The Shadow Queen (18 page)

Oh.
She wrinkled her nose. “You’ve never seen freckles?”

“Freckles.” He said the word softly, as if it were a fragile gift. “Are they just on your face?”

She knew her cheeks flamed with color. She also knew that, despite the man’s body, it was a boy asking out of curiosity. Still . . .

“I don’t know you well enough to answer that.”

He nodded, accepting.

He was half a head taller than she, if that. It would have been easy enough to look him in the eyes if his own weren’t so busy roaming over her face.

“Did you come out to look at the gardens?” she asked.

He cringed, as if she had scolded him for doing something wrong.

“I tend the gardens. It’s my job now. I don’t stay in the big house. I’m not in the way.”

His voice had risen to a kind of desperate keening and he looked ready to bolt, so she turned toward what might have been a flower bed at one time. “Well, you’ve certainly got enough work. This land hasn’t been loved in a long time.”

Something changed so suddenly, she gasped in response to that flash of strong emotion. She couldn’t decipher the look in Gray’s eyes, couldn’t get a feel for where he was now, mentally or emotionally. Which wasn’t good because even if he was diminished in some way, he was still a Warlord Prince and he outranked her. She couldn’t tell if the Purple Dusk power she was sensing was from his Birthright Jewel or his Jewel of rank, but either way, it was darker than her Rose.

And then, oddly, she had the feeling that some broken piece inside him suddenly settled back into its rightful place.

A moment after that, it was as if nothing had happened. Except that Gray seemed a little less like a boy.

“No, it hasn’t been loved for a long time,” he said.

Too many feelings. She’d come out here to walk and get away from all the feelings, to do something to settle herself before she went back to the next group of males who would be disappointed in the chosen Queen.

“Do you have a basket or a wheelbarrow?” she asked.

“We have both.”

“Good. I have an hour before the next meeting, so that’s enough time to clear a bit of ground.”

“Clear ground?”

“Weed the flower bed.”

His eyes widened. “You can’t weed.”

“Yes, I can.”

“But . . . you’re the Queen.”

“Yes.”

He rocked back on his heels, clearly at a loss.

“I’m the Queen who lives in this house now, so these are my gardens, right?”

“Yes,” he said warily.

“So these are my weeds. And since I’m the Queen, I can pull weeds if I want to. Right?”

He wasn’t quick to agree. Well, he
was
a Warlord Prince. They were never quick to agree about anything. Unless it was their idea in the first place.

Finally he said, “You’ll get dirty. It rained last night.”

“I know it rained. Which means the soil will be softer, and the weeds will be easier to pull.”

“But you’ll get dirty.” He frowned at the hem of her skirt, which had already picked up some moisture from brushing the top of the grass.

“I can”—she looked toward the stone shed, saw him stiffen, and looked the other way—“change clothes behind those bushes while you get the wheelbarrow.”

Not giving him time to argue, she hurried behind the bushes, vanished her good clothes, then called in the old shirt and trousers she usually wore for gardening. As she stuffed her legs into the trousers, she caught a heel of her shoe in the hem and hopped for a few steps, saying words her father pretended she didn’t know.

“Should have used Craft, Cassie,” she muttered as she finally got the heel clear of the hem. “Pass the shoe through the cloth and you’re less likely to topple over and fall on your ass.”

Once she got the trousers on, she buttoned up the long-sleeved shirt, and quickly braided her hair, using Craft to secure the end of the braid.

“Good enough,” she muttered as she hurried back to the flower bed, returning at the same time Gray arrived with the rattling wheelbarrow.

“These are a bit rusty, but I found a couple of short-handled claws that are good for loosening soil and digging out weeds,” he said. He hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he kept glancing at her face and then looking away.

Finally he said, “Your skin is very pale.”

Cassidy wrinkled her nose. “Pale skin goes with the red hair.” Unlike her brother Clayton’s, her skin never changed to that soft gold color when she spent time in the sun. It just went from milk to cooked lobster.

