The Fate of the Tala Read online

  ~ 3 ~

  “You really should be more careful, Your Highness.” Healer Vanka channeled her healing energy into my thigh with renewed intensity. It prickled painfully, and I fancied she deliberately made it more uncomfortable than necessary. She wasn’t my favorite healer, and she wasn’t fond of me either. Over a hundred years old, Vanka remembered my mother, and still resented Salena for leaving Annfwn. In her mind, my mother had abandoned the Tala, and I’d forever be an upstart interloper, part-blood daughter of a faithless queen.

  “I’ll do my best,” I replied drily. Quite a few of the Tala old guard still suspected my loyalties and feared that I’d fail to protect Annfwn. It used to bother me more than it did now—except that every glimpse of the future only verified that they were likely correct. I didn’t see any way to save Annfwn, and all the world would know that soon enough.

  “You must do better, Your Highness,” Vanka insisted. “You carry the future heir of Annfwn. You cannot be capricious about this pregnancy.”

  Somehow I just didn’t see battling Deyrr’s sleeper spy attacks as capricious behavior, but I swallowed my sarcasm, struggling to hold my leg still for the treatment, determined not to show how much it hurt. To distract myself, I gazed out the window at the stubbornly empty sky, reaching out to check on Rayfe’s progress. He was close, but not quite home yet.

  “I know you don’t understand our Tala traditions,” Vanka continued, “but we follow them for good reasons. You should be in seclusion, resting in peace and quiet.”

  If only I hadn’t sent Kelleah to be Healer for Ursula at Ordnung. Kelleah had understood my reasoning for not going into seclusion and had supported my choices. But, no, I’d had to be all foolishly generous. It had been the right thing to do, as Kelleah possessed enough spine to out-stubborn Ursula and enough flexible thinking to live among non-shifters. But that decision stuck me with Vanka, to my everlasting misery.

  But Rayfe trusted Vanka and whatever I could do to set his mind at ease made my life easier in equal measure.

  “A Tala pregnancy is a rare gift,” Vanka insisted with a renewed burst of healing energy. “But you’re acting like it’s nothing. One might think you flaunt Moranu’s will.”

  Gritting my teeth and pressing my tongue against them, I managed not to hiss at the pain, wishing I could heal myself when I shapeshifted, like other Tala could. I’d tried and tried to master that aspect of shapeshifting and had gotten pretty much nowhere.

  I was tired of thinking about it. Truly, I’d done thrice-damned well to be able to shapeshift at all. When Rayfe had first brought me to Annfwn, a foreign princess who sacrificed herself to marriage with the demon Tala king in order to stop a war, they’d all—all but Rayfe, who never lost faith in me—called me too old to learn to shapeshift. I might’ve been born with the Mark of the Tala, but growing up outside of Annfwn—outside the barrier and in a land bereft of magic—had nearly leached the magic out of me, too.

  But I had learned to shapeshift. I’d even mastered nearly ten forms. Many Tala only ever had their First Form, and some—particularly those part-bloods born outside Annfwn like me—couldn’t shift at all. Even Rayfe stuck primarily to a couple of preferred forms. I’d never match a prolific shifter like Zynda, but I’d mastered sufficient forms to access the Heart, and that’s what mattered. I’d accomplished far more than traditionalists like Vanka had believed possible.

  I’d also had plenty of Moranu’s will. Having a goddess thrust visions into your mind and guide your steps into a doomed future wasn’t exactly a pleasure ride on the beach.

  A frisson of blue-black energy rippled through me, the familiar mind-scent of Rayfe approaching, and I nearly cried out in my relief and gladness. In the form of a black eagle, he flew through the arched open windows of our rooms, and my heart actually skipped a beat. With an implosion of magic like the popping of a soap bubble on my skin, he took human form.

  Waving black hair still settling around his fine-boned face and shoulders, his midnight blue gaze found mine and the moment of connection hummed between us like unheard music. I caught my breath at the delight of seeing him. Even after all this time together, Rayfe still overpowered my senses. The sheer presence of him, magnetic, feral, and profoundly magical, dizzied me. I craved him in a way I’d never expected to want a man, blood calling to blood still, even though his seed had taken and sprouted.

