Senneth nodded. “But that makes sense, too. That’s just another reason Romar was an excellent choice to name as regent. He would know what else to protect her from. Such as accusations of sorcery.”
“It might not be true.”
She glanced at him but kept striding forward. “So. You spent the day with her, and Valri was nowhere in sight. Could you read the princess without the Lirren magic to blind you?”
He was silent a moment. “I could have,” he said quietly. “I could tell her mind was open and full of wonder. But I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to look inside. It just seemed-unfair. Wrong.”
Senneth snorted. “So now you can’t answer the question we are both dying to know! A mighty inconvenient time to have scruples, wouldn’t you say?”
“Senneth, I didn’t sense magic on her, if that’s what you want to know. Maybe that’s why I was so surprised when she could read my mind. Every mystic I’ve ever met has just been caked in magic-it’s like a glow or a scent-I can instantly tell it’s there. But I didn’t pick that up from Amalie. If she has sorcery, it’s buried.”
Senneth walked on a few more moments in silence. By now they were almost to the wall that surrounded the compound; soon they would be intersecting with the nightly patrol of guards. Senneth angled her direction a little so that they followed a path parallel to the wall but a few yards away. “You can’t read magic on Ellynor or Valri, either.”
“Right. Which is why I wondered if Amalie had Lirren blood.”
“It just seems impossible. You know how rarely the Lirrenfolk breed with outsiders.”
“There’s Ellynor. There’s Valri. There’s Heffel Coravann’s wife,” he reminded her. “We know of three marriages between Lirren women and men from Gillengaria. So it’s not like it’s never happened. Maybe Pella’s mother crossed the Lireth Mountains when she was a girl. Maybe she fell in love with a Lirren boy and came back carrying his child. Maybe not even Romar or the king know how Amalie got her magic-they just know she has it. If she has it.”
“If she has it,” Senneth echoed. “Maybe we’re wrong.”
“I don’t think I can just ask her.”
“No, and I can’t ask the king, much as I’d like to. But, Cammon, you can’t repeat this to a soul.”
“Not even the others?” he said. It was unnecessary to list them. She knew who he meant.
She looked troubled. “I don’t know. I’ll have to tell Tayse, and he’ll surely tell Justin. And I can’t not tell Kirra. And what Kirra knows-well, I suppose all of us will know it by sunrise tomorrow.” She gave him a serious look, which, in the darkness, he felt more than saw. “But no one else, Cammon. No one. If this secret comes out-”
“I know,” he said, feeling somber and afraid as he never had in all his existence. “Amalie could be in the greatest danger of her life.”
HE made his way slowly back across the palace grounds, lost in thought. At this hour, every door was guarded, so even at the kitchen he had to pass a sentry. But that was a good thing, he thought. Let there be soldiers at every door, mystics at every window, dogs and even raelynxes loose in the yard, prowling around, patrolling for interlopers. Let the king invoke every possible measure to keep the princess safe. Cammon was starting to lose the confidence that it was a task he could accomplish on his own.
He could tell, as he made his way up the great stairway to his room, that there were still a couple dozen people scattered throughout the large building who were not yet sleeping. Some were servants, some were soldiers, some were restless souls unable to close their eyes. It gave him a vague sense of comfort to know that part of the world was awake around him. They might all be strangers, but he was not alone.
He pushed open the door to his room and realized with a shock that he still was not alone.
“Valri,” he said, for the little queen stood in the middle of the room like a marble statue intended, one day, for the royal sculpture garden. She had not bothered to light a candle. Child of the night goddess, she clearly did not need aid to see in the dark. Only a wavering sconce in the hallway provided enough light for him to identify her.
His own magic had failed him; he had had utterly no idea of her presence.
When she spoke, her voice was hard and angry. “Stay away from the princess when I am not there to chaperone you.”
He was instantly antagonized and made no attempt to hide it. “I would never do anything to harm her. You don’t need to worry.”
“She is the heir to the realm! She cannot be allowed to wander off alone with any man! Her reputation is as precious as her life.”
“Then you have a strange idea of what’s precious,” he shot back.
“I think I am better qualified to judge what’s important to Amalie than you are.”
“And are you better qualified than she is?” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He was angry, a state so rare for him that he almost didn’t know what to do or say next. Calm. Senneth would advise him to be calm. Slow down the hot words, bargain for a little time. “Let me light some candles,” he said. “I can’t even see your face.”
He considered closing the door, since she might not want an audience for the conversation, but it probably wasn’t good for the queen’s reputation for her to be alone with other men, either, so he didn’t. The candles cast some measure of familiarity back into the room, and he was more serene when he faced Valri again.
“I don’t know what you’re so afraid of,” he said in a quiet voice. “You know I won’t hurt the princess. You know that no one regards me as anything more than a servant. I’m not a danger to Amalie or her reputation.”
“You’re the most dangerous man in the city,” Valri said deliberately.
“I have no idea why you would say that.”
Valri came a step closer. Even in this poor light, her eyes were a spectacular green. “Amalie has so few friends-friends, people her own age. None, in fact. Me. And I am hardly anyone’s definition of a playmate.” She took a deep breath. “And now she has you. And you are exactly the kind of person a lonely girl would take to heart. You’re kind, you’re funny, you’re thoughtful, you have wonderful stories to tell, you’ll do anything she asks, and you don’t particularly care about rules because most of the time you don’t even know what the rules are. And, oh, yes, you’re a young man who is not terrible to look at, and who doesn’t covet her throne, and who has been brought into her life specifically to protect her from danger! What do I think you’re going to do? I think you’re going to make her fall in love with you!”
In the following second, Cammon had three radically different yet fully formed thoughts that all managed to occupy his mind simultaneously.
The first one: Valri’s lying. This isn’t the real reason she’s afraid of me.
The second one: Me? Amalie could fall in love with me?
The third one: Bright Mother burn me, I could so easily fall in love with Amalie.
“Majesty,” he said, and his voice perfectly conveyed his sense of shock, “you simply can’t be serious.”
She came closer, and now she frowned and shook her finger at him as if he was an erring schoolboy. “She must marry a high-born noble! You know that! She knows that! It will be a marriage of convenience and, like as not, marked by politeness instead of passion. You can’t distract her by being funny and charming and sweet. You can’t show her something she cannot have when she must have something else.”
A fourth thought intruded: Valri thinks I’m funny and charming and sweet? “Do you want me to leave the palace?” he asked.