dared to have feelings for just as he had his own mother?
“You did take life, Raed Syndar Rossin.” The voice was just across from him, low, accented and somehow familiar—he just had to sort through memories to get to it. But everything was too sluggish, just as it always was after awaking from possession by the Rossin.
So he yanked his eyelids apart, and Grand Duchess Zofiya looked back at him. If Raed could have picked anyone to be sitting opposite him in the fine carriage, it would never have been her. His one and only contact with the sister of the Emperor had been back in Vermillion when he had taken a bullet for her.
In that split second she had looked grateful—even if her brother had later thrown Raed into prison. Now her beautiful dark eyes were leveled on him with far less grace, and more than that. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought she was growing cataracts. Yet she didn’t appear to have any trouble seeing him.
In the impossible heat she was wearing a sheer white garment that only barely concealed her admirable curves. Again, the last time he had seen the Grand Duchess she had been wearing the Imperial Guard red uniform —and from what he had heard, that was all she ever wore—even to state events. Another strangeness.
Raed pushed with his hands, levering himself off the carriage seat, but quickly found that they were bound, and it was not with anything he had ever encountered before, but he knew what they were immediately.
“Weirstones.” He held up his hands before him, swaying slightly and still a little muzzy. The string of tiny stones gleamed like diamonds in front of his slowly focusing eyes. “Really—you shouldn’t have.”
Zofiya laughed, but it was a short sound with no real amusement behind it. “But if I did not, then your passenger would become very troublesome.”
Raed twisted so that he was sitting a little more comfortably on the seat, though it still felt precarious. His feet were bound in the same fashion. “It takes very little to restrain the Rossin.” He measured how far it was across to the Grand Duchess, but at this moment he remained curious rather than angry.
She leaned back, some of the baking Chiomese sun filtering in through the curtains and outlining her form even more in the thin white dress. Raed was aware, if not entirely immune, to her tactics. Zofiya was a beautiful woman, and the dress not only showed off her womanly curves but also the lines of honed muscles years of military training had given her. He began to reconsider how great his chances of overcoming her physically really were.
“It is not merely the weirstones that restrain the Rossin,” Zofiya replied, “but the fact that he was soundly beaten.”
Raed had dreamed most of his life of hearing someone saying that to him—telling him they had a way to defeat the great geistlord that haunted his life. Sorcha, Merrick and the Bond had given him some comfort, but he had never thought that there could be any more.
Raed was not comforted—not when her smile did not reach her strange eyes. Raed knew about possession better than most, and there were many small signs of it on Grand Duchess Zofiya: a tiny twitch under her right eye, unusual fashion choices, and a complete lack of sweat on her body.
“What are you,” he asked through dry lips, “to sit there talking so calmly about beating the Rossin, when most people don’t even want to say his name?”
She gestured down her body. “I dare because I am protected.” When she shifted, Raed saw something that his blurry eyes had not noticed before. Sitting on the seat next to her was a mahogany box, large enough to hold a man’s head. He wondered if that was what was in it. “My goddess Hatipai has cast her cloak over me, and even your passenger carries no dread for me.”
“A goddess?” Raed couldn’t help letting out a little snort of disbelief. “You are relying on the protection of a little god against the Rossin?”
She moved so fast that all he felt on his skin was the sting of her slap. She had enough strength behind her attack to rock him back in the seat, and something else—a brush of power that tasted familiar. It was gone too quickly for him to identify, but the Young Pretender was left staring at the Grand Duchess with a new appreciation.
“Don’t you dare talk about things you have no idea of,” she whispered to him over bared teeth. “You may call them little—but Hatipai is a living goddess—my living goddess!”
Raed rubbed his cheek somewhat awkwardly and smiled in what he planned on being a charming manner. “A gentleman doesn’t like to bring up debts in front of a lady, but this seems hardly fair, considering I saved your life only a season ago.”
She tilted her head, her luminous dark eyes full of regal pride. “And a Grand Duchess does not acknowledge what is hers by right. Every citizen of Arkaym does his duty when he protects the royal family.”
Now, that pinched his pride. “I have never sworn an oath to you or your upstart brother—I owe you nothing!” Raed hoped to enrage her to the point where he might be able to overcome her—perhaps get the tight length of weirstones around her fine neck.
Idly Zofiya drew her long knife and began to clean her nails with its shining length. “Perhaps
The Rossin. It always came down to the Rossin. If it was not enough trouble to be the Pretender to a throne with a bounty on his head, he also carried a geistlord inside him that apparently had even more enemies.
“What do you want with him?”
Now Zofiya leaned back in her seat, a beautiful woman with something dark lodged in her. The Young Pretender knew a lot about that. He also knew this was not the Duchess he had taken a bullet for back in Vermillion.
Her smile was devastating and knowing. “She wants him. She must have her revenge.”
Raed let his head drop back on the seat with a slight groan. “Hatipai, you mean. This is what it is all about?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” And that was all she was going to say.
“Where are we going?” the Young Pretender asked, hating to sound so helpless, but peering out from the carriage still only revealed more sand and a group of Imperial Guard.
The Grand Duchess did not respond at first, so Raed tried to weigh his options. Without the Rossin there were very few. He couldn’t be sure of overpowering Zofiya, who was a fine warrior in her own right. If she carried any sort of geist, which he suspected was the case, then the chances went down even further.
He couldn’t for the life of him find the Bond that Merrick and Sorcha talked about. Raed was ready to roll from the carriage and see what happened, but just as he was gearing up to do that, Zofiya spoke again.
“We are going where you wanted to go all this time, Raed Syndar Rossin—we are going to meet your sister.” Her voice was soft and precise.
The Young Pretender only just managed to stop himself from leaping on her. “Fraine? You took Fraine?”
She bared her teeth in a smile that would give him nightmares. “ ‘Took’ is such a strong word.”
Raed clenched his teeth, sucked in his self-control, then gave her a curt nod. “For now you live, Grand Duchess Zofiya. Until I see her.”
She did not reply, and he did not try to engage her any further in conversation. In this manner they traveled on into the darkness and the desert: the second in line to the Imperial throne and the man who had been born to it.
TWENTY-FIVE
The Eye and the Fist
Sorcha let Merrick lead the way mainly so she could keep an eye on her young partner. They had to avoid the main thoroughfares, which made getting back to the palace a rather laborious process. Everyone not on the streets was slamming shut their doors—barricading them if they could.
“The pull of the geistlord”—Merrick shot a glance over his shoulder—“is only felt by those true believers.”
Sorcha’s laugh was so sharp it could have cut. “I always knew faith was a bad habit.”
“It may be that all gods are not geists.” The alleyways were strung with washing lines so that Merrick had to push through someone’s dirty linens merely to make headway.
Just how her partner could say such a thing with such confidence was a mystery. He had returned with more
