Annoura sighed as the cool darkness soothed the frayed edges of her temper. Calm, efficient Jiarine. She’d been such a help these last weeks. For all that Annoura had never been keen on keeping female confidantes, she’d come to rely rather a lot on Jiarine recently. Especially after the queen’s Favorite, Ser Vale, had disappeared from court with nary a word save some useless, impersonal scrap of a note claiming a dire emergency on his family estate.
Lady Montevero and Ser Vale had been good friends. She had, in fact, been the one to initially sponsor Ser Vale at court and introduce him to the queen’s circle. Now, with Vale gone and no word from him in months, Annoura had found herself talking more and more to Jiarine, hoping Jiarine might have news about the handsome Dazzle who had so quickly become Annoura’s indispensible confidant and Favorite. Alas, the lady had received no word from their mutual friend either.
Annoura plucked at the coverlet with restless irritability. “Where is the king? Has he been told of my illness?”
Silence. Then, “I delivered the message myself, Your Majesty. Half a bell ago.”
Half a bell.
Half a bell and still Dorian had not come. Time was he would have been at her side in mere chimes, breathless from having run through the palace to reach her. But now, even with half the court afflicted by this mysterious stomach illness, he’d not roused enough concern to visit her?
“I’m sure he will come to see you soon, Your Majesty,” Jiarine soothed, “but the Tairen Soul and his mate arrived this morning.”
Annoura’s fists clenched around the comforter, pulling until the satin was taut. “The Fey…arehere?”
No wonder Dorian wasn’t by her side. The Fey. It was always the Fey. They—not she—would always be first in his heart. She could be on her deathbed, and if a single flaming Fey crooked a finger, Dorian would abandon her without a qualm and go running to his magical master’s side like the obedient lapdog he had become.
“They arrived unexpectedly this morning,” Jiarine said. “I’m sure the king would not otherwise have stayed away.”
“Oh, of course he wouldn’t.”
If Jiarine heard the heavy irony in Annoura’s voice, she gave no sign of it. “Your Majesty, I’ve sent for the physician, but he left the palace a bell ago to attend Lady Verakis. I don’t know how long it will take him to arrive.” Skirts rustled as Jiarine moved closer to the bed. “Lord Bolor is outside, Your Majesty. He’s no physician, but he has a tonic that worked wonders for me earlier this morning.”
Annoura grimaced. “No.”
“But, Your Majesty–”
She lifted one corner of the compress long enough to fix Jiarine with a withering look. “Have your ears failed you? I said no.” Then, because Jiarine had been such a boon companion to her these last weeks, Annoura sighed. “Jiarine, I know you’ve taken to him. He’s handsome enough, I’ll grant you, and he has a sharp wit.” Too sharp at times. “But there’s just something about him that rubs me the wrong way. I don’t trust him.”
Not that she truly trusted anyone except Dorian—and even that was questionable these days—but with most courtiers, Annoura knew what they were thinking even before they did. She could read them. She had a very good idea of how they would react in most important situations, and she knew how to keep one step ahead of them and manipulate them to achieve her own aims.
But this Bolor fellow…Annoura didn’t know what he was thinking or how to control him. And that bothered her beyond measure. No matter how much Jiarine seemed to like him, Annoura had no intention of granting Bolor entrée to her inner circle.
And she certainly wasn’t going to quaff down some potion the man had brewed up just because Jiarine—clearly addled by the man’s virile good looks—vouched for it.
“Your Majesty—”
“The answer is no. And if he’s waiting outside my door, you can just send him away. Except for the king or the physician, no one sets foot in this room but you. Is that clear?”
Jiarine bobbed a brief, stiff curtsy. “Of course, Your Majesty. As you wish.”
“Good. Go sit there, in that chair. There’s a book on the stand beside it. You may read to me.” Annoura dropped the compress back over her eyes. She heard Jiarine cross the room to the door, whisper something unintelligible to someone outside, then return and take a seat.
The lady’s acquiescence pleased Annoura. Ill she might be, but some things the queen of Celieria could still control.
“If there’s even a possibility the Mages have claimed your queen’s soul, we need to know it,” Rain declared after King Dorian spent several chimes detailing the troubled political situation in Celieria City.
Dorian flinched, and Ellysetta’s heart ached for him. His deep and genuine love for his beautiful queen was well-known throughout Celieria—even a celebrated point of pride to its citizens—and fear for his wife must be eating at him night and day. «Oh, Rain, no wonder he looks so weary.» His country was at war, his nobles were infighting over the Fey, and now his wife might possibly have been corrupted by the Mages. Those were burdens enough to bring the strongest of men to his knees.
«He’ll be ten times worse off if his wife truly is in the service of the Mages.» Rain glanced at Gaelen, who gave a slight nod. “As you know, we now have a way to detect Mage Marks. Gaelen showed us the weave this summer. While Ellysetta spins healing on the queen, Gaelen can check her for Mage Marks. Unless she possesses magic herself, she will not sense his weave.”
Dorian looked up from his desk, his hands knotted before him. “You’re asking me to let you spin forbidden black magic on my queen.”
Rain’s eyes narrowed. “I’m asking you to let us check your queen for Mage Marks. If she is Mage-claimed, you need to know. If she’s not, it will set your mind at ease. If she bears only a few Marks, you need to know that, too, so you can take precautions to prevent further Marks.”
As he spoke, an urgent thread of Spirit stabbed into Ellysetta’s mind across the private communication pathway forged by their partially completedshei’tanitsabond. «Ellysetta, open your senses to Dorian and tell me what you find. Quickly.»
«What’s wrong?» It was a measure of her trust in him that she didn’t wait for his answer before tearing down the barriers that kept human thoughts and emotions from battering her empathic senses. With swift delicacy, she sent gossamer-fine threads of Spirit andshei’dalin’s love spinning out towards Dorian.
