She flattened her palm against the tree and looked at him over her shoulder. The wool scarf had slipped a little, and her red-gold hair made a halo around her shrouded face. “But before. When the Nocklyn lord was talking to me. You sent me thoughts on purpose.”
“I did that time. I haven’t tried to do it since! I’m not sure it’s a good thing that you can hear me when I don’t want to be overheard. Let me see if I can shield my thoughts from you now when I’m really trying.”
He shut his mind down, staring at her in concentration. I wonder what Senneth will make of this conversation, he thought, willing the words to stay locked inside his own head. She will not like it any more than Valri would, but I’m certainly not telling the queen.
Amalie tilted her head as if listening, but looked disappointed. “No. Nothing.”
He smiled. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“Not to me,” she said. “I like to hear you thinking. It makes me feel like-like-there is someone else in the world.”
He was troubled, and that was a rare state for Cammon. “Majesty, I’m pretty sure the queen would say you should be looking to other people to keep you company.”
She tilted her head to one side, considering that. “Valri likes you.”
“I think so. But that doesn’t mean she thinks I’m suitable to be your friend.”
Amalie shrugged, dropped her hand, and started kicking her way down the leaf-strewn path. Cammon fell in step beside her. “But you want to be my friend,” she said.
He couldn’t help himself. He smiled at that. “Oh, I do. But scruffy mystics with no family connections don’t get to pick princesses as their friends.”
Amalie smiled, too. “But, you see, I am the princess. I get to order people to do what I say. And I say, ‘Cammon, I want you to be my companion.’ What can you do about it? Nothing. You have to obey.”
He gave up. He didn’t particularly want to keep his distance anyway. “Well, good. And if Valri and Milo tell me I have to stay away, I won’t listen to them. Only if you tell me.”
“So I want you to entertain me at dinner,” she said.
“Entertain you how? At the formal dinners? With your father and all the nobles present?”
She nodded. “Those dinners. Particularly when one of my suitors is present. I want you to tell me stories.” She glanced at him. “With your mind. Put the stories in my head.”
He tried not to laugh. “Won’t that make it hard for you to concentrate on the conversation?”
“We’ll work out a signal. I’ll touch my left earring if I’m bored and want you to talk to me, and I’ll touch my right earring if I want you to be quiet.”
It was a terrible idea. Valri would flay him alive if he agreed, and Senneth would not be even slightly amused. Kirra would think it a delightful plan, but Kirra was hardly a role model for anybody. “Majesty-”
She took a lofty tone. “I command you. You have to do what I say.”
He felt, for a moment, like a swimmer resisting a strong current-and then he put his head under and succumbed. “Well, then, I will. I don’t know how entertaining any of my stories are, though.”
“You can make disparaging comments about my suitors,” she said. “Make fun of their hair or their clothes.”
“I’m really the wrong one to talk about how other people look.”
“And you can let me know when they’re lying. Right there at the dinner table.”
“And then you’ll challenge them, I suppose. ‘Not true, ser. You only own half that many horses.’ ”
She grinned. “You think it would make conversation awkward? I won’t say anything. But I’d like to know.”
“All right, then. I’ll tell you whenever I pick up anything interesting from their thoughts.” He glanced at her. “Valri won’t like it.”
She gave him an angelic smile. “Valri won’t know.”
He glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting the queen to appear any minute, anxious and scolding. “She’s probably looking for you right now. Are you cold? Do you want to go in?”
She shook her head. “I want to see the raelynx.”
He was pleased. “You do? I love to visit him. I’ve never seen you there.”
She turned and led him in the direction of the big cat’s private enclosure. “I used to go with Valri almost every day. These past few weeks I’ve scarcely had a moment to myself, so I haven’t been. I wonder if he’ll have forgotten me.”
Someone was coming up the pathway. Cammon touched her arm, put his finger to his lips, and drew her aside. Like children, they hid behind a springy yew until the solitary gardener had passed by, then they grinned at each other and scampered on down the path.
“What does Valri plan to do with him?” he asked. “Does she really think she can keep him here forever?”
Amalie was silent a moment. “I hope so. I’ve grown attached to him. I would hate to see him returned to the Lirrens, even though that’s where he belongs.”
“He’s not a pet, you know. He can’t be gentled like a horse.”
“I know. Valri told me.”
He glanced at her. “But you’d like to try.”
She shrugged and didn’t answer.
It took them almost fifteen minutes to cross the compound to the garden where the raelynx was imprisoned. From thirty yards away, Cammon could sense its restless, hungry presence. Violence and motion wrapped in a package of exquisite beauty. It was like fire or wind or something elemental. Not just inhuman-bordering on divine.
It was aware of their approach, too, and by the time they made it to the gate it had padded over to press its square nose against the bars. As when he had been here with Valri, Cammon sensed an unexpected emotion at the forefront of the cat’s mind. He strove to identify it while he watched Amalie step up to the gate and circle her fingers around the bars.
Remembrance. Recognition.
“Be careful,” he said. “He can bite your hand off.”
“He won’t,” she said, and stroked her index finger down the red fur of his nose.
Hard to believe that there was anyone in the world that Cammon would find himself urging to caution. “Majesty. Be careful.”
For an answer, she slipped one hand between the rods and scratched under the red chin, extended for just that purpose. With her other hand, she reached through and slowly pulled the tufted ears through her fingers.
Cammon was afraid to move, afraid to startle the creature into sudden brutal movement. “Amalie. Stop. Amalie.”
The raelynx began to purr.
It was a dark rumbling sound, so deep and throaty it might almost be a growl of warning. Except its eyes were closed and its flicking tail was stilled and the emotion emanating from its wild heart was even stronger, and even stranger.
Affection.
The raelynx knew the princess and, in the most primitive fashion, loved her.
“Just how much time did you and Valri spend down here in the past year?” he asked in a low voice.
She gave him a quick flashing smile and pulled her hands back, which filled him with overwhelming relief. “All told, days and days,” she said. “I thought he would remember me.”
And before Cammon truly realized what she was about, she pulled a key from her pocket, opened the locked gate, and stepped inside the garden.
CHAPTER 13
CAMMON was ossified with horror.
Standing there like one of those grim statues of her forebears, he watched Amalie crouch to the ground before the raelynx and rub her fingers over the brushy fur of its face. Its purr intensified; the ground itself seemed to shake with the sound. The raelynx turned its head to catch Amalie’s wrist between its teeth, and Cammon’s heart exploded, but the cat was playing. It nipped her skin, then ran its rough tongue down the length of her forearm. That hurt; Cammon felt Amalie’s sudden pain spike through her bubbling delight. But she didn’t cry out or jerk away. Instead she bent down and pressed her nose against the cat’s and ruffled the fur on either side of its face.