Katyrinna (Rin)

Queen Katyrinna was faced with an all-too-familiar dilemma—too much family to protect and only one of her. Of course, Rin was rather liberal with her definition of “family.” The Naxturaen definition was strictly limited to one’s line of blood relations. Rin had a growing cluster of blood relations, but the idea of confining the people to be concerned about based on something as arbitrary as relation made no sense to her. Of course she considered Alexander and Issabeth the closest of family, along with anyone “related” to them, and then Athena and Rosaliy and anyone in the palace, and she had so many Glade residents who depended on her now. Dripping in family was a nice problem to have until the world was ending, and then protecting them all at once was quite the challenge.

In fact, as she could see off in the distance, a country had just been dropped under her roof, metaphorically speaking, but she could not even begin to think through what that would mean for the future. No one could watch the future anymore. Rin had never counted on Arlana to intervene in a way that was timely and useful, but knowing the Seer was watching for the most dire of potential catastrophes had given some peace of mind in the past.

“You’re supposed to be resting, not fretting,” Alexander broke into her thoughts.

“Resting makes me fret,” she replied.

He nestled behind her on the window seat and pushed aside her hair to kiss the back of her neck.

“You’ve already changed your mind?” he asked, resting his head on her shoulder.

She reached back for his hand and interlaced her fingers with his. “I can’t say I truly made up my mind in the first place.”

“Go,” he said simply.

She smiled and kissed as much of his cheek as she could reach. “What about walking into a trap and me having limited powers and trusting Issabeth and Rosaliy and letting Drake do his job and the baby and all that?”

“The crazy ramblings of a terrible husband,” he said flippantly.

“Half of that may be true,” she teased. As awful as this latest adventure had been, at least it had not demanded Alexander of her. Being trapped with him and the new baby for so long would very nearly have been a vacation if it had not been marred by worry over her children. Of course, Rin would never admit that to the meddling star women.

The pounding on the door surprised both of them. Normally Rin could see these things coming, but the baby was proving to be quite the magic siphon. Each of her children had responded in unpredictable ways to being half Terran and half Naxturaen. Lillya had been the fussy, Terran baby the palace was expecting, and Taurin and Tansy had been a mix of magical tantrums and twin mischief. This baby was Naxturaen in a way Rin had never experienced. Naxturaen babies took time to acclimate themselves to the world around them, Kalilya had warned. This little girl had spent days soaking in the magic around her, barely eating, just sleeping and drinking in the people and places. One thing remained the same. As with the other children, Rin herself was a mix of pure love and complete terror.

“It’s Daniella,” Rin said after an attempt to focus on her surroundings.

“Alarming,” Alexander murmured.

She transferred the sleeping bundle of striped rainbow hair to Alexander. Best she could figure, the baby was dreaming about colors. Crystal Palace was a land of color after being trapped in the night sky.

By the time Rin’s toes touched the moss floor, Daniella was rapping on the door again. Rin could sense her radiating urgency now that she was focused. She raised a hand, and the door responded by swinging open. She felt a tiring little rush of magic before she remembered she was supposed to be conserving her energy.

Daniella—white-faced—took a step inside the open door. She clutched the amber necklace. “It’s turned black,” she blurted out without any other greeting, and she thrust the stone forward.

The oval-shaped amber rimmed with gold was marred by a black cloud hovering in the center.

“What does it mean?” she demanded.

“Whoever the stone is linked to is in danger,” Rin answered dully.

“Of course it’s a link stone,” Alexander muttered. “How did that not occur to me?”

The fact that he was conscious and mobile so soon after the baby’s arrival was stunning enough. Rin had no wonder why his tired mind was not as sharp as normal.

“We’re going,” said Rin.

“We?” asked Alexander.

Daniella’s odd behavior had earned the notice of an anxious pair of guards who were creeping into the Naxturaen hallway in case they were needed. They were being rather brave, all things considered.

“Nayil,” Rin called to one. “Find Dmitri, please.” She would have told him to move as quickly as possible, but the haste was implied. Nobody ever needed Dmitri on a leisurely timetable.

Meanwhile, Daniella tried to pass the necklace off to Rin.

“You aren’t coming?” Rin asked, surprised.

Daniella’s eyes darkened like they did when she was annoyed by a stupid question. Rin chose to interpret her mixed emotions as nervousness. She always had the hardest time reading Daniella. The woman made no sense.

“They’ll be anxious to see you’re alright,” Rin told her gently.

Her words were chilly. “I shouldn’t be anywhere near them.”

Alexander chuckled. “We tried that.”

Daniella looked wary. Poor thing. Rin wondered if turning a memory spell on herself was a last resort or if she had wanted to start new. Alexander claimed his mother was trying to garner Rin’s sympathy after what she thought might be an unforgivable crime. If so, she had calculated well. Rin was highly sympathetic to the cruelty of Daniella’s self-imposed punishment.

