A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,64

might help, if he didn’t immediately throw me out of his head. And I did want to know what he was up to in the mountains.

“Very well. It is worth a try.”

“I knew you’d see wisdom,” he said. “Just don’t stay too long or I am dumping that tea on your head.”

“You’re braiding my hair after this,” I added. I should’ve asked him to help me tame the matted disaster on top of my head hours ago.

“Gods, I was wondering when you’d ask,” he snorted.

I rolled my eyes, but sat back down. I shut my eyes and fell into the yawning chasm of my mind.

Chapter 13

Baccha

The last time Baccha had swaggered into the camp at Ariban, he’d been walking off a bender that started in the King’s City, the capital of Dracol.

He remembered sitting in a tavern, talking up the matron who owned the place, Delu. He’d been wearing a human guise, using glamour to round his ears and soften his features. He was too vain to do anything about his hair, but he wore it braided and muted his magick.

He’d wound a lock of Delu’s hair around one finger. Her complexion was darker than most in Dracol, and she had smoky eyes he found soothing. Delu murmured, “Sora ohai, ne?”

He enjoyed the clipped Dracolan accent, was charmed by the frank way all Dracolans spoke. But what he liked most about Delu was that she had no need to take their months-long flirtation beyond just that.

Baccha leaned in, but felt a sudden yank at his center accompanied by a sharp punch of pain that nearly upended his stomach. He hardly remembered extricating himself from Delu, just rising unsteadily from his seat and snatching a bottle of white liquor from the bar.

Drinking, Baccha found, helped clear the pain long enough for him stagger back to his apartment high in the city’s structure. And though he did not enjoy the scorch of liquor on his throat, it numbed him enough. He barely lasted an hour more in King’s City with the pain driving him to flee. He stayed only long enough to pack his things, say a few goodbyes, and summon Meya to beg for a ride through the A’Nir. The ancient beast was the only horse Baccha trusted to ride through these mountains quickly.

He drank his way south, replenishing his supply in the few mountain villages on the way. It never did completely dull the pain in his center. Every morning he woke up clutching his stomach, certain someone had stabbed him in the night.

Only in his few bouts of lucidity did he stop to wonder exactly why Moriya was calling him home after all these years.

The journey took two weeks, and by the time he found his way to the camp, he must have looked haggard and probably reeked of alcohol.

This time Baccha walked through the garden of stripped trees surrounding the camp with his arms bound. Tin and wood animal charms hung from the bare branches, creating an eerie music every time the wind blew. Magick charged the air, making him feel slightly light-headed.

His head was beginning to ache. Not to mention the pain in his back—something about the slumped shoulders caused by his bound wrists made his lower back sting something serious.

Ysai had tied the rope wrapped around his wrists to her saddle and divided her attention between tracking a path through the barren trees and glowering at Baccha.

She suspected he wasn’t telling her all he knew about Eva, but by the end of their strange, blood-fueled interrogation, Baccha could tell that compelling him had drained her strength. Truth was, he had managed to hold back a few key details about the Princess. By the time she recognized her mistake in not asking all he knew about Eva, it was too late. Ysai never thought to ask about Eva’s power, assuming she only possessed human magick. He understood why Ysai avoided the subject—the marrow and blood magick that Eva had inherited from Raina was still a source of fear to many here. The Elderi never let them forget all the atrocities humans committed during the war, including the thousands killed when Raina’s magick was let loose on entire battlefields.

The most important detail he left out about the Usurper was that this part human possessed their rarest magick. The same magick Ysai had inherited from a long line of khimaer nobility. She’d not given any physical indications that she could shift, but Baccha could scent it on her nonetheless—wild