A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,45
person. She bit into a ripe berry and, briefly struck speechless, groaned as the tart sweetness burst on her tongue. “And what about you, peacemaker? You can’t believe that your magick hasn’t shaped you.”
“It has, but I could just as easily use my magick to incite violence or lust or fear. I choose not to, because of who I am, not because of the magick.”
“So you say. If you sense everyone’s emotions, I would guess peace is in your best interest. Wouldn’t it get noisy”—she tapped her temple—“up there if everyone was constantly enraged?”
“Yes, but—”
Isa shook her head; her thoughts had carried back to yesterday. “Why are we staying here? What are Eva’s plans once we leave?”
“I think it’s better for me not to tell you that.” He dragged a hand through his hair, rumpling the curls.
“Why? I can’t escape.”
“Because,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I don’t want you to disappoint me.”
Isa stared at him, willing his words to make sense. How could her reaction to Eva’s plans disappoint Aketo? Unless Eva’s plans were all about him and they intended to go north, into the mountains to the Enclosure.
Suddenly she understood perfectly. “You know, you’ve never asked me what I think of the Enclosures.”
The flat look Aketo gave her made Isa want to squirm. He’d never asked her, but she’d never asked about his home. Of course he’d expected disappointment. He inclined his head, gold eyes flashing like coins, waiting. “I shouldn’t be surprised you were quick to understand.”
“Eva and Lei left when I was fourteen. Old enough that he made sure I knew right from wrong,” Isa said, pausing to pick at a loose thread on her hem. “When we were young, we took a long trip to the Kremir. We stayed at one of the strongholds at the edge of the desert, Adonsai, for a week. Mother and Lei went to the Enclosure for a few days at the end of the trip. Lei wanted me to come, but Mother said Eva was too young to go, and I had to watch her while they were gone. Adonsai was different from Ternain. The only khimaer person I knew before that trip was Mirabel, but much of the staff at the stronghold was like”—she caught herself about to say me—“you.”
“Khimaer and bloodkin?” Aketo asked, head tilted as he studied her.
“Of mixed blood,” Isa clarified, hoping Aketo didn’t notice the heat rising in her cheeks.
He cringed at the description. “I prefer ashini.” Isa frowned, not recognizing the Khimaeran word, and Aketo explained, “It’s shortened from a longer phrase, ashini dapa zahare. ‘Blessed with countless kin.’”
Isa tested the word on her tongue. It sounded better than her terms, which always made Isa think of the Palace kitchens and the head cook’s recipe book. It only took Aketo’s new phrase for her to realize it had never sat right. She didn’t feel like one part of her was human and the other half was fey.
She felt like neither and both all at once.
“I asked my father,” Isa said, barely noticing she’d forgotten to call Lei by his name, “and he explained that in the regions far from the capital, the lines between fey, human, blood-kin, and even khimaer aren’t always so clear. He said I ought to imagine what Myre might’ve been like without the war.”
At the time, Isa thought he was referring only to her and Eva, and their future as Rival Heirs. Without the war, they wouldn’t be Princesses, because they were human. Without the war, they wouldn’t have to try to kill each other. In hindsight, though, it was clear Lei must have known what she would soon come to understand: She was half fey.
It was months later in that very year that Isa began her lessons with the Sorceryn and discovered that what she thought was human magick, was really glamour. She could make the palace guards see her as a plain servant girl, which was useful for sneaking about. And if she conjured an image of her mother’s glossy blond hair strongly enough in her mind, no one could tell that she was unchanged beneath the glamour. Human courtiers would coo and sigh as they pawed at her hair, captivated by the idea that she looked more and more like her mother every day.
What Lei had actually been asking was for Isa to imagine a world where she, human and fey, did not feel out of place.