A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,12

required? And how could I even hope to be crowned when I was khimaer?

But as long as I had even the slimmest chance, I had to fight for the throne. The freedom of thousands of khimaer depended on it.

When we had finally found Orai a few days ago, we made our camp in the shadow of a outcrop of striated red-and-white stone. The Plain’s dense grass was sparse here and we were downwind of the village’s only well. And still close enough that we risked trips to it at night.

When I reached the high grass at the perimeter of the camp, I undid my sword belt and laid the weapon on the ground. I waved at Kelis, who stopped about twenty feet away, and she saluted in reply.

I began the way Anali first taught me when I moved to Asrodei. I bent at the waist and planted my palms in the dirt. In our first lesson, she had bade me to listen to the pulse of the earth. I didn’t truly understand what she meant until Aketo’s lessons in kathbaria.

Now I dug my claws into the rocky soil and let my mind fall silent. Wind knifing through the grass reached my ears. Finally energy crackled in my hands and I surged up, as if to cup the sun itself.

I cycled through the stretches until I forgot everything but the strength and rhythm of my body, which was its own song.

I included a few new movements focused on my neck and shoulders. It was easy to forget that I had horns until I lay down on my bedroll at night, my back aching. I was still getting used to the weight of them. Next I practiced a series of hand-to-hand attacks Aketo taught me until my limbs were warm and loose.

Finally I retrieved my sword. I lifted the blade, sighting down it to an imagined foe, and lost myself in the savage dance.

I dashed to the right, blade singing as it slashed the air. Breath blossomed in my chest, a near-jubilant feeling taking over me as I spun. The sword was light as a dagger and seemed an extension of my hands. I flowed through the sequence of sword forms easily, with enough strength behind each strike to kill.

I pushed my body harder, bade my limbs to move faster.

When I slowed, I fell to my knees as fear threatened to upend my stomach.

Not just fear, but joy at the power that sang in my veins.

I was not winded. The burn of muscle fatigue did not weigh down my legs. I could have gone an hour more. Two.

No, ten.

I’d suffered long hours after leaving Ternain, worried I would never get used to my new body. That perhaps everyone but me would adjust to it, so that I’d always seem a stranger to myself. But I hadn’t anticipated how much my body truly had changed. Freeing my magick had done more than shift my physical features.

All the newfound strength, speed, and stamina stole my breath, but I was determined to control my new well of strength. And understand it.

I knew no better way to learn my body, and make it mine again, than to work like this.

So I stood and began again, sweat stinging my eyes, old wound aching.

I did not allow my thoughts to linger on whatever other changes—and magick—would come. Baccha would call me a coward for it, but I found I didn’t care.

Chapter 2

Eva

By the time I finished, the sky over the Plain was ablaze. Burnt orange and gold-flecked crimson streaked through the sky from the setting sun as it tipped into the horizon. The sparse leaves of a massive baobab tree danced like tiny flames in the distance. But that was nothing compared to how this golden hour before nightfall transformed my sister.

Her golden-brown skin had deepened and the sun had seen fit to turn her light brown skin to a deeper bronze. Her hair looked spun of the finest yellow gold, her cheeks dotted with flecks of copper. Even in an ill-fitting tunic and pants, and a streak of ocher dirt across one cheek, she was still very much a creature of the Court.

I found myself wondering about her father’s identity. He must have been the source of her staggering beauty. Had whoever told her about Papa revealed that to her? I would never get her to tell me, but I wondered at whatever man had stolen our mother’s heart, then spurned her. Who would reject a Queen?