The Rival (2 page)

And when he retired, his great-grandson, Jewel's boy, would become Black King.  Rugad had Seen it.

"So," Talon asked.  "Do you think we can invade this place?"

Rugad raised his chin, and gazed down the valley.  Near the horizon, the green disappeared into a white mist, suggesting further riches beyond. 

"We will invade," he said.  "And we will conquer."

He knew that much to be true.  He had Seen the invasion and the victory.  Standing here, on this mountain plateau with the valley that had haunted his Visions for fifty years spreading below him, he knew that the plans he had made on Nye were perfect.

The Black King had arrived.

And nothing would stand in his way.

THE INVASION

[Two Weeks Later]

TWO

Arianna peered into the wavy silvered glass, and jutted out her chin.  The birthmark was the size of her thumb-print, darker than the rest of her already dark skin, and as obvious as the pimples the new hearth boy had.

She pulled her dressing gown tighter, then glanced behind her.  Still no maid.  Good.  Her bedroom was empty.  Sunlight poured in the open window, and the birds in the garden chirruped.  The bed was made, and she had thrown her new gown on the coverlet.  The dress had a low-cut bodice, which her father wouldn't approve of, and a cinched waist that tapered into a flared skirt.  The dressmaker had begged her not to use that pattern, but Arianna had stared the woman down.

The last I knew,
Arianna had said in her best haughty voice,
I was the Princess.  Has someone given my title to you?

The dressmaker had had the grace to blush. She had done what Arianna wanted, knowing that if she didn't the palace wouldn't hire her again.

The palace might not hire her again anyway.  Arianna had heard the woman curse when she thought Arianna wasn't in the room.

Demon spawn.

Even after fifteen years, the Islanders didn't know what to make of Arianna.  She was the second child of Nicholas, the Islander King, and Jewel, the granddaughter of the Fey's Black King.  Arianna had never known her mother.  Jewel had been murdered the day Arianna was born.

Arianna wished her mother had lived.  If her mother had lived, no one would call Arianna demon spawn.  No one would look at her sideways as she went down a hall.  No one would say that she wasn't really Islander, that she was pure Fey.

But it was easy to see how they thought that.  Arianna didn't look like her father.  She had dark skin like the Fey.  She had pointed ears and upswept eyebrows like the Fey.

And, most importantly, she had magick.

Like the Fey.

Her birthmark was the sign of that.  It identified her, according to her Fey guardian, Solanda.  Only Shape-Shifters had such a mark.  It was the sign, Solanda said, of the most perfect Fey.  Yet no matter what shape Arianna Shifted into, the mark remained on her chin.  Sometimes it was a faint outline, a suggestion of a mark, and sometimes it was a stamp, as vivid as a charcoal slash against the skin.

And it was ugly, ugly, ugly.

She was the Islander Princess, the most perfect of the Fey, and she couldn't get rid of the mark on her face.  Solanda said she should look on it with pride.  But Solanda wasn't fifteen.  Solanda didn't understand how the boys stared at the mark, and how the girls giggled at it.  Solanda didn't know that Arianna had overheard all the conversations about the King's strange daughter, with the witch's wart on her face.

Maybe if the witch's wart went away, people would see Arianna for who she was, instead of who they thought she was.

Demon spawn.

She glanced around the room a final time.  No cats, no maids, no hearth boys.  She was still alone.  She leaned over and pulled open a drawer in the bottom of the vanity.

The pot was still there, untouched.

She smiled, wrapped her hand around the ceramic, and pulled the pot out.  She set it on her dresser, pulled off the lid and winced at the sharp tang of aliota leaves. 

The cream inside was a muddy brown.  An awful color for skin.  Skin should be a pale golden white, like her father's.  Then her blue eyes wouldn't seem so startling, so out of place.

She dipped her fingers in the cream, and rubbed some on the back of her left hand, as the dressmaker had instructed her to.  The cream blended in, hiding the tiny cut she had gotten the day before.  She held her hand in front of her, tilting it at different angles, trying to see the blemish.  So far it seemed natural.  If it looked good in the light, she would slather some on her chin before she put on the dress.  She would go to her brother's coming of age ceremony, looking as regal as she could.

