No.
She was making a statement.
Or issuing a challenge.
I wasn’t sure which.
She wrapped her fingers around the flower stem and lifted her eyes to mine. That gesture—that trust or challenge or whatever she meant by it—shook something deep inside me. It ran through my chest and made breathing hard. Did she really trust me?
She should not. Not when I planned to abandon her.
And why had she made me tea?
Her voice carried the same challenge her eyes held. “If I bring you some dried fruit, will you eat it, now that your magic is restored?”
I nodded, fully aware that she was blaming the lamp for my refusal to eat last night instead of my own pride. It was an unexpectedly endearing thing to do, as if she knew I couldn’t accept any other explanation out loud. The gesture contrasted with the confrontational tone of her voice and the fiery look in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything else as she led us back to the horses.
She untied a flap on a bag and removed a pouch of dried peaches. The gelding chose that moment to shove his muzzle into my shoulder. “What are you doing?” Igrumbled, but the queen had disarmed me enough that I forgot I’d created a mask of not caring about people and animals. I lifted a hand to his mane as if the last eight centuries hadn’t happened—as if I was still a young fae on a farm—and stroked his neck.
“Fine, you deserve to be called something.” I should have asked his name from the singers, but the queen caught me talking to him, and her gasp reminded me that I couldn’t admit to a mistake now, even if that mistake was as small as not asking a horse’s name. “How about Sabir?” I stroked his neck again. Sabir, for his outstanding patience in changing riders yesterday.
“You’ve been a good boy,” I told Sabir. “Have a treat before we leave.” I turned the grass at our feet into oats, and the other gelding pranced over quickly, playfully nudging me out of the way so he could reach the oats too.
The queen offered me a handful of dried peach slices, and the tattoo on my wrist warmed. That was part of her bargain—food that I needed.
So what was the tea?
I changed the dried peaches into fresh, plump slices and ate one. The queen’s eyes widened as the food transformed, and her gaze followed the peach from my hand to my mouth. I resisted smirking at her open jealousy and asked, “Would you like one?”
She reached for the saddlebag again. “You need all of those. And perhaps more. I can’t have you dropping half-way to the Autumn Realm.”
This time she handed me an entire pouch filled with the dried fruit, and something twinged in my chest again. My tattoo did not warm up—I would survive fine on the handful of food she’d already given me, so this bag of fruit was not part of the bargain.
And she would know I knew it. Her own tattoo would be just as inactive as mine.
So why offer it?
My inner cynic answered: to create a debt that would force me to stay with her longer.
The flash of anxiety in her grey eyes made me doubt myself. If she had another reason, I did not know it.
Chapter 11: Khiona
Andar handed me three beautiful, fresh-looking peach slices, but he did not ask if I wanted them again.
No.
He started talking about the horses. “You should name your gelding too. They’ll be easier to work with if we have something to call them.”
He pressed his handful of peaches closer to my chest and tipped his chin at them, silently insisting I take them. “Horses are smart animals, and our magic will rub off on them. They’ll respond better to names, even if today’s the first time they hear them.”
I opened my hand to receive the peaches, and he dropped them on my palm. The tiniest edge of his mouth tipped up—not quite a smile, but not one of his antagonistic smirks—and he nodded.
Why did he want me to have them? Could he tell how his transformed peaches drew every piece of my being? I hadn’t had fresh fruit in forty years, and now I craved it more than anything else I could think of.
But why would he want to share?
He kept talking about naming horses, so I slipped one of the peaches in my mouth and… completely lost track of everything else. The fresh fruit burst open when I bit it, flooding my mind with memories of summer fruits from decades ago. I used to hire merchants to travel to Veran and purchase a variety of delicacies like peaches, apricots, and oranges. We kept them stocked in my icy palace year round, bringing the splash of flavor and the citrus scents to every meal and event.
