A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,96

a few nods and some pointed looks at Aketo’s fingers laced through mine, no one recognized me. Isa was too busy studying the Aerie to even notice the people.

We came to the last two houses on the street. The first was the color of sea foam with a stone path leading right up to the door. A young woman, who looked a good five years older than me, watched them from the porch. Like the khimaer we’d already passed, she wore layered and heavily embroidered clothing, along with a thick woolen cloak wrapped around her shoulders. Hundreds of narrow golden brown braids hung down her back, dotted with glossy beads. Ram’s horns framed a broad face, dominated by wide-set amber eyes. A sharp, almost-masculine jawline made her even more striking, and like Dthazi’s lion eyes, her eyes were rimmed in black.

“Dthazi, this is what you’ve been busy with all evening?” she called before jogging down the path toward them. A tail that ended with a tuft of sienna fur twitched in the air behind her. For a moment, I wondered if she was Dthazi’s wife, but no, they looked too similar. Family, then.

Aketo’s hand slipped from mine as he moved to greet her. He folded her into a tight hug and Dthazi, taller and wider than the both of them, joined their embrace, wrapping an arm around each of their shoulders.

The young woman pulled back, eying Aketo like he was an apparition. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you send word you were done playing soldier for the humans?”

She spoke in Khimaeran, but thanks to Lirra’s lessons, I could follow her words with little difficulty. A flush warmed my face. Playing soldier. Was that what he’d been doing?

“Hush, a few of those humans are still with me,” Aketo replied mildly. “Sending word could have endangered us, and from what I can recall, you like surprises.”

She lifted her chin, sniffing the air. “I smell no humans. You know I’d never mistake their reek.”

Aketo flinched but stepped away from the woman to wave a hand in my direction.

“Eva, Isa,” Aketo said. “May I introduce you to my cousin Yayazi? She commands our force here alongside my brother.”

Yayazi flashed a grin, revealing a set of canines longer and sharper than even Baccha’s teeth. “Call me Yaya.”

I gave her what I hoped was a warm smile and replied in Khimaeran, “Good to meet you.”

“You forgot to mention, brother, that’s Princess Evalina and Princess Isadore,” Dthazi said.

For some reason, this prompted Isa to glare up at him. Dthazi simply smiled sweetly in response.

Yaya’s demeanor shifted, now watching us with blatant suspicion. “Is that so.”

“It is a long story, there is much to explain. But first, I’d like to see my mother,” Aketo said, pointing his chin toward the last house on the street, unique only because no one stood out front.

Two more homes were stacked on top of it, accessible through ladder rungs up one side of the structure. Aketo took my hand again and started in the direction of the house, but Dthazi stopped him.

“Mama will want to see Eva alone first,” he said, and turned to Isa. “And you as well.”

I tried to catch Aketo’s eye but his hand slipped out of my grip and he was too intently studying the horizon for me to read anything.

Isa and I approached the front door, and I knocked. A feminine voice called, “Come on inside. Please.”

I pushed open the door, unsure of what to expect. A beautiful woman leaned against a round table in the back of the room. Curling impala horns, just like Aketo’s, spiraled up from her brow. She wore a simple green silk dress, banded at the waist, and her glossy sable hair was woven into two long plaits. Like Aketo’s, gold and black scales stretched from her shoulders down to her wrists, where they met chestnut skin.

A sleeping toddler rested on her hip, one of the braids clutched in its small brown hands.

I stopped moving. Stopped thinking of anything but those small brown fists.

When I tried to speak, to introduce myself, words failed me.

Daischa straightened and took a few tentative steps closer, one arm propping up the child, the other hand pressed against the child’s brow.

She stopped within arm’s reach, frowning at my frozen expression. “My, you two are lovelier than Lei could ever convey.”

Daischa followed my gaze to her hand on the toddler, and explained, “He is a fussy boy. By his age, Aketo and Dthazi slept so easily.