No witch's wart to remind them she was different.

She would be beautiful for the first time in her life.

She stood and, holding her hand out in front of her, crossed to the window.  The stone floor was cool beneath her bare feet.  She glanced once at the slippers resting beside the bed.  Shoes were the most uncomfortable contraptions ever invented.  Her feet weren't meant to be bound.  But they would have to be soon.  A coming of age ceremony, as her father kept reminding her, was an Important Event.  She would have to wear the shoes he had ordered to go with her dress.

The window was large.  It ended near the ceiling and stopped about waist high.  Solanda had had it built special, with long hinged glass panes that opened over the garden.  She believed that air was important to well-being  —  a Fey thing that Arianna's father reluctantly agreed with.  A tapestry depicting the coronation of Constantine the First was tied back.  Arianna hadn't looked at it in weeks, disliking the square poorly stitched faces, and the symbols of Rocaanism that dotted the tapestry.

Rocaanism, the state religion, was tied to her father's family.  Her father was a direct descendant of the Roca, God's first representative on the Isle.  Rocaanism was also deadly to her mother's people, the Fey.  Some believed that the union of the Fey and the Roca's descendent polluted the blood, and resulted in Arianna's brother Sebastian. Many believed that Sebastian was dumb.  He wasn't dumb, but he was slow.  Rapid movement  —  and rapid thought  —  seemed impossible for him.

She sat on the piled cushions of the window seat and tilted her hand toward the sun.  Then she frowned.  A stain discolored the skin over the cut.  It looked as if she had spilled Solanda's root tea on her hand.  Everyone would know that Arianna was covering up the blemish instead of having found some way to spell it away.

She clenched her fist and felt the skin pull.  The cream dried hard.  Her skin would have felt like caked mud by the end of the evening.  She would have to go to the ceremony, witches' wart and all.

Then the hair rose on the back of her neck.  Someone was watching her.  She didn't move, but pretended to study her hand.  The birds had stopped singing.  The scent of roses was overpowering, like it was when the gardener was working with the flowers.

Someone was in the garden.

Slowly she tilted her head and looked down.

Sunlight dappled across the flowers.  The roses spotted the green with color, red, pink, white and yellow.  Pansies littered the ground with purple.  The oaks, maples and pines were still; there was no wind.  The garden, her father's pride and joy, the place she had spent most of her childhood, appeared empty.

Then she caught a flash of movement near the bird bath.  She squinted. The bath was clear, the water smooth.  The shade of the nearby oak trees covered the marble inlay, making it look gray.  No birds were in the trees, none were overhead, and clearly none had been in the water, moments before.

She leaned back, and scrubbed her hand with the sleeve of her dressing gown, keeping her gaze on the garden below.  Then a tree branch rustled, but she forced herself not to turn her head.  Instead she watched, as seemingly preoccupied with cleaning as she could be when she was in her cat form.  After a moment, her patience was rewarded. 

A man stepped out of the small copse of trees near the bird bath.  Not a man, exactly, more a boy.

A teenage boy.

Her brother, Sebastian.

This time, she did turn her head.  Sebastian was supposed to be in his rooms, dressing for his coming of age ceremony.  It took him longer to dress than it took anyone else because he insisted on doing it himself.

She placed her palms on the window seat cushions and leaned out.  "Sebastian!" she yelled.  "You're supposed to be inside!"

He looked up, and her breath caught in her throat.  For the first time in his life, Sebastian's eyes were filled with a quick intelligence.  They were blue pools of flashing light.  That was odd.  Sebastian's eyes had never looked blue before.  They were a stone gray. 

His dark hair was mussed, as it always was, hiding his faintly pointed ears.  The exotic features of his face  —  his dark skin, his swooping eyebrows, his small nose  —  blended perfectly with the slight roundness their father had given to his bone structure.  For the first time in his life, Sebastian looked integrated, whole, not like something slapped together from mismatched pieces of clay.

