Page 6 of The Queen and the Half-blood
“Wait!” she gasped.
He paused, inclining his head.
“I should thank you.”
His dark-grey eyes glinted. “You’re welcome …Your Highness.”
Heat crept up her neck now. So, he knew who she was. “What is your name?”
Her savior paused an instant before replying. “Alar mac Struana.”
He pulled up the hood of his cloak then and, before she could ask him anything else, melted like a shade into the swirling mist.
Lara stared after him, heart still pounding, her breathing still labored.
Thanks to this stranger, she’d just dodged The Reaper’s scythe.
A moment later, the sound of twigs cracking underfoot made her spin on her heel and raise her daggers once more.
Roth erupted from the tree line, face taut, and broadsword at the ready, with three black-clad enforcers behind him.
Relief barreled through Lara, making her knees wobble. Never had she been so relieved to see anyone.
3: AT FAULT
“IT WAS A TRAP.” Lara’s declaration fell heavily in the damp, smoky air within the tent. “Those powries were waiting for me.”
A few yards away, Cailean growled a curse. He and Bree had just returned from scouting and come straight to the meeting pavilion. Skaal was with them, sitting at the chief-enforcer’s side as if she too were a member of Lara’s council. “Mor’s fucking servants.”
Silence fell, drawing out until Lara broke it. “I came close to being impaled on a powrie’s pikestaff,” she admitted huskily. In truth, in the aftermath, she felt a little sickly and shaky, although she was careful not to let anyone see. She was also still berating herself for giving in so easily to the lure of the corpse candles. “But luckily, someone got there first.”
“And who is this ‘Alar mac Struana’?” Roth muttered. The captain wore a thunderous expression. Since her brush with the powries, he hadn’t met her gaze squarely—and didn’t even now.
Blank looks followed. No one gathered around the table, Lara included, had ever heard of him. The name ‘Struana’ was unusual, for it was female. It was tradition in Albia to take your father’s name, not your mother’s.
Cailean snorted. “What interests me is what he was doing out there in the midst of the woods.”
“A hunter, perhaps,” Lara replied. The chief-enforcer’s gaze narrowed. Lara wasn’t surprised. It was his job to be suspicious.“When the captain called out to me, he melted into the shadows as if he were one of the Shee.”
Cailean’s frown deepened. “Are you sure he wasn’t?”
“He had Marav eyes.”
“Aye, but he could have been glamored.”
“If he were Shee, why would he have saved my life?”
The chief-enforcer didn’t answer. She had him there. Besides Bree and her brother, Gil, who now worked as Lara’s archivist back at Duncrag, no Shee would save the High Queen of Albia’s neck.
Another silence followed. As it drew out, Lara reached out and traced a finger across the large unfurled map of Albia upon the table. Her fingertip traveled east over the lower Uplands to where Doure sat upon the coast. Trying not to let the penetrating gazes of her council unnerve her, Lara focused on Doure and its surroundings. Over the past moons, they’d discussed the best way to take the fort at length. Like most Albian forts, it sat upon high ground and was protected by lofty stacked-stone walls.
Impatience fluttered up then.We need to get back to the task at hand.
Nonetheless, her council wasn’t ready to discuss the siege yet.
“How could a single corpse candle lure you out of this camp?” Annis mac Gord, her chief-counsellor asked. The woman’s round face, framed by hazel-colored braids, was strained, with a deep crease between her eyebrows.
“It all happened so quickly,” Lara muttered, defensiveness rising. “One moment, I was walking back to my tent … the next, the light ensnared me.” And it had. The flame had consumed her, and for a short while, all that mattered was reaching it. When she’d let it dance upon her palm in the clearing, joy had erupted like a cloudburst inside her.
