A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,18

first.

I met her outside, still shrugging into a fresh cotton shift.

The sky above us was velvety black, and a waning sickle moon offered scant light. As we walked through the forest of tents, I massaged my right shoulder, looser, but still sore with overuse.

“At Asrodei, when someone is determined to work themselves ragged for the sake of working themselves ragged, we send them to the ice baths after,” Kelis said, all studied nonchalance as she fingered the slim knife at her waist. She still wore her bloodletting knife despite being far from Ternain. “Have you been?”

“Of course,” I said with a smile that was quickly replaced with a grimace as I recalled the baths. Anali sent me to the long bathing chamber in the Fort’s infirmary just twice. Enduring tubs full of ice was part treatment and part punishment. Both times, I had snuck from my bed to practice swordplay by moonlight and had woken too sore to make a proper effort in my lessons. After the bath, instead of returning to the Sandpits, I had to cut bandages for the apprentice healers all afternoon.

“You’ve worked yourself to the bone each day for a week.”

“And I suppose you and Anali must be trying to find some way to stop me.”

Kelis stopped, her usually ruffled hair slicked back in a knot. Dark eyes surveyed me. “You’re a grown woman, Your Highness. It isn’t my job or the Captain’s to stop you from being foolish. That’s your job now. I only wanted to ask why.”

Perhaps it was the darkness that made me feel safe enough to share the truth. Or maybe it was the clarity of Kelis’s eyes and the lack of judgment there. “I’m not sparring mindlessly. I’m trying to . . . find the bottom of this new strength. I’m testing my limits before someone else has a chance to test them.”

“Aye,” Kelis said. “I understand. You seek control.”

Her words landed true. There was one person I could control, and thus depend on—myself. Not my family, not Baccha. There were limits to how much I could trust everyone now, even my friends.

When we were close enough to my tent to see Aketo waiting outside it, staring up at the stars, Kelis slowed.

I inclined my head, taking this momentary pause to draw a deep breath.

“If I may offer advice, Your Highness?”

I crossed my arms, glancing sidelong at Aketo’s lean form. “As long as you start calling me by my name, so be it.”

Kelis snorted. “If you truly want to learn your limitations, you must train your body alongside your magick. Good night, Eva.”

With that, she disappeared behind a nearby tent and faded into the night.

I was glad she’d gone, or else I might have confessed that I hadn’t used magick since I changed. Kelis was almost too easy to talk with.

When I reached Aketo, he lifted two buckets. “I told Anali we would go to the well tonight.”

The well lay about a mile east of camp. During the day, men and women balancing stoneware jars on their heads and hips walked the winding dirt path that led from Orai to the aged well. Its position indicated the town had once been larger, but now the wildness of the Plain butted up against it.

We were silent as ghosts, neither of us eager to talk. Once we reached the well, Aketo turned to me, his expression careful. Orai’s well was red clay elaborately carved to look like a tree stump growing from the earth. Roughhewn stone plinths held up a bucket and chain. Broken pottery littered the yellow grass that grew waist high.

When we first arrived here, I had noticed that, around the well, grass grew through patches of paving stones. I had a feeling ruins of a once-larger town were buried beneath the dirt. Few noble Ladies would have chosen such an isolated place as their homestead. I wondered why our family settled here.

I opened my mouth, but Aketo held up a hand. “I have to tell you something first.” Before I could relax, he rushed on. “The first time we met, you asked me why I enlisted and why I’d come to Ternain and I told you part of the truth. There were other things I hid.”

“What?” For a moment, I thought I’d heard him wrong. “You mean the affair?”

The one between my father and his mother.

This time it was Aketo who sputtered in confusion. “All this time you’ve known?”

“Not exactly.” I blew out a breath. “I wondered at Asrodei. When