“Your eyes aren’t brown, but they aren’t green either.”

“The color is called hazel. Doesn’t anyone have eyes like that here?”

Gray shook his head. “Brown and blue mostly. Some green. None like yours. They’re pretty.”

A little flutter of feminine pleasure. The only man who had thought anything about her was pretty was her father, and fathers never saw daughters in the same way as other men, so Poppi’s opinion didn’t really count.

Which wasn’t something she would
ever
say to Poppi.

Gray took a step back, as if he was leaving.

“I know you have other work to do,” Cassidy said,“but could you stay a few minutes and point out some of the good plants?” She wanted him to stay. This place didn’t feel as lonely now that she’d met him.

Another hesitation. “You want me to help?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“No, I don’t mind.” He seemed to be mulling over a lot more than spending an hour weeding a flower bed. “You should wear a hat to protect your face.”

“Oh, I . . .” He was right, of course. But somehow in the past few minutes he’d made some transition from scared younger boy to bossy older boy. Politely bossy, but she remembered a childhood afternoon visit with her cousin Aaron, which had been her first experience with being around a Warlord Prince of any age, and she still remembered that particular tone of bossiness that no one but a Warlord Prince could achieve.

“Don’t you have a hat?”

“Yes, I have a hat, but . . . You’ll laugh at my hat.”

“I won’t laugh,” Gray said quickly, putting one hand over his heart. Then he thought for a moment and added, “I’ll try not to laugh.”

Good enough.

She called in her gardening hat and plunked it on her head. It was a simple straw hat with a wide brim that kept the sun off her face and neck.

Gray didn’t laugh, but his smile kept getting wider and wider as he studied her hat.

“Why does it have a chunk missing from one side?” he asked.

“Because my brother was teasing me last summer and holding it behind his back—and didn’t notice when the goat snuck up behind him and took a bite out of it.”

His smile got even wider. “Shouldn’t it have ribbons?”

“I use Craft to keep it in place.”

Nodding, and still smiling, he handed her one of the short-handled claws. “I’ll show you what doesn’t belong in this garden.”

 

Where in the name of Hell did she go?
Theran scanned the weed-tangled mess of raised beds that framed a terrace before he headed for the rest of the formal gardens.

She’d
said
she wanted a little air and would be back shortly. That had been over an hour ago. A meal, and the men, were waiting for her return so they could get on with the rest of these meetings.

Considering how bad everything looked, what could
Lady
Cassidy find out here that would amuse her for so long?

The answer punched his heart. He lengthened his stride as he headed for the big stone shed. It had held the groundskeeper’s office at one time, but had become a catchall for unwanted tools. He’d helped Gray clear out the smaller room in the shed and put in a cot, a small chest of drawers, and a bookcase.

Gray was used to living rough. So was he. But here, with the mansion in sight, it seemed . . . meaner, coarser.

It was all Gray could tolerate.

If Cassidy thought she could play with a damaged man just because Gray wasn’t able to fight back, she’d find out the truth quick enough. He, Theran, wasn’t fifteen anymore, didn’t—
wouldn’t
—hide anymore. And Gray wasn’t standing alone anymore, facing something that terrified him.

He spotted Gray and hurried toward his cousin, no longer caring if he found Cassidy. A wheelbarrow full of weeds was on Gray’s left and someone—he caught a glimpse of a straw hat—was on the other side of the wheelbarrow.

“That’s called pearl of wisdom,” Gray said, pointing to a plant. “See? The flower has a sheen like the inside of a shell, and the seedpod looks like a pearl. The flower only blooms for a couple of weeks in the spring.”

“Gray,” Theran called, wondering what servant had befriended his cousin.

Gray looked around, a queer wariness in his eyes before he spotted Theran.

“Theran!” he said happily.

From the other side of the wheelbarrow, a husky voice said, “Oh, shit.
Theran.
”

When she popped up, it took him a moment to recognize her. She was the only person in Dena Nehele who had red hair, but it still took him a moment to recognize her.

