A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,82

a Palace seamstress.

“Are you General Mateen?” Isa asked, casting her voice in a whisper.

The man finally lifted his chin, offering a smile cool enough to make Isa’s entire body tense. But when he spoke, it was to his companion. “Is this her? The elder heir?”

Isa was pleased. At least now that he’d blatantly ignored and disrespected her, she would feel no guilt at ensnaring him. “I am, General,” Isa said.

Only when the young woman cocked her head, studying Isa, did Isa remember she wore no glamour. A storm of racing thoughts left her holding her breath: Should she conjure the guise she wore at Court now? Lighten her hair and sharpen her nose and make her eye such a vivid green they would not look away? But no, she couldn’t, not when they were staring right at her.

“Forgive us, Your Highness. Our battalion has been stationed north of the river for as long as I can remember . . . until recently we had little cause to visit the capital.”

Isa smothered the bone-melting relief she felt at the woman’s words. Of course they wouldn’t recognize the minor changes in her appearance. The elite forces of the second battalions were never stationed in Ternain. They kept to the Myre-Dracol border, where they’d be most valuable.

“There is nothing to forgive, General Mateen and . . . what is your name?” Isa asked sweetly. Neither noticed as Isa stroked a finger down the thorny vines tattooed on her wrists. Her magick always felt like fire under her skin; the blossoming warmth burned on the edge of painful, but she loved it. To Isa, that pain came with freedom and power.

She extended her mental fingertips to the woman, loosening the soldier’s tongue.

“I am Lieutenant Sala. We’ve come to”—she hesitated, glancing behind Isa to where the rest of her party still slept—“to help you, Princess Isadore.”

Isa sensed this was only half truth.

“How did you find us? I thought I would never return south.” She let a quaver creep into her voice as she drew deeply upon her magick. No more than a powerless noble.

General Mateen listened to their exchange with waning interest. He still knelt, hand buried in the sand, staring beyond her into the rock outcrops.

All of it made little sense. If they’d come for Isa, why did the General take no interest in her?

Sala’s eyes had gone blank and her smile was lifeless and wan. Her mind firmly in Isa’s grip now, the Lieutenant pulled a gold-and-green enamel ring from her pocket. “The Queen gave me this. I’ve been tracking you for weeks.”

She snatched it from the woman’s palm. A tracker . . . Isa eyed Sala, searching for signs of fey blood, and sure enough her ears were slightly pointed. As far as she knew, only the fey could track one person across hundreds of miles.

At this, Mateen finally stood. He squinted at Sala, taking note of the Lieutenant’s vacant expression. His gaze swung back to Isa and the hand curled round one wrist, the finger stroking a tattoo of a serpent. Isa arched an eyebrow, daring him to order her to stop.

Instead he barked a laugh that made her skin crawl. “Sala, stand with the others. Princess Isadore and I need to have a talk.”

Sala, mind still foggy from Isa’s intrusion, walked back without a parting word.

Magick still roaring beneath her skin, Isa turned her focus to Mateen, who would still not grant her the dignity of rising to greet her.

“I am pleased to find you unharmed, Your Highness. The Queen warned us, any injury to you—before or after we retrieved you—would be repaid in kind.”

Retrieved. The word made her stomach knot up. Like she was a toy or a trinket.

Still she sensed subterfuge through the General’s will. His thoughts were a thicket too intricate for Isa to untangle—no matter how hard she tried, her magick could not grant her that ability—but the longer she probed at his mind, the more confused she felt. Could it be that they weren’t here for her at all?

“What else did my mother’s orders specify?” Isa asked. She needed a way into his mind.

Isa summoned the magick within her, that which required no tattoos to trigger, and appeared to change. Her hair, a mess of unruly gold curls, now looked like the silvery blond of her mother’s coloring, and her skin took on the radiance of the sun, glowing with inner light.

And it was all false. Glamour did not change one physically, but instead cast