“Nobody was more adamant about keeping you away from baby Lillya than I was,” Rin agreed.

Daniella narrowed her eyes. “What changed?”

“Nothing,” Rin mused. “Everything.” She shot a glance to Alexander, telling him to find words Daniella would understand.

“You’ve always been obsessed with legacy,” Alexander told her. “So we were understandably worried when Lillya was born. I was sure you were going to find some way to subvert her powers and use them for yourself. You weren’t allowed anywhere near her.”

Daniella nodded crisply, not at all insulted by this information. “Sounds like a wise choice.”

“No,” Rin disagreed. “Before Lillya could walk, she was stricken by a blood disease—What was it called, dearest?”

“You’d think I’d remember, but it was ten years ago, and these things do seem to happen with alarming frequency.”

“Alarming,” Rin agreed. “You helped find the cure for her, Daniella.”

“Which was more suspicious than absolving, to be honest,” Alexander added.

Issabeth and Alexander had indeed been suspicious about Daniella’s possible involvement. They couldn’t feel her visceral fear and hatred of her own helplessness.

“But the first time you saw Lillya,” Rin tried to explain, “you were afraid to touch her, and I realized you were perfectly happy being kept away. You were afraid of…facing yourself, perhaps.”

“I gave up long before the twins,” Alexander remembered, “but if I hadn’t, they would have been the final straw.”

“He barely survived them,” Rin remembered, taking his hand. “You, Daniella, were all I had.”

Rin felt the woman’s cloud of skepticism, an appropriate reaction to such a declaration. Once, it was a story only she and Daniella had known, and now it was solely Rin’s. Again, she felt pity for the odd punishment. Even Arlana had said she could do nothing for the woman, which made sense. If a Flifary spell could break what Daniella had worked so hard to hide, what use was the spell? Rin had become familiar with Daniella’s cold logic in the past decade, even if they rarely understood each other.

“Besides,” Alexander was adding, “If the children were really your long goal, you’d find a way to accomplish your nefarious ends. Best to keep your enemies close and all that.”

“Isn’t this proof? All of this?” Daniella shot back.

For some reason, this little talk was not working for Daniella.

“It is, rather,” he said calmly, “but it’s proof you did have the ability to take them at any time. If you wanted their powers for yourself, you’d be off in a cave somewhere training them how to master dark magic.”

Rin took the necklace from her all the same. “You’ll see,” she promised Daniella.

Dmitri had been effectively summoned by now, but even with all his powers of efficiency, leaving happened with agonizing slowness. Arlana needed to be located, along with Talyrin. Alexander needed to be hurried along, a skill with which Rin was particularly familiar, although doing so while tending to a baby sprouting alarming magenta stripes all over her body was a challenge. Still, they beat everyone else to the meeting point outside. In the sunlight, Rin could just see the troublesome island in the distance. Dmitri and Arlana were heading their way.

A whinny broke her thoughts.

“Sorry to wake you,” she apologized to the horse, who nuzzled her cheek.

“I really thought I was getting out of this one,” Alexander murmured, smoothing out invisible wrinkles in a decorative layered vest.

She almost found his nervousness over facing the woman he was betrothed to amusing, but she had no room for humor until she saw her children. Being without them was all her worst fears come to life. The only reason Alexander and the baby were coming was that she refused to let them out of her presence.

Rin felt a jolt of excitement not her own. With a full-body yawn, the baby was waking up and responding to the hubbub around her with rainbow freckles. An adventurous spirit would serve her well in this family. It would also land her in a whole pile of trouble.

“Something’s wrong,” Rin informed Arlana as soon as the woman was within hearing distance. “Can you find the spot where Issabeth, Rosaliy, and Drake were sent?”

“Certainly,” Arlana agreed.

With that, the Once Seer raised her hands, and fog rushed around them. The smell of drenched fire hit Rin at the same moment as the rain. The baby’s hair went red as the rain pelted her head. Her tiny face twisted in baby rage. Rin adjusted her cloak to shield her from the offensive rain and evaluated the scene. They had appeared in front of the burned remains of a house.

A family huddled under the shelter of a barn nearby, so Rin’s party hurried their way.

A woman rushed to intercept them in the opening of the barn. “I don’t know where they are,” exclaimed the slightly hysterical woman with curly silver hair. She had a passel of similarly silver-haired children around her. One of them was limp in the arms of a man.

“Celia,” Alexander blurted out. “What’s happened?”

The woman tossed her head, annoyed at the question, and her arms reached for Rin’s. Daniella’s choice had been a good one. Celia’s level of concern for Rin’s missing children was a pure, panicked, brimming compassion that few people’s hearts had a capacity for. Rin loved her immediately.

Weakened powers or no, at this distance, Rin could find the blazing spots of light that represented her magical children. They were together. They were unhurt.

“They’re here,” she said for Celia’s sake as much as anyone else’s. “I’m not sure where exactly they are, but they’re close. There’s some sort of magical disturbance.”