  If Vanka hadn’t been practically sitting on me, I would have thrown myself into his arms. I settled for extending my hand, giving him a welcoming smile in the hopes he’d come to me.

  He didn’t return my smile, however. Instead, he glared daggers. I mentally sighed for it and braced myself. “You’re hurt.”

  No, I’m Andi, I very nearly replied. “Not badly, and it’s almost healed now,” I said instead, dropping my hand. “And, hello, darling. I missed you, too.”

  He bit out a sigh, and scanned me thoroughly as he advanced. “How is she?” he asked Vanka.

  “Well enough, King Rayfe,” Vanka fawned, beaming at him. “She’d be doing worlds better if we sequestered her, though. She’s endangering our heir with this nonsense. It’s not right, her being out and about like—”

  “Thank you for your assistance, Vanka,” I cut in, not at all in the appropriate temper to listen to this complaint yet again. “It feels like you’ve finished?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then leave us so I may speak with my lord husband.” I’d take a certain amount of her disrespect, but she’d passed my limit. The Tala didn’t observe much in the way of formal hierarchy, and I’d never wanted to be in charge of anything, so I rarely pulled rank, but occasionally it was good to be queen.

  With a sharp glare, a sour press of her mouth and a cursory nod for me—and a pointedly elaborate curtsey for Rayfe—she became a robin and flew out the window. He didn’t seem to notice, intent gaze on me. “You truly are all right?”

  I added my other leg to the chair, crossing them at the ankles. Elevating my feet always felt good these days. “Yes. I truly am, and so is—all is well,” I corrected myself, seeing him flinch as I nearly mentioned the unmentionable. “But this was the worst attack yet.”

  “Tell me exactly what happened, in detail, beginning to end,” Rayfe demanded, as I’d known he would. That wasn’t sorcerous foresight either; I’d simply come to know my husband very well. He poured a mug of cooled fruit juice and handed it to me. I drank it gratefully, then gave the breakdown of the attack as he paced the room. I did not mention my metaphysical encounter with the high priestess. Rayfe might think I’d taken too much of a risk, and I still hadn’t decided if it could be useful. I did know that I wanted to retain the option to contact her again, and that would be easier if Rayfe didn’t forbid me to do it. Not that I had any problem disobeying his edicts, but I made a policy of never lying to him. At least, not outright.

  “They’re getting more direct,” he commented when I finished.

  “Yes, and strategic. These creatures didn’t just mindlessly stumble along one trajectory. They held forces in reserve, and adjusted according to our movements. Also, I tried to blast the warthog and my magic bounced off.”

  He paused in his pacing and frowned at me. “What do you mean it ‘bounced off’?”

  “I can’t describe it better than that. I’ve never seen anything like it. I had plenty of power, because I was already drawing on the Heart. Since I placed the Star inside the Heart, the magic is even easier to focus. The beast should’ve vaporized, but the magic had no effect.”

  “We’ve theorized that the mindlessness of the Deyrr creatures is a result of the high priestess being too far away to implant more than simple instructions,” Rayfe said slowly, thinking. “Could this mean she’s now guiding them intelligently from n’Andanda, perhaps also protecting them from sorcery?”

  Glumly, I nodded. She’d grabbed my thoughts the moment I knocked on her door, as she put it. She was in close proximity to us metaphysically, if not in actual physical space. �
�I think that’s probably accurate. What about the infestation downcoast—I’m guessing it wasn’t as bad as we’d been led to believe?”

  He tipped his head at me, as if awarding me a point in a game. “No, it wasn’t. I suspect more strategy, this intended to draw us away from here, to leave the children undefended.”

  The same thought had occurred to me. Had my encounter with her right before the attack been a strategic distraction also? We seemed to share similar gifts—a commonality that often unsettled me and occasionally frightened me—so had she glimpsed a future where I contacted her and planned accordingly? In that case, her abilities to sort the possible futures probably outstripped mine. She had the advantage of centuries of practice, which meant she could be many steps ahead of me at every turn. The headache, temporarily eased by Vanka’s healing, began to creep back in around the edges of my vision.

