The Soulstoy Inheritance (15 page)

I stared up at the granite slope, choosing this moment to question the sanity of going through with the Throne Test. The Read kingdom hadn’t boasted any real mountains, and I had certainly never had opportunity to climb one before. Yet I had already overcome several impossibilities, it seemed that the mountain was more of a garnish than a real challenge.
They hadn’t assumed that I would get this far.
This was merely a safeguard. Just in case.

I stood there, curling my fingers into fists and relaxing them over and over again. Some logical part of my brain was trying to convince me to walk away, to sneak back into the human kingdom under the cover of darkness and beg Hazen to hide me away, to do anything but climb this ridiculous mountain. With any luck, the hawk would simply fly to a new mountain once I had managed the task. No matter how my better sense attempted to cajole me, there was a burning anger in my heart that began to push me forward. I climbed silently, always fitting myself into a crevice as the bird dipped low, and resting on an outcrop as it returned to the skies. Shrouded in the shadow of the highest ridge at the top of the mountain, I awaited my moment. My face was turned up to the stars, my scraped hands gripping a shelf of rock above my head. When I saw the edge of a wing cut across the sky, I scrambled onto the ridge above me, sliding a little against the rock, and pushed my unbound hair out of my face.

“Hey!” I yelled. “I’m down here!”

The bird dove, rushing toward me quicker than I had expected, and I braced my feet against the rock, throwing my arms out and whipping a barricade of wind at it. It began to spin, thrown off-course, and I jumped from the ridge at the last possible moment, the glinting gold of the crown in my sight. For a moment, I was suspended in midair, seconds away from colliding with the hawk, and then I turned, my hand closing about the crown as I rolled myself along the bird’s side, tipping with the momentum that had it hurling toward the bottom of the ridge. The crown came away easily, and I tried to swallow the terror that rose in my throat as the bottom of my stomach seemed to rise into my chest. The rock was rising up to meet us rapidly, and I threw my arm around the bird’s neck, dropping my glamor just as it managed to straighten.

It scrambled along the bottom of the ridge, almost jostling me off, and then launched into the air again. I closed my eyes, calming my breathing as best I could so that I was able to concentrate my connection on the body of energy beneath me. Eventually I would have to learn how to compel people without my Force connection, but now—as the hawk began to dip into a turn that would throw me—was
not
the time.

“Whoa… straighten… easy.” I panted, clutching to it.

It resisted me more than the reptile creature had, but I only concentrated harder, until it finally slowed, and began to sail through the air with an ease that quickly spread through me. I laughed, my eyes flying open, and the hawk
cawed
in response. I should have told it to go back to the arena, it seemed the most logical option, but I had the crown, and I was flying. I was free of my High Council and the mirrored arena, displaying my own terror back to me, free of the Tainted Resistance and the nightmares of the forest below. Nobody had expected me to
fly
the beast I was supposed to be fighting. There would be no plan to kill me up here.

I laughed again, and tightened my hold, pulling back a little of my compulsion. The bird dove downward, and I buried my face in the feathers before me, the rush of fear exhilarating me. I could feel that it would try to throw me off again, and I shimmied the crown down my arm, reaching my other arm all the way around its neck, until my hands could just grasp at each other.

“Come on,” I challenged, “give me your best.”

I thought it would plummet all the way to the ground, but it jerked up almost as soon as I spoke, and tried once again to roll into a spin. I increased my compulsion once more, preventing it from turning all the way, and as it straightened out again, I drew back the compulsion. This happened a number of times until finally, the bird gave up trying to spin me off, and plummeted headfirst for the ground. We were over the river now, having cleared the mountain peaks, and I could see the castle growing nearer. The ever-twinkling lights of Castle Nest were greeting me in horrible, taunting invitation. The river—now seen from above—seemed to be even more immense than it appeared from the castle walls. It, too, shimmered its dark greeting, welcoming me home, back into the fold of monsters. 

