A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,33

turns, they reached a healing chamber.

In short order, Tavan had them set Eva down on the bed in the center of the room—“Slowly, slowly,” she barked, wings twitching with impatience—and sent Osir and Lirra from the room.

“I will let one of you remain,” the healer chirped. “But you must be able to keep a cool head and assist me.”

“You stay,” Aketo said, turning to Falun. With the sensations of Eva’s pain still ringing in his head, he could barely think.

Falun shook his head. “No, I’ll go to the camp and return with everyone.” To Tavan he said, “Will your . . . friends let me back in again?”

“Not friends, they are my kin, which is infinitely worse.” Tavan’s feathers fluffed in annoyance. “Yes. Lirra will let you in.”

He and Falun shared a long look before the fey stepped out of the room. It wasn’t hard to decipher. Protect her.

He remembered his promise to Baccha to keep Eva safe. So far he had failed spectacularly. He wouldn’t fail her again.

Tavan’s hands dropped to her hips, her fingertips somehow already tinged crimson. “How is she alive?”

Aketo rounded on the woman. Wasn’t it her job to know that? “I think you could give me a better explanation than any I’d offer.”

“She should be dead. From the fall, the shock of shifting so abruptly, the internal damage. She should not still draw breath and yet she lives. Her pulse is strong. Tell me why.”

“There is a spell tethering her life to her sister’s,” Aketo said. “It is called an Entwining.”

“Hmm.” Tavan nodded, eyes fluttering closed. “I can sense many . . . tethers, as it were. I will keep my healing away from her mind. That seems prudent considering the possible magickal complications.”

Aketo flushed. He didn’t know how healing magick worked, except that it did, but he could hardly believe Tavan could sense his attachment to Eva.

Tavan made a clicking noise with her beak. “Hurry now. First we must reknit her spine.”

* * *

By the time Aketo left the healing chamber, and the healer Tavan, he was clinging to the last of his patience by his fingernails, and his entire body ached from quelling the nausea each time the owl woman reset one of Eva’s bones. Every single time, Eva’s pain had hit him like a wave of nausea.

Before he left, Tavan explained that Eva might not wake for a week. He imagined that if Eva had heard the prognosis, she would have let out a stream of curses wicked enough to make even Falun’s floppy hair coil. He supposed there was some irony in the Entwining spell saving both Eva’s and Isadore’s lives now. She was alive when she should have been dead. She would have laughed at that with the bitter mirth he’d first fallen for, a shield against the old sorrows and resentments.

He understood arming oneself. His calm was as much camouflage as anything else.

He was grateful for Tavan, truly, and requested that she not let anyone enter the healing chamber without him. Falun had not yet returned, so he went in search of Osir and Lirra. Aketo could sense the residue of their emotions—from Osir there was only increasing unease and from Lirra, more worry—and followed the faint pulse of their emotions until he reached another courtyard.

Unlike the first yard he’d walked through in their home, this one was well maintained. Paved with blue-and-pink half-moon tiles was a reflecting pool at its center. Before it lay a circle of high-backed wicker chairs. It seemed like the sort of place where audiences used to be held at a minor court.

There Osir and Lirra sat beside each other, arguing furiously.

The former looked up first at his approach, his penetrating gaze heavy with worry. “How is she?”

“She will heal.” He quelled his frustration, imbuing his voice with calm. “My name is Aketo Jahmar. Introduce yourselves. Formally, please.”

Osir’s eyes widened, but he bowed his head in acquiesce. “I am Osir Nbaltir. This is my eldest sister, Lady Lirra. She leads us.”

“Who else is included in this us?” Aketo asked, tone placid.

Osir seemed to wilt at this inquiry. “Just the three of us. The rest of our family is either dead or scattered across the Queendom, in hiding.”

“Just,” Lirra added, “as you should be.”

Aketo’s eyes narrowed as he turned to her. “Speak plainly. Please.”

She inclined her head in an act of deference that surprised Aketo. “Very well, Prince. Yes, I do recognize your name. We get little news here, but always have kept an eye