A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,101

to get away with this anymore.” But Aketo’s eyes were still on the gallows.

“We should head back to the Aerie,” I said, a quaver in my voice.

“Yes, you’re right,” he said, his jaw clenched tight.

Aketo opened his mouth, but his words were swallowed as the sound of a scream pierced the night. I recognized my sister’s voice instantly and took off running.

Chapter 25

Isadore

It would have been better if she could hate Daischa.

It would have been for the best if she had never come here at all.

Goodwill seeped from the woman’s skin like perfume and it should have infuriated Isa. Daischa swept through her small home like it was a Court of her own making, ladling rice, pouring drinks, and refreshing tea, lithe as a dancer. She was stunning, but not like Mother, whose beauty seized you by the throat.

Instead Daischa carried an inner warmth that radiated with her every smile and affectionate touch. Every time Isa managed to work herself into a fury, it melted away when Daischa made her way around the table, asking a silent question with a touch of her fingers before she piled more food onto Isa’s plate or refilled her cup.

She should have expected no less from the woman who raised Aketo. His sense of being perfectly at ease in his skin had always aggravated Isa, and clearly he’d learned it from her.

All of that had been nearly too much to bear, but when Eva held Otho, without even considering that she might want to hold him, that she wanted to tell him her name or let him steal her jewelry for teething, she couldn’t take it.

Unlike Eva, she was comfortable with babies. When she was young, the nursery in the Queen’s Palace was one of the places Kitsina liked to visit when they weren’t at Court.

Her sister, Kethra, was one the nursemaids there. She was Kitsina’s diametric opposite, plump and pretty with eyes like the sky and chunky blond-streaked curls piled atop her head. Her pockets were always filled with candied fruit. Whenever they visited, Kethra let Isa cradle one of her charges while she and Kitsina shared Court gossip. Isa had loved the children’s smells and their soft sounds, how their minds offered up no cruelty, only simple desires.

She left Daischa’s home and began walking without any plan. It was reckless to wander a place she didn’t know alone, but she hardly cared about anything, let alone what these people might think of her. She followed the trees for a while, her hands trailing through the soft leaves. A few people still milled about the street. She expected them to keep wide of her, and several did eye her with suspicion, but just as many approached her, inviting her to share the warmth of their stove. When Isa declined in stumbling Khimaeran, they smiled and corrected her pronunciations until she had it right.

One older woman, whose heart-shaped face was framed by ram’s horns, had undone her scarf and wrapped it around Isa’s neck. She’d tried to protest, but the woman waved her off, calling, “I won’t need it in my bed, but you will need it in this cold.”

Isa walked until she reached the steps leading down the mountain and sat down. She wasn’t sure how long she sat before a shadow fell over her. “Thinking of walking all the way home? If so, you’re going to want this.”

She looked up just in time for a wool blanket to fall on top of her head.

Sputtering, Isa reached first for the tattoo of a white desert rose in the center of her forearm. Her magick quested outward, hoping to tie a string around his will.

But the magick would not take hold. It seemed to melt upon contact with his mental net. It was infuriating.

She threw off the blanket and jumped to her feet, slightly off-balance on the stairs, her arms pinwheeling.

Dthazi, smirking, offered a hand. “Easy there, hellcat.”

She managed to steady herself without his help and sneered, “You’re the one who looks like . . . like an overgrown mountain lion.”

He grinned, flashing those long canines, and retrieved the fallen blanket. “Yes, I do rather look like a cat. Thank you for noticing. I will not bite—however, you look liable to take a chunk out of me right now.”

She realized she was baring her teeth at him, and quickly smoothed her expression, taking the blanket from him and wrapping it around her. “Perhaps I will.”

“Bah,” he purred. An actual purr that left Isa staring