I lifted my compulsion completely, getting ready to pull my glamor back into place. The hawk must have sensed this, for it became almost vertical, wings pressed right up against my legs, falling so fast that I had to close my eyes against the rush of wind. It didn’t try rolling again, but a second later, I found myself completely submerged in the freezing water of the river. I released the bird, which buffeted me away, claws scraping along my stomach, and then took off into the sky again. I kicked for the surface, feeling the temperature of the water seeping into my very core, turning my insides to ice. Pulling my glamor back into place was easy, as my throat was now burning with river water instead of hunger. I swam to the bank and hauled myself out of the water, crown once again clutched tightly in my fist. My shirt had been torn, and I had two gouges running along my stomach. They were both shallow, and I suspected they wouldn’t even need stitching, which was good, because Harbringer wasn’t here anymore to heal me. 

The arena was a long way to walk and I didn’t feel like trudging back through Castle Nest, soaked to the skin and bleeding. Instead, I struggled back to the bridge and began the struggle back to the castle. Once I reached the top of the hill, I could hear the rush of noise from below. They were cheering, shouting unintelligible things, and I wondered what the mirrors showed them. A bedraggled, lost girl, most likely.

I felt like crying then, and turned away from the noise, just as a figure mounted the crest of the hill and jogged toward me.

“My Lady!” It was Grenlow.

I paused, and noticed that the rest of my advisors had followed him.

“Am I finished?” I asked Grenlow, my voice flat.

He looked confused, but he nodded.

“How do I get the tracking device out?”

He stepped up to me and held a hand out for my arm, his expression solemn, as if to match my own. I gave him my hand, and he pulled out a strange instrument with a glass tube at the end. As soon as the ends touched my skin, a blade slid down and made a small, precise incision, less than an inch above where the needle mark still showed. I bit my lip to keep from crying out, and then had to turn my eyes away as a sudden suction began pulling beads of blood up the sides of the tube. After about a minute, the pressure disappeared, and Grenlow cleaned the area with his handkerchief before binding it tightly in a fresh bandage.

Everyone had been silent until this stage, but now Isolde stepped forward, so that the light from one of the bracketed torches along the outside of the castle wall cast a flickering reflection over her face.

“I guess congratulations are in order,” she said cautiously.

“Are they?” I countered.

Nobody answered, and I looked at each one of them carefully. I didn’t like Ashen, and I was suspicious of Grenlow, but they were the only two who showed any emotion at all. The others were completely blank, too blank. They weren’t disappointed that I had passed their impossible test; they weren’t excited that their kingdom had a new ruler. They were nothing. Their move had been made, their hand dealt in this game that they played with my life, and now they were determined not to give anything away. It was my move.

“Grenlow, can you find Sweet, Quick and Teddy and send them to my room?”

“Yes, Lady Queen.”

“Thank you.” I turned on my heel, and strode away from them.

I needed to get Ashen away from the rest of them somehow, but there was no use trying to communicate with him while the others watched on, so I trudged up to my room, my sore limbs protesting the whole way. I first checked Gretal’s chambers and then my own, but she was nowhere to be found, so I started a bath and gingerly stripped off my clothing. It was only ten minutes later when a knock on the sitting room door echoed through to me. I pulled myself from the bath gingerly, grabbing a robe and wrapping myself into it, not bothering with my wet hair.

I padded to the sitting room and opened the door, feeling some of the tension drain from me at the sight of my Guard.

“Teddy,” I said, as they noticed me, “I need to see Ashen, and Leif—if possible—but I don’t want the others to know.”

“Leave it to me, Lady Queen.” He grinned, apparently pleased with the task, and then slipped from the room. The other two sat down without invitation, which pleased me, though their grim expressions didn’t.

“What is it?” I asked, as there was another knock on the door.

Gretal appeared, carrying a tray. When she saw me, she set it down and ran to me, enfolding me in her arms. Surprised, I hugged her back, though it caused me a small amount of pain. She pulled back after a moment, and didn’t say a word, though I could see that there were tears in her eyes.

“Gretal?” I glanced from her to my grim-faced Guard. “What the hell is wrong with everybody?”

She disappeared for a moment and then reappeared with a comb in her hand, a small basket of medical supplies tucked under her arm.

“That whole ordeal…” she said, pushing me down onto one of the chaises. “I don’t think you were even supposed to survive the first round.”

