Hunter's Season (Elder Races #4.7)(3)

Then he strode out the door. The last thing Xanthe saw of the girl were large sad eyes peering around the Wyr lord’s shoulder.

Xanthe walked over to the sit at the table and rub her face. She would not reconsider as those large sad eyes had asked her to do. She could not.

Silence settled in the cottage. It seemed so much emptier than it had before Tiago had come. She stared at the items on the table that she had unloaded from her pack. There were various toiletries, weapons—her shoulder harness and sword, along with throwing knives—and the old, hand painted wooden box that held the Tarot deck.

The last of her energy had slipped away. She would put the things away tomorrow. For now, she pulled the box to her, opened it and pulled out the Tarot deck. Warm, mellow Power filled her hands as she reverently fingered the hand-painted cards.

She shuffled the deck and turned over the top card. It was one of the Major Arcana, Inanna, goddess of love, her chariot drawn by seven lions.

Inanna’s card had been showing up every time she shuffled the cards.

“I thought you meant the cat,” she said to the card.

The face of a golden woman smiled out at her, fierce and mysterious.

She sighed. Love came in many forms—the love of a friend or lover, a parent or child. The devotion of a pet, or the love of one’s country. Xanthe was really suited for only one of those, although for a while she thought the kitten might work.

She put the deck in the box and set it gently on the fireplace mantle. Then she ate some stew and fell into bed.

The summons from the palace came early the next morning.

Everything was blanketed in light dew, and the tip of the sun barely showed through the trees. Xanthe had made a cup of tea and had taken it out to sit on an overturned log, enjoying the silence and the solitude.

It was peaceful at the cottage, with bright trills from birds and the rustle of wind blowing through the long grasses. She had never grown accustomed to the sounds and smells of American traffic, and for so long she had been unable to take much time to herself. She had always been surrounded by others she couldn’t trust. It was exotic and liberating to feel the inner coil of tension that had been wound so tightly relax at last.

She heard the horseman on the path before she saw him, and the coil came back, tightening her stomach muscles. She stood and waited, and a few moments later, a palace guard trotted into view, leading another saddled, riderless horse. The guard didn’t bother to dismount as he came up to her. Instead, he handed her a sealed note and the reins for the second horse, turned and left.

The note was a single word written in strong black slashes: “Come.”

She blew out a breath. So much for relaxing and taking time for herself. After tethering the horse, she washed, dressed in her own palace black uniform, braided her silky hair and checked her appearance in the oval silver mirror in the bedroom.

Somewhere in the distant past, she had an ancestor who had not been Dark Fae and it showed in small ways. She was slim with an upright carriage, but her eyes were a darker gray than most Dark Fae’s were. There was a sprinkle of light freckles across the bridge of her nose and along her cheeks, and her features were not quite as angular, her lips plump and curving. For those of the nobility who were concerned with the purity of breeding lines, those small differences were as good as a shout.

Not that she was likely to try to pass herself off as noble any time in the foreseeable future. She tilted her head to check that her braid was neat, then she slipped on her shoulder harness that settled her sword onto her back, spread soft cheese over a slice of bread to eat on the journey and she shut the door gently as she left the cottage.

Adriyel was not a large city by American standards, but it was beautiful and busy. Her uniform and the horse created an open path for her on the cobblestone streets as people moved to make way for her. The buildings nestled harmoniously among the trees, and there was a long waterfront park by the river near the falls. As she approached the palace, she studied it with a critical eye.

Age and simple elegance defined the palace’s architecture. The building was superbly designed and proportioned, the lines deceptively simple, yet phantoms lingered in Xanthe’s mind whenever she looked at it, phantoms of blood and battle and screams in the night. Brushing them aside had long ago become habit. She took the horse to the stables and entered the palace through the servant’s quarters.

The Wyr lord was in the Queen’s private apartment. The two guards at the doors nodded respectfully to her and stood aside. “You’re to go right in, ma’am,” said the one on the right. If she remembered correctly, Rickart was his name.

“Thank you,” she said. She shrugged out of her shoulder harness and handed her sword to him. One did not go armed into the Queen’s presence unless expressly invited to do so.

Xanthe had only been in the Queen’s apartment once before, and that had been seasons ago when the Queen and her Wyr lord had made the final decision on Xanthe’s mission, so she looked around curiously as she entered. The rest of the interior of the palace was like the exterior, spacious and deceptively simple, sparely decorated with pieces of furniture, tapestries and sculptures that were national treasures.

The Queen’s private apartment was another matter. In the large sitting room color was splashed everywhere. Traditional embroidered tapestries covered the walls, and bowls and vases of flowers brightened dark polished wood surfaces. Red velvet couches were arranged in front of a fireplace and piled with pillows that were also embroidered with rich gold accents. An intricately carved bowl made of some lovely, translucent green stone Xanthe wasn’t familiar with held miniature Reese’s peanut butter cups. A scatter of books had been left carelessly on one table. Xanthe glanced at the haphazard pile. Dark Fae books on history and politics were intermingled with American mass market paperbacks, most of them romances.