A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,4

I dream of Court and coronations and fine silk and gossamer gowns drenched in gore.

I dream of the Patch and chatara and my bare feet dancing upon the broken paving stones until they run with blood.

I dream and dream and dream, conjuring every darkness seeded deep within me. It feels like magick, this dreaming. In my waking hours when everyone seems to watch me from the corner of their eyes, worried I will finally show signs of breaking, I know my dreams have protected me. I can smile and pretend for them, waiting for night when I will wake screaming and only Aketo will be there to see.

At least I had the dreaming; much as the terror ate me up inside at night, by day it bolstered me. Look, see how I could seethe and weep and be so afraid and, yet, come morning I could hold it all in with a will of steel and a biting smile.

Because I couldn’t afford to be broken.

Not when I’d stolen my sister halfway across the Queendom to keep my mother from crowning her when the truth of my heritage spread. Not when I had dragged half my guard along with me, making them betray their oaths to the throne. Not while I sought a way to keep all of us safe, Isadore included. Not while I needed to soon decide what my future would hold.

There could be no breaking under such circumstances.

I had to find a way to survive first.

* * *

I inched forward on my elbows, eyes slit against the cloud of golden soil that rose at our every move. The sky above was an unbroken stretch of cerulean and the midday sun hammered against my back, but anything that dulled the bite of the wind that swept through these lowlands had my gratitude. The bare skin on my arms pebbled as another gust rolled past, tugging apart the loose braid at the nape of my neck.

High Summer was well and truly gone, but by virtue of my greatly diminished wardrobe, I hadn’t yet given up the sleeveless tunics and thin leggings of the warm months.

It had been six weeks since my nameday on the last day of High Summer, and what little warmth left in the year still lingered on the Plain. A chill had begun to flow south. Autumns were long in Myre, the land slow to cool for a short and bitter Far Winter.

Far Winter being the season when cold came down from the A’Nir Mountains all the way to the Red River. Soon the silks and cottons of High Summer and autumn would be exchanged in favor of wool and furs. And most of the clothing I’d brought from Ternain would be of little use.

If we stayed in the North on the path I had set.

That remained to be seen, considering we’d been stuck for the last week, waiting.

As the dirt settled, I peered through the battered eyeglass I’d acquired three weeks ago before venturing onto the Plain. I blinked, gaze focusing on the small village that lay just a few miles north. From our vantage point atop a rock outcrop that jutted up from the Plain like a tooth—more a misshapen molar than the smaller, fang-shaped stones that dotted the vast golden plain—I could cup the village in my palm. Anali and I pressed flat to the ground, hiding in a fold in the rock that kept the few villagers going about their day from spying us.

Arym meant “gold” in Khimaeran, and the Plain had been named for the bright ocher dirt that glittered faintly in the sun. It was a hard region, with hundreds of miles of flat grasslands, shallow lakes fed from an offshoot of the Red River that ran deep beneath the earth, and low, lifeless hills peppered with undersize, knotty trees. Few traversed the Arym Plain for fear of the lions and magickal predators that roamed it. Not to mention the roving herds of wildebeest and antelope and Gods knew what else. Any land left to grow wild and free in Myre kept secrets even the oldest storybooks didn’t speak of.

But even shining dirt couldn’t pretty up the small village curled up in the shadow of a considerable estate. Orai wasn’t so much a village as a handful of sturdy clay homes with latticed windows painted in jewel tones scattered around the walled estate. There wasn’t much more to the small, dust-covered place: two inns that looked like they’d seen better days;