  “At least we outsmarted them in that the children weren’t undefended.” I sounded more weary than I’d meant to. “We saved them all and none of them were seriously injured.”

  “At great risk to yourself,” he shot back, brows lowering.

  “Marginal risk to myself,” I corrected. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  “Are you sure?” He prowled toward me, blue eyes intent on me. Not in a sensual way, either, alas. Ever since my belly had begun to obviously swell, Rayfe looked at me with that penetrating gaze entirely to ascertain my health—and the condition of our unborn child, which he avoided mentioning directly. “You have to remember your condition, Andromeda.”

  “It’s not something one forgets, Rayfe.”

  He hissed in frustration. “You seem to sometimes. Vanka is correct in that. Like today.”

  “It’s my job as queen and protector of the Heart to defend our people. That’s why you went to such lengths to bring me to Annfwn, wasn’t it?”

  “Don’t start with that.” He turned away, pacing to the table to sort through the pile of missives that had arrived for him in his short absence.

  I took a breath. It drove me crazy the way he’d begun to treat me, barely touching me—sex was not up for discussion—asking after my health all the time. I’d known going into this pregnancy that the Tala in general, and Rayfe in particular, would be obsessively protective and paranoid about it, but I’d long since passed finding it charming and had moved into boiling irritation. My frustration—emotional and sexual—simmered under pressure, with the least thing likely to set me off.

  The sex had worked between us before anything else did. Rayfe and I had connected physically and subconsciously through sexual intimacy, that blazing passion there even when we couldn’t seem to communicate any other way, or agree on anything else. Now we’d gone from an active, passionate sex life to nothing. And, as if losing that connection had ripped out the foundation of our relationship, we seemed to have only arguing left.

  I didn’t blame Rayfe for not finding me attractive. Moranu knew I was swollen in all the wrong places, sometimes sick to my stomach, and often moody. Worse, to ally the fears of everyone watching my pregnancy with strained hope and dreadful anticipation, I had to appear serenely happy no matter how I felt.

  Still, even when we were strangers to each other, Rayfe had shown sexual interest in me. In fact, he’d been the first man to see me. These days, he looked past or around me in a way that threw me back to being miserable, invisible Andi again. Losing his regard eroded my confidence bit by bit, with every passing day. Instead of invisibility being my shield, it felt like a trap I couldn’t escape.

  Nor could I help thinking about how Ursula had insisted from the beginning that I would only be a blood pawn to Rayfe and the Tala, a queen in name only, acquired to breed the next generation that they couldn’t. Rayfe had convinced me otherwise, that though he and Annfwn needed me for my sorcery, he did love me. And I had believed him.

  Well, I still believed that he loved me, but this pregnancy had changed how we interacted so much that Ursula’s words had crawled back to slither round my mind.

  “Here’s one from Ordnung,” Rayfe said, handing me the scroll with Ursula’s stooping crimson hawk seal.

  It suited me fine to let Rayfe change the subject, so I broke Ursula’s seal, and started reading. Stopped. Went back to the beginning and read again. “Holy Moranu, Ursula and Harlan got married.”

  I angled the parchment to the midday light to make sure it really was my older sister’s terrible handwriting, and that I’d understood correctly. This time I reread the opening lines aloud for Rayfe.

  “Is that really such a surprise?” he asked. “After all, they’ve been mated all this time. Surely a mossback marriage simply formalizes that existing truth.”

  “This is Ursula we’re talking about,” I said. “High Queen of the Thirteen Kingdoms, born with a law book stuck in her throat.”

  “I know who she is,” he replied with a grimace. My sister and my husband had reached a reasonable détente in their political rivalry, but it was a peace between two predatory natures and monarchs of their realms, ones who faced a greater common enemy—for the moment. I had no doubt that, if we managed to survive this war, then Rayfe and Ursula would again be fighting over borders and autonomy. And me.

  That was trouble for the future, however, and right now the possible futures I could glimpse past this annihilating conflict were too splintered to follow. The imminent war acted like a huge dam across the river of time. The many resulting channels radiated from it with so many fine ripples and new channels that it gave me a headache to try to think about them, much less track each potential outcome.

