A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,23

in each corner of the room. Dressed in bright cotton dresses of burnt orange and rose, they cut fruit for the inn’s guests to go along with their breakfast.

No, Baccha counted seconds. Partly because it was a welcome distraction from the headache throbbing at the base of his skull, and partly because he was curious. How long would it take the near deity who ran this establishment to notice him?

Just thirty-two passed before someone tapped his back.

He looked up to find one of the barmaids, her eyes the green of the sea. Her skin was tawny, a pale brown shade, and auburn coils were like the sun rising behind her delicate face.

She was a pretty one, the sharp points of her ears marking her fey.

Baccha finished off that last bit of his drink and pounded his chest to relieve the sudden need to heave up a lung.

“Aunt Lyse will see you now,” the barmaid said with a cool smile. Her eyes held a hint of frustration. Likely put there because she could not see through his glamour and Aunt Lyse, owner of this establishment, would not have any interest in the plain human guise he currently wore.

For the most part, seeing through glamour was a matter of strength of will and magick. (Baccha had long believed all matters of magick came down to strength of will.) Few fey had lived long enough to develop the skill required to unravel his glamour.

Aunt Lyse was one of those who could.

Baccha rose to his full height, peeling off layers of glamour like tatters of a gossamer cloak. He’d been slouching for weeks, hidden behind a nondescript face whose features he adjusted each morning. At the subtle widening of the young woman’s eyes and the color rising in her cheeks, Baccha loosed a sigh. If nothing else, his face could be relied upon to rouse desire.

Now that he’d reached the Citadel ahead of any rumors about Eva and her sister, or himself, he could afford to show his true form. And Aunt Lyse would take insult if he appeared before her with any face but his own.

A couple people in the morning rush noticed his transformation, and those who did glared in confusion, not recognition.

That news of what happened, now six weeks ago, had not reached the Citadel chilled him. Not that he wanted rumors chasing him or her across the Queendom. But if the Queen had hidden news of her missing daughters, or worse, they’d been caught before the news had any reason to spread, there had to be some sort of calculation behind it.

Like hiding the King’s and Princess’s true heritage.

Or perhaps that the throne now lacked an heir with both its Princesses missing.

Baccha focused again on the waitress, who surveyed him with a veiled expression. “I am Saras, my Lord. I will bring you to our Aunt.”

Baccha chuckled. Lyse and her apprentices believed that she was kin to all fey, but unlike most who came to see their Aunt, Baccha was her actual flesh and blood.

He followed behind Saras’s gently swaying stroll. As they walked through the dining room toward the steamy and perhaps even more crowded kitchen, Saras piled empty glasses and stoneware platters on a small tray balanced atop a single palm. By the time they reached the large sink in the kitchen, the towering dishes rose higher than Baccha’s height. Balance and grace were a particular quality of the fey, and a reflection of their latent potential for violence.

A strength some fey went to great lengths to hide, consciously or unconsciously, working to distance themselves from the khimaer humans despised.

It made it easier for humans to believe the fey were not a threat, and to ignore the fey’s centuries of kinship with khimaer. An unspoken rule had risen up in the wake of the Great War: They had to guard their greater magicks from human eyes, lest the humans decided they too needed to be caged. Bloodkin avoided feeding around humans for the same reason.

Saras paid him little attention as they left the kitchens. She padded up a service staircase he knew led to the permanent dwellings in the inn.

It seemed his display had been a waste of time. Saras no more recognized him than had the thousands of Myreans he’d encountered on this trip south. He would have to ask Aunt Lyse to start telling more of his old adventures.

That even one of Aunt Lyse’s acolytes did not know his face stung—a strange discomfort he should have