Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,35

kill you here, it would’ve dissolved the alliance and seen us all slaughtered. I acted out of simple prudence.’

Humiliation stung my cheeks and I felt a flash of hatred for him.

‘The Skythes saw the tussle,’ said Dieter. ‘You’ll have to trot over and show them you’re okay. I told them it was a disagreement between sisters. The old woman was impressed, actually, to find you weren’t a weakling.’

When I didn’t answer, he lifted my chin with the tip of his finger. With his other hand he held before my eyes a small glass vial filled with a dark red liquid – blood.

‘It’s yours,’ he said. ‘I drew it while you slept.’

‘Why?’ I demanded. ‘What do you need it for?’

‘I’m hoping I won’t,’ he said, drawing the vial away and tucking it into a pocket near his heart. ‘It’s clear, however, that you’re determined to make trouble. With the blood, I don’t need to be nearby to transform your brand. You remember your brand, don’t you, Matilde?’

Silent, I looked up into his pale eyes.

‘I can turn you to clay no matter where you are,’ he warned. ‘Or I can think up a few other uses for the blood. But that’s neither here nor there. What you need to know, Matilde, is this: one wrong move against me, and I’ll finish what I started at Aestival.’

I couldn’t sleep.

Not with Dieter in the tent, a few breaths away, though he attended to his papers, not even bothering to watch me. This increased my terror – that I was so completely his he might even forget me. Curled up tight around my nauseated stomach, I couldn’t calm the sense of nervous anticipation that pervaded me.

When eventually he stood, I watched him moving around, extinguishing the lanterns, progressively dimming the interior until only the red glimmer from the brazier traced the shadows around me. After a time, rustling told me he was peeling off his clothing in the dark, then he slipped into his bed on the other side of the brazier.

Even after his breathing told me he slept, I lay awake, wondering over my fate.

Two weeks before, my most pressing concern had been whether Grandmother would take me on the Aestival progression, and if I’d be able to conceal the clues, should one of my visions overcome me in the presence of the drightens. Now everyone dear to me was dead, slaughtered by my husband’s troops, and I was bound by a hex I could neither understand nor unravel. And should I reach for the shadows to escape Dieter’s binding, I risked a life in the cloisters of the mara.

The idea gave me pause, however. The Nilofen had lauded Dieter’s military acumen, but would they be so sanguine about his brand on my brow, and the power it gave him over me? And the drightens, I knew, would not countenance a shadow-worker on the throne. It was a small chance, but it was all I had.

I must have fallen asleep eventually, for between one blink and the next it was morning and a young boy was kneeling at my head, entreating me to wake.

‘Forgive me, my lady,’ he greeted my bleary stare. ‘The old Skythe lady claims you.’

‘Wait outside,’ I said, the effort of speaking, even quietly, paining my throat. ‘I’ll be ready in a moment.’

Dieter stirred as I finished dressing, rolling over and revealing a glimpse of bare chest. I quickly turned away and fled the tent before he woke fully.

Mathis and Gunther stood up as I appeared, both eyeing my bound throat. At least they didn’t question me; routine had settled that much into us.

Stepping up from behind them, a Skythe girl beckoned me. Points of black and gold paint outlined her eyes and swept up the line of her temples. I joined her and she led me to her camp in silence. When we reached the small breakfast fire before Shadi’s tent, I expected the girl to continue on or perhaps vanish inside. Instead she knelt and peered into the pot resting over the embers, for all the world as if I didn’t exist.

Emerging from her tent, Shadi took in my wounded throat and the soldiers behind me with a glance.

‘Sit,’ she said, waving me to a cushion on the ground some distance from both herself and the girl by the cookfire. My heart fell. There could be no soft speaking over such a distance.

When Mathis and Gunther followed me, Shadi banished them. ‘Don’t crowd her! You’re a strange lot, aren’t