He made a small panicked noise in the back of his throat, a noise that echoed in the silence of the garden, and disappeared into the trees.

"Sebastian!" she called again, but he didn't come to her like he usually did.  Something was wrong.  And her internal sense warned her that if she ran down the steps, through the halls, and into the garden, he would be gone.

So she slipped out of her gown and Shifted.  Her bones compacted and lightened.  Her arms stretched out, the fingers melded into tips, and feathers sprouted all over her body.  Her mouth stretched into a beak, and her vision changed as her eyes moved to the side of her head.

This was her robin form, one of two dozen Shapes she had never told Solanda about.  Shape-Shifters were supposed to have only one alternate form  —  Solanda could only turn into a small tabby cat  —  but so far Arianna had experienced no limitations. She could Shift into anything she chose, as long as she practiced the form in advance.  She had been playing at her robin form since she was six years old.

The change happened within a heartbeat.  She hopped to the edge of the window and flew.  The air currents ruffled her feathers and she felt the warm kiss of freedom. She longed to rise with the wind and explore the city of Jahn, looking for food, looking for other birds, but she quelled the instinct, landing instead on the edge of the bird bath. 

She cocked her head and looked into the trees.  The long cool shadows hid nothing.  She could see the smooth tree trunks, the sloping branches, the carefully tended grass.

Sebastian wasn't quick enough to hide from her.

Was he?

"Sebastian!" she called again.  "If you're not dressed when Dad comes for you, he'll be really mad."

No answer.  The strangeness made her stretch her wings, then tuck them back against her side.  Sebastian always answered her, and he hated displeasing their father.  Normally just the sound of her voice would have made him appear.

"Sebastian!"

She took one small, mad hop, then nearly lost her balance.  She put a spindly leg out to steady herself and tottered over the water for a moment before she remembered her wings.  She opened them and flew into the trees, landing on a maple branch.  A jay landed above her and cawed at her; he thought she was too close to the bath and he wanted to use it.

Another robin landed on a nearby oak tree.  That was confirmation enough.  She would circle the garden and the courtyard to make certain, but she already knew what she would find.

Sebastian was gone.

He had disappeared in less time than it normally took him to move his arm.

Maybe he had finally come into his powers.

Maybe all the abilities he was supposed to have as a mixed Fey had been dormant all these years.

Or maybe something had gone wrong.

No matter what, he would be terrified.  Change always frightened Sebastian.  He would need her.

She wouldn't rest until she found him.

THREE

Gift huddled in the hole near the stone fence.  He was breathing through his mouth, as quietly as he could.  Sweat ran off his nose and dripped on the ground, making dark spots in the dirt.  She would fly above him.  He knew she would.  One thing he had learned about Arianna over the years was that she was brilliant.

And she had seen him.

She thought he was Sebastian, and he supposed in a way he was.  Gift was the baby born to Jewel and Nicholas, Arianna's older brother, but he had been stolen by his grandfather when he was only days old.  Sebastian was the changeling that had been left in Gift's place.

Birds returned to the garden.  Their shadows passed along the ground, their cries echoing overhead.  They couldn't see him.  Maybe Arianna wouldn't either.  He could only hope.  He didn't know what she would do when she saw him.  He was wearing Fey clothes, and he wouldn't be able to explain that.  And the clothes were only the beginning.  Even though he and Sebastian looked alike, they were not identical.  In fact, the only things they had in common were their strange beginning, Gift's birth family, and the mental Link between them.

And maybe their future.

He shuddered despite the afternoon's heat.  The Vision still weighed heavily on him.  He had been a Visionary since he was a little boy  —  unheard of in the history of the Fey  —  and none of his Visions had scared him like this one.

Except the one in which he saw his mother die.

He swallowed.  A robin circled overhead, coming lower, and lower, its head cocking from side to side as it descended.  Despite being raised by the Fey, he had never gotten used to animals and birds speaking with human voices.  When that robin had called out Sebastian's name, Gift had jumped in alarm.  He had nearly tripped in his mad dash to his hiding place.