Sharon Shinn - Reader And Raelynx

Cammon turned his head and put walls up around his own mind and felt himself hunker down behind their shadows.

Amalie touched his arm. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Her face was creased with concern.

He made himself smile and shake his head. “Nothing. I’m just hoping Tayse doesn’t see me, or he’ll want to drag me over the fence and make me practice swordplay. He thinks I don’t work out nearly as often as I should.”

She smiled, but a trace of worry lingered, as if she knew he was lying. “If that happens, I’ll have to throw off my disguise and play the haughty princess. ‘I have commanded this man to wait on me , Rider, and you will not drag him from my side.’ ”

“Oh, yes, that tone of voice would make even Tayse back down.”

When she had had her fill of watching warfare, they promenaded through a few of the gardens. Despite the sunshine, the cold had chased everyone else inside; they had every path and enclosure to themselves. All the flowers were dead, of course, but some of the hedges retained their color, and the naked trees offered a variety of fantastical shapes with their trailing limbs and supplicating, upraised branches. Cammon and Amalie wandered through the sculpture park, where past kings and queens of Gillengaria struck marble poses and gazed down with forbidding, displeased expressions.

“If I ever have my statue done, it’s going to show me smiling,” Amalie said. She paused beside a representation of some former queen, whose face could hardly have been more grim, and stretched her arms wide in a welcome gesture. She had taken off her father’s glasses so her face was completely bare, completely open, covered only with a smile. “I’m going to be bending down a little, like I’m getting ready to kiss a child on the cheek. I’m going to look happy . People will want to come visit my statue, and maybe leave offerings for birds and squirrels at my feet.”

Cammon couldn’t help smiling at that. He was recovering some of his usual insouciance, though he was still being careful to keep his curious mind in check. “Maybe by the time you’re old, and you’ve been ruling for fifty years, you’ll be feeling a little more grumpy.”

She laughed. “So maybe I should commission my statue now.”

Before the war comes , he thought. While there is still a hope that you will take the throne .

“I will,” she said calmly. “The Riders and the mystics will keep me safe.”

He stared at her, completely nonplussed, for it was not a thought he had intended her to overhear. “Majesty-” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She placed her fingertips against the smooth bole of a skinny birch, as if feeling for a pulse in its narrow trunk. “Sorry for what? For worrying that war might snatch the crown from my family? You’re hardly the only one.”

“I shouldn’t-I didn’t mean-I’m sorry that I didn’t keep my thoughts to myself.”

She flattened her palm against the tree and looked at him over her shoulder. The wool scarf had slipped a little, and her red-gold hair made a halo around her shrouded face. “But before. When the Nocklyn lord was talking to me. You sent me thoughts on purpose.”

“I did that time. I haven’t tried to do it since! I’m not sure it’s a good thing that you can hear me when I don’t want to be overheard. Let me see if I can shield my thoughts from you now when I’m really trying.”

He shut his mind down, staring at her in concentration. I wonder what Senneth will make of this conversation , he thought, willing the words to stay locked inside his own head. She will not like it any more than Valri would, but I’m certainly not telling the queen .

Amalie tilted her head as if listening, but looked disappointed. “No. Nothing.”

He smiled. “Well, that’s a relief.”

“Not to me,” she said. “I like to hear you thinking. It makes me feel like-like-there is someone else in the world.”

He was troubled, and that was a rare state for Cammon. “Majesty, I’m pretty sure the queen would say you should be looking to other people to keep you company.”

She tilted her head to one side, considering that. “Valri likes you.”

“I think so. But that doesn’t mean she thinks I’m suitable to be your friend.”

Amalie shrugged, dropped her hand, and started kicking her way down the leaf-strewn path. Cammon fell in step beside her. “But you want to be my friend,” she said.

He couldn’t help himself. He smiled at that. “Oh, I do. But scruffy mystics with no family connections don’t get to pick princesses as their friends.”

Amalie smiled, too. “But, you see, I am the princess. I get to order people to do what I say. And I say, ‘Cammon, I want you to be my companion.’ What can you do about it? Nothing. You have to obey.”

He gave up. He didn’t particularly want to keep his distance anyway. “Well, good. And if Valri and Milo tell me I have to stay away, I won’t listen to them. Only if you tell me.”

“So I want you to entertain me at dinner,” she said.

“Entertain you how? At the formal dinners? With your father and all the nobles present?”

She nodded. “Those dinners. Particularly when one of my suitors is present. I want you to tell me stories.” She glanced at him. “With your mind. Put the stories in my head.”

He tried not to laugh. “Won’t that make it hard for you to concentrate on the conversation?”

“We’ll work out a signal. I’ll touch my left earring if I’m bored and want you to talk to me, and I’ll touch my right earring if I want you to be quiet.”

It was a terrible idea. Valri would flay him alive if he agreed, and Senneth would not be even slightly amused. Kirra would think it a delightful plan, but Kirra was hardly a role model for anybody. “Majesty-”

She took a lofty tone. “I command you. You have to do what I say.”

He felt, for a moment, like a swimmer resisting a strong current-and then he put his head under and succumbed. “Well, then, I will. I don’t know how entertaining any of my stories are, though.”

“You can make disparaging comments about my suitors,” she said. “Make fun of their hair or their clothes.”

“I’m really the wrong one to talk about how other people look.”

“And you can let me know when they’re lying. Right there at the dinner table.”

“And then you’ll challenge them, I suppose. ‘Not true, ser. You only own half that many horses.’ ”

She grinned. “You think it would make conversation awkward? I won’t say anything. But I’d like to know.”

“All right, then. I’ll tell you whenever I pick up anything interesting from their thoughts.” He glanced at her. “Valri won’t like it.”

She gave him an angelic smile. “Valri won’t know.”

He glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting the queen to appear any minute, anxious and scolding. “She’s probably looking for you right now. Are you cold? Do you want to go in?”

She shook her head. “I want to see the raelynx.”

He was pleased. “You do? I love to visit him. I’ve never seen you there.”

She turned and led him in the direction of the big cat’s private enclosure. “I used to go with Valri almost every day. These past few weeks I’ve scarcely had a moment to myself, so I haven’t been. I wonder if he’ll have forgotten me.”

Someone was coming up the pathway. Cammon touched her arm, put his finger to his lips, and drew her aside. Like children, they hid behind a springy yew until the solitary gardener had passed by, then they grinned at each other and scampered on down the path.

“What does Valri plan to do with him?” he asked. “Does she really think she can keep him here forever?”