A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) - Amanda Joy Page 0,98

you want to hold him? I understand if it’s . . . too soon.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know how. There are never babies at Court.”

“Here,” he said, holding out Otho until I was forced to grab his waist. “He can sit up now, so there is no particular secret to it.”

Otho settled into my lap, curious fingers grasping at my clothes. He tried stretching to his full height to reach my horns, but when I held him close, he noticed my wings. With a wet gasp, he grasped at the feathers at the apex of my wings, and despite my best efforts he climbed halfway over my shoulder.

I jumped, squirming at the touch. Few people had touched my wings and I still was not used to it. I pulled Otho back down to my lap.

“Are you all right?” Aketo whispered.

“I should be angry with you.”

“I know. I’m surprised you haven’t thrashed me yet.”

“I understood when I saw him. Throllo knows about him, doesn’t he? That’s why Papa couldn’t remove him. The news would get out and my mother . . .” There was no telling what this information would make her do.

“I thought you would think I was mad. Here I was kissing you, courting you, but I couldn’t share this secret. I didn’t know if you would hate me or my mother.”

“Has anyone who’s ever met your mother hated her?”

He snorted. “Admittedly no.” He looked at my neck, searching for the pendant. It was tucked into my shirt and I yanked it out.

“It doesn’t change anything for us. It does, though, make me worry about what we’re planning. What if we fail? The Queen might try to harm your mother, or worse.”

I wanted to believe she wouldn’t care—she had no reason to. Her marriage to my father had been loveless for quite some time, and she’d had more than a few lovers who were known to the Court. But I’d come to expect cruelty from my mother. This was the same vengeful creature who had chased me from Ternain with her lies about my magick and inherent wickedness.

“Mother would never harm a child,” Isa said. I hadn’t realized she was listening in on our conversation, but at the mention of Lilith, she shifted to glare at me.

“I’m glad you’re so certain of that,” I snapped. “But she hurt both of us when we were just children. Maybe you’re misremembering.”

Isadore rose from the table and stormed out. I started to follow her, but Dthazi waved me off. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t wander too far.”

Otho began to cry, great hiccupping wails that drew Daischa. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

“Don’t worry. He needs his bed,” she said, rubbing small circles in Otho’s back. “You take Eva for a walk”—she directed at Aketo—“I will get everyone here settled in for the night.”

When we stepped outside, I gulped down the night air. “Did you still live with your mother before you left?”

Aketo pointed up at the homes above Daischa’s, one painted red, the uppermost golden yellow. “When I came of age, I moved up there. My brother lives in the yellow one.”

I nodded. We hadn’t discussed sleeping arrangements yet, but I couldn’t wait to get a look at where Aketo called home. There at least we could have some privacy for the first time. Canvas tents didn’t offer much seclusion.

“What do you want to see?” Aketo asked.

I approached the line of trees, looking between the branches. The rest of the Enclosure spilled out beneath the ledge. Even though it was night, the crystals embedded in the stonework and the moon above lit everything in a silvery-lavender glow.

Finally, I could see the towering wall of limestone that blocked out the rest of the world beyond Sher n’Cai. The fine hairs on the back of my neck lifted at the sight at the top of the wall. It was covered in massive shards of glass that reflected the moonlight, designed to make climbing up and over those walls lethal.

The Aerie sat on a shelf of stone carved out of the mountain, so that from up here you could see the empty town directly below. There was a market at its center. Rows of stalls were covered in black-and-ivory cloth, and even from here I could see piles of broken pottery and sacks of grain. There were three streets of nearly identical single-story homes, whitewashed with peaked roofs of white tiles. The only source of color was the green ropes of vines climbing up the