  But this… Maybe it explained why Moranu had sent the new vision this morning. This marriage would’ve shifted the probabilities significantly. In some futures, we battled only Deyrr; in others, we fought both Dasnaria and Deyrr. Sometimes they acted as one force; other times as two. In some futures Dasnaria seemed to be allied with us. The possible futures shifted so often and with so many variations that I hadn’t tried to track them in a couple of days. Clearly I needed to look again. I rubbed my temple, dreading that prospect.

  “Do you have a headache?” Rayfe asked with quick concern. “Maybe you should lie down and have a nap.”

  “I don’t want to lie down.” I tried to keep my voice measured, but I sounded cranky even to my own ears. Vanka had wanted me to take a nap, too. I shook the scroll at him. “What I want is for you to listen to me. This supposed ‘formality’ isn’t simple at all. Ursula is the High Queen of the Thirteen Kingdoms. She just married a former mercenary, brother of the Emperor of Dasnaria, the man behind the navy massing outside the magic barrier, preparing to descend on Annfwn.”

  “Yes,” Rayfe replied with exaggerated patience, “I know who Harlan is, too.”

  I managed not to growl at him. “Right, but listen to this: Emperor Hestar offered me a treaty, one hundred years of peace, if I married his… I can’t read that word. Mind-allied brother?”

  Rayfe peered over my shoulder. “Mind-addled, I believe.”

  “I don’t know why you can read my own sister’s handwriting better than I can,” I grumbled.

  “Probably because all of your written language is equally impenetrable to me,” he replied with a bit of a smile, then waved a hand at me to continue as he prowled back to the window. He wore black, as usual, and the sleek leather clung to his lithe body. Rayfe had a liquid, feline physique, and I savored the sight. Not that it did me any good these days, but at least I could look.

  With a sigh, I returned to the letter instead. “…if I married his mind-addled brother. So I’m informing him that I’m already married to his brother Harlan, and fortunately Kral was in Ordnung to see the contract witnessed and executed according to Dasnarian law, too. We’ll send a copy of the marriage contract and offer to sign the treaty under those terms. Hmpf. See? The woman loves laws.” Except when she flouted them by lying so outrageously, and to the Emperor of Dasnaria, no less. And she’d given up a possible treaty that could’ve tipped the balance o
f this war. So out of character for Ursula to do something this… impulsive. And sentimental. Romantic, even.

  Unforeseeable, really. I began to get a very bad feeling.

  “Kral was at Ordnung?” Rayfe asked, breaking into my reverie. “I thought he and Jepp were at sea on the Hákyrling, guarding the barrier.”

  “No,” I replied absently, skimming the rest of the letter for pertinent information. “While you were downcoast taking care of that sleeper spy infestation, Jepp and Kral sailed in and asked Zynda to give them a ride to Ordnung. Apparently this missive from Hestar, delivered to the Hákyrling, was the reason for their urgency. They might’ve told me.”

  “You might’ve told me.” Rayfe had finally stopped pacing to lean against the window ledge, arms folded and gaze sparking with irritation. He really hated not knowing things. “I didn’t see the Hákyrling in the harbor.”

  With the sea breeze tossing his wild, dark hair around his face and shoulders, the sun highlighting the blue glints, he looked unbearably enticing. That didn’t stop me from scowling back at him, or maybe the unsatiated craving for him made me scowl more. “You just now returned.” I waved a hand at the window he’d flown in. “And you didn’t see Kral’s ship because Shipmaster Jens took the Hákyrling back out to monitor the Dasnarians.”

  “All right. No need to bite at me,” he replied with measured patience. “Finish reading the letter.”

  “Eh, you heard the important part. The crux is that they—including Kral, apparently—are going to lie to Hestar and claim the marriage predates his offer, and they’re going to ask for the treaty anyway, on the grounds that they’re already family.”

  Rayfe cocked his head. “Didn’t Harlan’s horrible, power-mad relatives disinherit him a long time ago?”

  “Why, yes. Yes, they did. Ursula seems to be hoping that whatever reasons prompted Hestar to ask for the treaty will be compelling enough for Harlan’s family to re-inherit him, so they can have the treaty that way.”

  “I don’t know that word in Common Tongue. ‘Re-inherit’?”