The Twelve Kingdoms: The Mark of the Tala (2 page)

The word fell between us, sizzling with all the implications of good and bad it carried.

“Father expects me to take his throne.” Ursula felt her way through the words. “Are you saying my task won’t be easy, despite his groundwork?”

I laughed, trying to soften the harsh shadows gathering around her thin lips. “We’re only talking. I don’t know what the future holds.”

“I wonder.” Ursula missed very little. Just by looking, she seemed to dig my secrets out of me. As if I had any. Still, I turned away from the uncomfortable stare and stripped off my protective gloves. If I hurried, I might have time for a ride before afternoon court, which would no doubt be more complaints about crops failing and arguments over which of the kingdoms should have to assist the others. Riding my horse, Fiona, was both my joy and my refuge.

On horseback, I never felt that weakness in my limbs, the odd, shooting pains. Away from court, I escaped the strange looks or, worse, the way most people seemed to look right through me.

“When you were born, Mother said you belonged to Moranu—did you know that?”

I shook my head. Our mother had died when I was but five, and I remembered only bits and pieces about her. No one ever spoke of her, not if they wanted to avoid angering Uorsin. Which, of course, everyone did.

“They say Moranu’s priestesses can see the future, is my point,” she continued.

“You mean, the ones forbidden to enter Ordnung? You know full well that none are to worship Moranu or Danu. I’m surprised you even know that.”

“Do you know why I stopped nagging you to practice your sword skills?”

“Because I’m hopeless?” I quipped, but she didn’t smile back.

“That’s the thing, Andi.” She pointed her sword at me. “You’re not hopeless. You could learn if you wished, just as you could be as lovely as Amelia if you ever stepped out of the background. I think you like our shadows, because they let you hide.”

A frisson ran through me, something dark, with an edge of flame, the kind of hot that leaves you shivering.

“Not much to hide here,” I tossed at her, letting the foreboding roll off me and spreading my arms to indicate my shabby working leathers. “Unremarkable me is all you get.”

Ursula lowered the point of her sword, slid it into its sheath with a hiss.

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

After that, the princes came courting Ursula. Ever hopeful, they made their plays for power. When she turned them away, a few turned their intentions toward me. It amused me, to watch them realign their courtly praises and scramble to find ways to praise my beauty, my intelligence, my courage—none of which were in evidence. I tried to be pleasant, especially when Ursula sentenced me to ten laps around the stables for any time she caught me rolling my eyes.

Somehow she managed to be kind and firm to the hopefuls, sending them packing with smiles on their faces. Before much longer, the supply thinned, then trickled off altogether. They called Ursula the Sword Princess, and some of the pub songs wickedly suggested that her blade satisfied her at night better than any man could.

When an impertinent minstrel sang one of the ditties for us, late one night after dinner and after Father had retired, Ursula simply laughed and acknowledged it could be true. She stroked her sword, resting in its formal jeweled sheath on the table, her fingers brushing the cabochon topaz in the hilt.

“My lover,” she mused. “It certainly gives me all I could wish—companionship, protection, an edge over the competition.”

The minstrel toasted her and strummed a few lines.

“And what do they sing of Andi?” Ursula refilled my goblet with dark-red wine.

The minstrel glanced at me as if he’d forgotten I was there. Likely he had.

I smiled at him, one of Amelia’s sweet expressions to show him I didn’t expect to be noticed. I was accustomed to falling through the cracks.

“That’s mean, Ursula,” I stepped in while the poor man stammered. “I’ve never done anything to merit a song and you know it. Our minstrels need more inspiration than I provide.”

He plucked a few strings on the lap harp, making that liquid sound, water running over rounded pebbles, a horse clipping lightly along a mountain trail. His blue eyes studied me while his fingers flickered in the firelight.

“Forgive me, Princess Andromeda”—he bowed his head to me—“but it occurs to me that those who are overlooked are like the waters of our deep mountain lakes. They seem only to reflect what’s around them, but in the depths lurk the great mysteries.”

“Sea monsters?” I replied with a laugh, imitating one of Amelia’s delicate shudders. Hopefully that covered my flinching at his use of my full name. Only my mother had ever used the whole ungainly thing. It both annoyed me and picked at the scar over my old, aching sense of loss.

“Ah, but Mohraya has no seacoast. Let me sing you a song of the ocean, then. If it pleases you. Of lost treasure. Or paradise.” With that he launched into a winding ballad I’d never heard, of a land with turquoise waters and white cliffs, where fish fly in the air and birds swim in the waters, bringing back pearls to nestle in the petals of tropical flowers. And lovers walk hand in hand along the shimmering sands.

Ursula smiled, her face smoothing into relaxation, and closed her eyes to listen.

The song stuck with me.

Silly, I know. Still, there’s something about a handsome young man singing a song just for you. Or that you can pretend is just for you. It creates this nostalgia for love you’ve never experienced. I know you can’t be nostalgic for something that hasn’t happened, yet I felt it. As if I already loved someone and he was out there somewhere, moving around in the world. Someone who would see me for me and not as the space between my sisters.

The sense of searching drove me to longer rambles, exploring trails I hadn’t ridden before in the forested foothills that rose behind Castle Ordnung.

Technically that land was out of bounds to me, and probably was outside the boundaries of Mohraya at some point. The boundary with the Wild Lands wasn’t clear. Very few people lived there, mostly hunters, trappers, and hermits. The Wild Lands were forbidden, the warnings laced with tales of roving demonic creatures. Restless, driven by a need to see more, I skirted those boundaries, pushed them.

