Lor’s egg had hatched on Ellina’s third name day—which was the usual time for a child to be paired with his or her chewchie for life. She had looked into his liquid black eyes and stroked his soft, Sacred Blue fur and an instant and life-long bond had been formed in that moment. The little chewchie was her constant companion and the only one in the world—besides her grandmother—that Ellina trusted completely.
“What’s that about not trusting anyone?” Lor asked in her grandmother’s voice and Ellina realized her thoughts were going through their shared connection as well. Her anxiety must be broadcasting loud and clear to sharpen the link between the two chewchies so drastically. “Don’t you trust the new Kindred guards our allies sent us?” Lor continued, somehow managing to speak in the exact tone of gentle reproof that Ellina knew her grandmother was using. “The commander, especially—the one assigned to you—seemed very sincere when he swore his oath of loyalty. You ought to trust him, at least”
“I…suppose I trust him because you do,” Ellina said reluctantly. In fact, the big Kindred, Commander Ty’rial was so aloof and businesslike it was difficult to know how she felt about him. “I guess I’m just missing Guffin,” she admitted.
Guffin had been her bodyguard and the captain of her own personal royal guard from the time she was a little girl. A battle-hardened soldier and the scarred veteran of many campaigns though he was, the old guard had always been gentle and kind to her, especially after her father and mother had been assassinated, not long after her fifth name day. He had been utterly devoted and loyal beyond question—someone Ellina knew would die to protect her.
Which is probably what happened, she thought, feeling a mixture of grief and guilt course through her.
A few weeks before the coronation, Guffin had taken ill. So sick was he that Lord Kikbax, the High Priest of Thufar, had even sent his own personal physician to look in on him.
The High Priest was a blustering, officious man whom Ellina had never cared for but she had been grateful for his care of Guffin. Yet, even his physician seemed unable to cure the old soldier. A “wasting disease,” he called it and indeed, Guffin—who had been so fit and hale despite his sixty years—had wasted quickly away to a mere shadow of himself. And then illness had led to death—and all within a matter of weeks—so quickly that Ellina was still reeling from his loss.
She closed her eyes, remembering how she had held the old guard’s hand as he drew his last breaths, his pale blue eyes sunken in his grayish face…
“So sorry…to leave you, little one,” he’d rasped, clutching her fingers in his rapidly weakening grip. “Especially just before…your coronation.”
“Don’t speak so! You’re not leaving me—you’re not going anywhere.” Ellina had fought back tears and tried to smile, to keep a positive note in her voice as she spoke. “You’ll be right behind me, guarding me, for the coronation and every day after that. See if you’re not!”
But Guffin had shaken his graying head. His chewchie moved feebly at the gesture of negation—it too, was dying by then, since a chewchie could not live without its host.
“I am sorry, little one,” he had whispered. “But now, unto Thufar, I must go. Trust Fundreg—he will be my replacement. I have trained him well.”
And then he had given one last, deep breath and his eyes no longer saw her. His chewchie—a small black beast with silver stripes in its fur—had uttered a terrible wail and breathed its last as well—following its master into death.
“Guffin? Guffin, don’t leave me!” Ellina hadn’t wanted to believe the old guard was gone. She had sat there, holding his hand and hoping for another word, another breath, until Lor had sat up on her shoulder and began a soft, sad howling filled with grief and respect.
It was the death howl which brought Ellina to her senses and made her realize that Guffin was truly gone. The chewchies performed it for one of their own who had served faithfully and well and they were never wrong. Sadly, she had released Guffin’s hand—already going stiff and cold in her own—and left the room. She had hoped that his last words of advice would carry her through the difficult time to come.
But her old bodyguard had been deceived in his replacement. Fundreg and all the royal guards under him had been bribed to look the other way during the coronation when a terrorist posing as an Ambassador from the Southern continent had tried to kill both Ellina and her grandmother at the same time. If it hadn’t been for the quick intervention of a Kindred diplomat, they would both be dead and chaos would rein.
Ellina knew that Guffin could never have been bribed to let her be assassinated—he would have put his dagger hilt-deep in the guts of anyone who even suggested such a thing to him. So now she wondered if maybe the “wasting sickness” that had taken him had really been a sickness at all. Perhaps it had been a slow-acting poison instead—one which mimicked all the signs of the disease and got her faithful old guard out of the way so that the attempt on her life could be made in the first place.
He died because of me, she thought, guilt and grief rising inside her like a dark tide. Because he couldn’t be bought and they knew it.
“I know you miss Guffin,” Lor said in her grandmother’s voice. “But Ellina, my child, his death is not on your head. You do not
