains came into view. “Because it’s about time to put our acting skills to the test.”
Indigo—still looking like Qualmer—whipped his head up and cursed under his breath.
“And you’re calling me foolish,” he hissed to Melaina as he swept out a hand toward the canyon pass, “as we’re walking right up to our certain death here. Jesus. I’m telling you right now, taking Quilla through that canyon and right past all those guards is not wise.”
“We shall see,” was all Melaina answered in a prim voice.
Indigo edged his horse unicorn alongside mine. “You have all your daggers at the ready, right?”
“I’m prepared for whatever might happen,” I said without even glancing his way.
“Good. And just remember—size, strength, speed. None of that matters when going up against an opponent. All you have to be is smarter than them. You can overcome anyone by out-thinking them.”
I glanced his way. “Is that your strategy with me? Not trying any physical wooing, just mind games to sneak your way into my good graces in the hopes I’ll claim you as my mate in return?”
He grinned. “You’re not my opponent, and I don’t want to go to war with you, empress.” With a self-degrading laugh, he shook his head. “Besides, if I were trying to trick my way into your good graces, I’d probably only show you my better attributes and hide the rest. Think about that.”
I had. And I opened my mouth to accuse him of definitely only showing me his best points. Because, so far, I’d seen nothing about him that would draw a hard-limit no from me. Not even the fact that he was anti-Graykey. Hell, sometimes I was anti-Graykey. But he could also look past the stigma of the group as a whole and see each individual for their own attributes. And that was what mattered.
But he lifted his manacled hands, saying, “I’ve provided no illusions about myself. This is one hundred percent, unadulterated me. Warts and all. I’d rather you know the true me, the good and the bad, inside and out, so that when you do claim me as yours, it will be a decision made from your own mind, knowing exactly what you’ve gotten yourself into, with fully opened eyes.”
I didn’t have a disclaimer to that. I liked what he had to say too much. I liked how he respected my right to decide my heart for myself, even though the cocky part of him was sure I’d choose him, anyway. Except I didn’t want him to know that. He was already too confident.
So it was just as well that I wasn’t given a chance to respond since we’d just reached the canyon pass.
A handful of people had congregated in front of us, lining up to wait their turn for inspection and to pay their fees so they could enter the canyon. At the front, two uniformed soldiers stood guard, overseeing admission. Each traveler would expose their forearms, one of the men would splash water on them, looking for a mark, and then the traveler would toss their coin into a bucket and be on their way.
The process flowed seamlessly with everyone well accustomed to the process. Most didn’t even converse with the guards. When a party full of two wagons’ worth of people exited the canyon pass after having traveled through it from the other end, no one paid them any attention, as they would’ve been inspected for a mark when they’d entered.
I forced myself to breathe deeply through my nose as our turn to reach the front of the line approached. With a quick glance to my arm to make sure the knight’s armor was still covering my mark, I then checked on Melaina to ensure she still looked like a guard as well.
But no matter how I tried to calm myself, my heart just kept hammering out of control. We could die. In seconds. If the guards decided to throw that water on us, my mark would be exposed, and they’d attack.
My gaze caught on the spear one soldier was holding. Its pointed tip glinted brightly in the sunlight until I could almost feel the warmed heat from the steel blade penetrating my neck.
Jesus, how had I survived our first trip through the canyon pass on the way up to Pinsky without having a complete panic attack?
Indigo nervously edged his horse closer to mine, making me slice him with a warning glance. He was supposed to be a prisoner here. Small suspicious movements weren’t smart. I widened my eyes, silently asking him what he was doing.
But he only whispered from the side of his mouth, “Breathe, empress. No one here will attack you without going through me first.”
I scowled, irritated that he was reading my emotions. And as sweet as it might be for him to try to calm me, it was even more dangerous. He should be keeping his damn mouth shut right now, not worrying about—
“What do we have here?” a guard asked suddenly, making me jump and veer my attention to the man peering up at us questionably.
Shit.
Here we go.
“A Graykey prisoner,” Melaina announced, keeping her voice low and as masculine as she could. Roughly grabbing Indigo’s shackles, she twisted his arm, exposing the fake mark she’d put on him. The guards reared back immediately. A woman in line behind us gasped. A child waiting even further back began to cry.
“We’re taking him in to the king. Hopefully to get this damned curse ended once and for all.”
“Amen to that,” the guard answered, yawning as he waved us through. “Just get him out of here.”
“Will do.”
I dropped three tokens into the bucket and stepped past the guards. Behind me, I heard Holly’s hoofbeats as she followed. Someone belched. Another muttered something snide. I didn’t dare glance back when I heard someone spit, but I figured it had landed on Indigo since he cursed directly afterward.
I just kept walking forward, my head faint with worry as we started between the heavily shadowed, cool rock walls of the dried-out canyon base. Every mile or so, a guard station illuminated with torches hugged the ground, helping to light the path and keep the passage safe and crime-free.
A person could travel through the mountains without paying a fee, I supposed. But the pass cut the travel time down to half a day when it’d probably take weeks through the treacherous hilly terrain above, plus this was safer with the armed guards that staved off more than most thieves from trying
to rob anyone and chased off wild animals that may attack. Even taking the river ferry down to Moore and then heading back up to Tyler would be faster than attempting a perilous mountain trip.
Our only obstacle here was getting past the guards and into the pass. And we’d just made it.
The air hissed from my lungs as we left the knight’s station behind, and the parties traveling in front of and behind us spread further apart.
Melaina and Indigo appeared at my sides so we could ride abreast of each other.
“Well, that…” Melaina finally spoke up in a melodramatic voice. “Was so scary. I mean, the moment the guard yawned and his companion belched before scratching his balls was…” She blew out a shivering breath. “Why, I was sure that was it. We were all going to die a most violent and painful death.”
“Shut up,” Indigo muttered irritably.
Melaina started to laugh at him. “You worried for nothing, boy.”
“No, I didn’t.” He sighed impatiently. “Because it could’ve been dangerous. If those two hadn’t been the laziest pair of guards I’d ever met, all three of us could be dead right now.”
“But we’re not,” she sang merrily.
“Fine,” he snapped. “You were right. I was wrong. You had a fail-safe plan to get us into the pass. Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Yes, actually. It was.”
He sniffed moodily and rolled his eyes toward the sky.
Humming a cheerful tune to herself, Melaina rode ahead, calling a greeting to a handful of men she passed going in the opposite direction.
Indigo swung his attention to me. “And you’ve put up with her for eight years now?”
Since it was fairly dark in the canyon and he couldn’t see my expression, I grinned. It was kind of nice to have someone else around who shared my aggravations about Melaina.
“I’ve put up with Melaina my entire life,” I corrected.
“Christ Almighty,” he murmured in sympathy, shaking his head slowly. “You deserve an award.”
