Tiras seemed loathe to release me, but in the quiet space after passion was spent and our skin cooled, he rolled away. I followed immediately and gathered him to me, my eyes almost as heavy as my heart.
“Stubborn woman. Sleep.” Tenderness rang in the familiar command, and a smile touched my lips before his mouth found mine again.
I couldn’t sleep. I wouldn’t. I didn’t. I squeezed every second from the time he had left, kissing his mouth and holding him close until he began to shudder, his eyes full of pain, his body arching from the bed. He was holding on for me, and I put my hands on his chest, willing him to stay, pressing words and spells into his skin. But he was now a part of me, and I could not cure myself.
Then he was gone, bursting from the room, becoming a bird before he reached the balcony wall, soaring up and away from me like he’d never been there at all.
For a solid month, Tiras didn’t come home. He didn’t change. He was an eagle by day and an eagle by night. Some nights he came to me as a bird, leaving me little things, a rose, a magnificent feather, a glittering, black rock as big as my fist. Each morning there was another gift, but no Tiras.
Then he stopped coming at all, though I watched for him wherever I went. I visited the mews daily, my eyes clinging to the rafters, pretending to be interested in the irritable falcons that bristled whenever I approached. Hashim, the Master of the Mews, didn’t question my sudden interest in his birds or my frequent visits, but after several days, he greeted me with a careful suggestion.
“The king must have told you about my eagle friend,” he murmured, not raising his eyes from the bell he was attaching to a falcon’s hood.
My heart lurched but I didn’t flinch, and I watched him warily, waiting for him to continue. He glanced up briefly, and his eyes were kind.
“He has not returned, my queen, not for a very long time. I watch for him too. If he does, I will send word immediately. Never fear.”
I could only nod, fearful of revealing too much about myself and about the king, wondering if Hashim had known Tiras’s secret all along.
Kjell was as drawn and quiet as I, and though there was little love lost between us, we’d formed an alliance, desperate to protect the king and the kingdom, though that was getting harder and harder to do. We’d spread rumors of his travels to shore up support in the provinces, though the guards must have wondered who accompanied him on these official royal visits.
Twenty-eight days into the king’s absence, a message was received by carrier pigeon from Firi. Volgar sightings were increasing in the area, and nests near the shores of the Jyraen Sea were causing general unease. The Lord of Firi wasn’t asking for reinforcements, but the news added to the bleak atmosphere in the castle.
What would Tiras want me to do? I asked Kjell, pacing from one end of the library to the other. I need him to come home.
“There may come a day when he won’t return, Lark,” Kjell said quietly. “We have to face that.”
He will return. He always has.
“You have to start making decisions without him,” Kjell urged. “It is what he has been preparing you for.”
I can’t rule alone.
“He was convinced you could.” It was the kindest thing Kjell had ever said to me, and when he raised his blue eyes to mine, I saw something new there. A begrudging respect, a sliver of forgiveness . . . something. For the first time, I didn’t feel any disdain or dismissal.
“You have to start somewhere. There hasn’t been a hearing in a month. The people are afraid, crime is rising, and altercations abound. Our dungeon is full, and the guard doesn’t know what to do with those they are holding. You have to take his place. You are the queen.”
Will you help me? Will you speak for me?
It was Kjell’s turn to balk.
How will I render judgments if I can’t speak?
Kjell groaned and fisted his hands in his hair.
Sometimes Tiras and I pretend that I am whispering in his ear. That way it doesn’t look so odd when we communicate in front of others.
Kjell looked as if he regretted his insistence on a hearing day, but he agreed, the word was spread, and the following morning I walked into the Great Hall amid confusion and wonder, chatter and whispers. I sat on the throne, and the guard, already briefed by Kjell, began to organize the line of hesitant subjects, who looked as dubious as I felt.
And it began.
One by one, the people approached, quickly stated their case, and a judgment was made. I listened more to what they weren’t saying, just like I’d done before, terrified that I would make the wrong choice. Kjell would lean in, I would cup my hand over my mouth, pretending to speak privately, though my lips never moved, and I would tell him my judgment. He would repeat my verdict and we would move onto the next case. He never questioned me or raised a condescending eyebrow.
I grew more confident as the day progressed, relying almost entirely on my ability to hear what others couldn’t. When I was unsure, I asked Kjell for guidance, and he would make a suggestion. But that happened less and less as the day wore on.
Toward the end of the day, a man came forward and laid a large satchel at the foot of the dais.
“Tell the queen your trouble,” Kjell commanded impatiently.
“I caught a Changer,” the man exclaimed excitedly. “I hunt them . . . for the good of Jeru, of course.”
“Show me,” Kjell commanded, sounding exactly like Tiras, and I heard the same apprehension in his voice that gripped my chest.
The man opened his satchel and pulled out a huge black bird with a glossy white head. He laid it out carefully and stepped back, puffing his chest and standing akimbo like he’d presented me with a chest of jewels.
The bird was limp and lifeless.
I rose from my throne, overcome with dread, and Kjell hissed beside me, telling the hunter to back away. I knelt beside the bird and raised his red-tipped wing. I started to shake, my vision blurring as Kjell pulled me away. The feathers were still warm, and bile rose dangerously in my throat. I collapsed in my throne, unable to stand.
“How do you know it was a Changer?” Kjell asked, his voice so cold the man shivered where he stood, sensing his offering had not been well-received.
“I saw her change,” the man babbled. My heart stuttered and skipped, and guilt warred with the sliver of hope that made me ask, Her?
“Her?” Kjell repeated.
“She was a woman one moment . . . then she changed. She flew away. I set a snare . . . and I caught her when she returned.”
“And you killed her?” Kjell asked.
“She is a Changer,” the man repeated, as if that were explanation enough. I rose to my feet once more, outrage giving me mettle, and the man must have seen something in my face that alarmed him, for he began to back up.
“I didn’t mean to kill it. It was alive in my snare. I covered it in the shroud and put it in the sack. There must not have been sufficient air.”
The law says only the king can condemn the Gifted.
Kjell repeated what I’d said, and the man began to tremble.