Not a Queen. Despite her caste, she was not a Queen.

“Has an hour gone by already?” Cassidy asked.

“And then some. We’ve held the midday meal, thinking you would be back soon.” He couldn’t keep the tightness out of his voice, couldn’t even keep it on the right side of respectful.

“My apologies, Prince Theran.” There was a tightness in her voice too as she stood up and vanished that stupid hat. “I’ll wash up and join you as soon as I can. Please tell the men not to wait for me. They shouldn’t have to eat cold food just because I lost track of the time.”

“We live to serve,” Theran said.

She winced and wouldn’t meet his eyes as she hurried back to the mansion.

Theran watched her for a moment, then looked at Gray. “Are you all right?”

That queer wariness was back in Gray’s eyes. “I’m fine.”

What did she do to you?
He couldn’t ask, but he knew something wasn’t quite right.

As he turned to go back to the mansion, Gray said,“Theran? She knows the land needs to be loved. The Queens who have been living here haven’t cared about that.”

A message there, but Gray had always had a sensitivity to the land, being more aware of it than the people around him were. That sensitivity had heightened after he’d been rescued.

I’m glad you’re not afraid of her, Gray,
Theran thought as he walked back to the mansion,
but what kind of Queen cares more about digging in the dirt than taking care of the people?

 

It took most of the afternoon to meet the Warlords who wanted to be considered for the court. Three belonged to her and were suited to serve in her First Circle. The others wanted status, safety, something else. Whatever it was, they wouldn’t find it with her.

Several Warlords who lived in the town of Grayhaven would be an asset in one of the other twelve circles that made up a court, and she hoped they would accept the offer when the Steward made it on her behalf.

Once she found a Steward. And a Master of the Guard.

And with every man who wasn’t accepted, Theran tensed a little more.

Toward the end of the afternoon the first, and only, Prince arrived. A middle-aged man whose skin sagged as if he’d once been hefty but hadn’t eaten well in quite some time and whose left hand had been broken and badly healed.

“What do you want, Powell?” Archerr asked in a challenging voice.

“I would like to be considered for a position in the court,” Powell replied courteously, looking at Cassidy. “I’m good at organizing schedules and duties.”

“You’re also good at skimming off a percentage of the Queen’s tithes,” Archerr snapped.

“That was never proved,” Ranon snapped in return.

Why would Ranon defend a man accused of stealing from a Queen? Unless the Warlord Prince knew, or suspected, something about Powell that the rest of the men didn’t know.

“Did you steal from the Queen you served?” Cassidy asked.

“Yes,” Powell replied.

Mutters from the Warlords and Warlord Princes who had remained in the room. Snarls from several of the Warlord Princes who were in her First Circle, but she couldn’t tell if they were snarling at Powell or at one another.

“Why?” Cassidy asked.

“The Province Queen I served liked luxury,” Powell said. “Well, they all did, didn’t they? And it was the tithes from the District Queens that had to support those luxuries. It was hard to walk through the town where the Queen lived and see children who were hungry or who were wearing clothes and shoes too patched and torn to be useful. So sometimes a few coins would find their way back to a family for food or clothing.”

“I see,” Cassidy said. “Is that why your hand was broken?”

Powell nodded. “Most people were careful to spread out the spending. One man was not. I claimed to have given the man some coins from my own wages, and the Queen couldn’t prove otherwise. That’s why she had my left hand broken instead of maiming the right hand.”

In Kaeleer, a tribunal of Queens would have known you were lying within minutes,
Cassidy thought.
But their wrath would have been aimed at the Queen who had mistreated her people and not you.

“I have to trust that the people who serve me will work for the good of Dena Nehele,” Cassidy said to Powell. “I understand your reasons, and I can’t say you were wrong. But everyone is going to be living lean for a while, and tithes will be necessary to support the court and take care of the expenses that come with the court. If you think someone is being tithed unfairly, I need to know. But the amount of the tithe, unfair or not, will be my decision. Is that understood?”