In all truth, Fiona and I had been riding out farther west each day since the wedding. I missed Amelia and her happy presence. In the quiet of my heart, I could admit I envied her. Hugh had been kind even to me. He would cherish our Amelia as she should be. As she deserved to be, our little motherless sister. But the envy worked on me, and I found myself wishing that people—that our father—looked on me with admiration. That Hugh had seen me and fallen in love.

These were ugly feelings to have, and they plagued me.

The farther I rode from Ordnung, though, the more the dark thoughts dissipated, and the more right I felt. So I went farther than I should have, had anyone known. Sometimes too far for me to easily make it back before I was expected, and we would return in a headlong rush, racing against disapproval.

That day, moody with the song, I rode farther than ever. Fiona’s hooves tapped along the trail in a cadence that echoed the minstrel’s song.

The longing in it made me a little teary, and I shook my head briskly at myself, nudging Fiona into a canter. We’d reached the top of a hill we’d never before climbed, finally emerging from the close, shadowed woods. A high meadow, filled with waist-high grass the color of green apples, lay before us in unspoiled splendor. With a snort of horse-joy, Fiona leapt under me, racing across the grassy bowl that curved up to the cloudless sky.

A laugh tore from me, even as my hair escaped its coils, whipping free behind me like Fiona’s pearly white mane lashing my face.

This.

This was real. The smell of the air, a hint of snow sliding down from the high peaks, promising winter to come after glorious summer. It thrummed through me, filled me. I sank into the solid muscle of the horse, savoring her sleek strength. I didn’t need more than this. Formless longings meant nothing.

Then Fiona screamed.

I heard it after we were already falling. I fell with her, tumbling to the grass—not soft, but brutally hard under the bright dressing. Fiona’s great supple weight rolled over me, crushing my breath. Long practice had me kicking free, so her ungainly lunging to right herself left me behind, grateful not to be dragged by my foot as she galloped out of sight.

My lungs struggled against paralysis, grasping at the bits of air they could drag in. Knife-like pangs shot through my muscles. The image in my head throbbed with stark shock.

A man, standing there with a pack of dogs, in the fold of a wallow. Hounds bigger than wolves. No wonder Fiona had shied and lost her footing.

They would be on me in a moment.

A man with dogs where they shouldn’t be was never a good thing. As far as I’d gone, I was surely still in Mohraya, where Uorsin owned all hunting rights. And my sword still strapped to the saddle, racing off to nowhere. Only my little dagger remained, in the sheath on my belt. If I survived this, Ursula would kill me.

The hissing grasses as he strode toward me sent panic through my veins. Gasping, forcing my rib cage to flex, I struggled to my hands and knees.

“Should you move just yet?” inquired a low voice.

The air burned like fire. I looked up through the dark tangle of my hair. He stood a short distance away, black leathers, black cloak. Seven wolfhounds ringed him, sitting on their haunches, an avid audience with uncannily blue eyes.

“I’m fine,” I managed to say evenly, thinking of the times Ursula had knocked me with the flat of her blade and taunted me until I stood. Of course, she hadn’t done that in some time, since it took me so long to get up again. “You startled my horse.”

And you shouldn’t be on King’s Land.

I didn’t dare say that, though. Because I shouldn’t be on King’s Land either, unless I came from the royal family, and he didn’t need to know I was Uorsin’s relation.

“Yes,” the man agreed, dark eyes steady. “Do you need assistance standing?”

Definitely not. The man shared the lean, hungry, and lethal look of the wolfhounds, even with his careful distance. I wiggled my knees and ankles. They felt okay. Hopefully nothing was so damaged as to make me stagger when I stood. The cold congealing in my stomach told me I couldn’t afford to appear at all weak.

I stood, slowly, brushing grass off my riding pants as I unfolded, to give myself time to test my weight. Nothing gave way, thank Moranu.

“I’m fine,” I repeated, returning his assessing stare, deliberately slowing my heaving lungs.

One of the wolfhounds sniffed the air in my direction, raising its russet ears. It growled softly. A hushed word from the man settled it.

“Not often one finds a princess unattended in the wilderness,” the man observed, as if commenting on the weather, but his face burned with an unholy, acquisitive light.

I scoffed. “I wish! I imagine those royal brats have soft lives of silks and candies. No, I’m only hunting rabbits for my family.”

He took a step toward me, flattening his hand to signal the dogs to stay. I steeled myself not to step back. Predators always became more dangerous when presented with a chase. Two horse lengths between us still gave me room. To do what, I didn’t know. I could never outrun those hounds.

“Lies don’t become you, Princess.” His gaze drilled into me, evaluating, calculating. “Now, which one are you? Not Ursula the heir, I don’t think. Rumor says she looks more like a man than a woman.”

“No closer,” I commanded.

“Or what, Princess Amelia—you’ll scream?” He held out questioning hands to the empty sky, but he stopped closing on me.

“I’m not Amelia,” I said on reflex. Idiot. I closed my hand over the hilt of my dagger and drew it. “And I was thinking more of using this.”

He smiled, eyes glittering. A breeze wormed through the meadow, sending a wave through the grasses and lifting a strand of his long black hair, tied in a tail at the nape of his neck. He took another step closer and stopped, watching me to see what I’d do.