She started to comb the tangles out of my wet hair, and I winced, the movement pulling on my tender scalp.

“So it wasn’t just me then?” I asked, directing the question to Quick and Sweet. “That was unnecessarily hard? That test?”

“We’ve never seen one so brutal,” Sweet admitted. “Compulsion is supposed to be banned, and those beasts… I think someone might be trying to kill you, Lady Queen.”

“Enough of the Lady Queen nonsense. You’ll call me Bea, or Beatrice, and you’ll tell Teddy to do the same. Do you think I made the right choice, asking Ashen here? He seems to not have it in for me as much as the others… though it would make sense if he wanted me dead. He should be on the throne, in my opinion.”

“Ashen has never wanted to be King. He and Nareon conquered the throne together, but Ashen gave it over without a fight, asking to be given an advisor spot instead.”

I frowned, biting my lip. “What about the other brother? Elias?”

Sweet shrugged. “Nobody has seen Elias for… well, a long time.”

Gretal finished combing my hair, and then tapped my shoulder. “Go and put something on beneath that so I can treat you properly. I can’t have the Queen disrobing in front of these two rapscallions.”

“Rapscallions?” I laughed, the sound alien to my sore ears.

I stood and moved to the door of my bedchamber. “Really, people don’t have much of an opinion of my Guard.”

I changed into a sleeveless undershirt and a fresh pair of leggings before returning to Gretal, who made me lie on my back on the chaise so that she could prod and scowl at my stomach.

“You really should call for a healer,” Quick said, eyeing the patch of purplish blue that was beginning to spread wider, up over my ribcage and down to my hip bone, the hawk’s markings spearing two red lines diagonally across.

“Nareon ordered a woman to heal me once, she almost fainted.”

“Healing is hard, but it’s their job.”

“It’s not fair to transfer your pain to another. Besides, it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Gretal made an agitated sound, and I glanced at her face, seeing that her eyes flicked up to the bandage Harbringer had dressed my shoulder with. I hadn’t taken it off in the bath, because I suspected that I had probably ripped out his stitches during the Throne Test.

“Alright,” I conceded, “that one might be a little worse than the others.”

The door opened again, saving me from a response. From behind Gretal’s torso, I saw several people slipping into the room.

“Can we do this later?” I asked Gretal, half raising myself as Ashen’s face came into view, his mysterious violet scrutiny touching upon everything at once, before settling on me. 

“No.” She pushed me back down, and bent to fish around for something in her medical bag.

I chuckled and sat up again, much to Gretal’s chagrin. “I’ll let you fuss later, I promise.”

She huffed and allowed me to sit up, but then moved to the side of the chaise and began to cut away my shoulder bandage. I sighed, deciding this was probably as good a compromise as I was going to get, and then gestured for Ashen to have a seat.

He lowered himself into an armchair beside my chaise, propping his ankle over his knee and surveying Teddy, who moved to stand beside the door, before swinging his eyes back to me. I wondered what Teddy had said to get him here, and whether Leif was already in the room, hiding in a closet or something.

“You’ve been very forthcoming with me so far,” I told Ashen, as the bandage finally fell away from my arm, and Sweet winced out of the corner of my eye.

“No nice deed goes unpunished,” he quipped, taking in my shoulder and raising an eyebrow. “You should really get a healer for that.”

I ignored both comments. “I want to ask you something.”

“I am at liberty to answer.”

“Is someone trying to kill me?”

“Without a doubt,” he replied, no trace of amusement or duality in his voice. He was simply stating the obvious, it seemed.

“Do you know who it is?”

“You mean, apart from yourself, Lady Queen?”

“My own death-wish aside, yes.”

His smile quirked a little. “Did you know that feeding from a powerful synfee is taboo, in this kingdom?”

“I do now.”

“I am sure it irks Ayleth, to know that her lover shared something so primitive with you.”

“Ayleth is trying to kill me?”

“Not on her own.”

“So who else, then?”

“Tell me about that charming blade you always seem to be carrying around.”

“It’s the knife that killed my father. I intend to return it to its owner.”