Talyrin’s nose flared. If they had come at night, he could have told her more about the crackling magic Rin could feel in the air, but she had no time to wait for information about trivial details like what sort of danger she was up against. Not when her children were so close.

Rin stretched out a hand to the sleeping boy in the man’s arms. Pale powder lingered in his curly hair.

“Pulveriso Dormio,” she said softly, the horror of her words striking her heart cold. She felt the baby shiver in response. Just when Rin thought the Malum were gone forever, an offshoot always managed to spring up.

“What does that mean?” the man holding the boy asked, pulling him back from her just slightly.

“Malum,” Arlana answered him. “It means Malum.”

That word sent a mixed flutter of alarm and disgust among the gathering, excepting Celia’s pack of children, who were staring at Arlana in amazement. She was rather exotic, especially in her draped layers of feathered scarves.

“Dmitri,” Rin said, unable to finish her request. There were no traces of Malum here now, but that could change at any moment.

“Of course,” he answered anyway. “Tal, you can cover ground more quickly to sweep the area. I’ll head north, you south?”

“Northeast and southeast,” Alexander amended. “We’re heading south.” He waved a finger at the sky. The dark clouds were concentrated just south of them.

“Tansy,” Rin agreed.

The black horse snorted in agreement, and he and Dmitri hurried off in opposite directions through the rain. In the little time since they had arrived, the rain had settled from a deluge into a light spatter, which indicated Tansy was calming down or tired, or both.

“The boy will wake unharmed,” Rin promised Celia and the understandably grumpy man. “Arlana will stay with you.”

“We’ll all stay with me,” Arlana said, gesturing to the trees.

Lillya was sopping wet and shaking, but still, relief flooded through Rin the instant she saw the girl. The bedraggled girl sped toward Rin and Alexander and clamped her parents around the middle, her already wet face streaming with tears. Meanwhile, Rosaliy emerged with Tansy and Taurin. Taurin seemed to be faring the best of everyone, seeing as how he was wet and covered in ash with no danger of a bath in sight.

“Celia and Silas have cows and chickens and trees that grow apples,” he babbled happily.

Tansy, however, was going to remain a fixture on Rin’s leg for a while. Rin ruffled her hair and kissed her head.

“Is everything ok now Mama?” she asked, muffled by the fabric of her dress. “The scary lady made a fire, and I didn’t know what to do, but Rose said it was ok to rain it out.”

“Good job, firefly,” said Rin, heart brimming. She could even muster up some real magic if she needed to.

Rin’s eyes asked Rosaliy the question she did not want to ask.

“Shrilynda,” Rosaliy whispered. “Lillya said she threw a handful of powder to disappear.”

The name caused a spike of horror the baby recoiled from and threw back to Rin in alarm, like the echo of a frightened shiver. Rin shoved her feelings aside. Shril was long gone. Although that just shoved the problem to a later day, she was relieved all the same.

Lillya tugged on her cloak. “Mama, Drake. That awful woman stabbed him.”

Poor Drake. Rin should have taken the time to be more clear with him about the danger inherent to being anywhere near her or her loved ones. Celia had needed a similar briefing.

“And Aunt Issabeth.” Lillya waved wildly southeast. “She got hit with the same powder as Barx.”

“I’ll drag her back here,” Alexander offered.

Rin wanted to insist they all stick together—for the rest of time, preferably—but she could not be in both places.

“Silas will help you,” Celia volunteered her husband.

Both men flinched, but Alexander needed the help, and the grumpy Silas chose not to argue.

“Show me where, Lil?” asked Alexander, not being at all subtle about the fact he wanted someone nearby as a buffer against Silas. Or perhaps Rin just knew him well enough to see what he was doing.

Rin raised her eyebrows.

“Look at what happened to his homestead,” Alexander exclaimed, albeit quietly. “I need to stave off my murder any way I can. Duck, why don’t you come along with us,” Alexander suggested louder.

Rin very nearly smiled, but Rosaliy was still anxious. She was sopping wet and filthy, but she cared about none of that.

“How badly hurt is Drake?” asked Rin.

“Duck found blue bark,” Rosaliy replied, “so the poison isn’t spreading, but he’s not particularly resistant to magic.”

“We’ll have to do something about that,” said Rin. “For now, I need you and Arlana to recover albin grass and sanofi flowers from Crystal Palace. Mash them together into a paste, if you would.”

“Albin?” Rosaliy asked.

“Mmm,” Rin agreed. “Shril always coated her daggers in a particularly vile mix of heart strings and powdered swamp toad bones.”

“I’m so sorry she got away,” sighed Rosaliy.

“I can’t say I’m sorry,” Rin admitted. “I have no desire to deal with Shrilynda right now. Will you find me and force me to make a plan for her later?”

Rosaliy smiled a little and nodded. She and Arlana vanished in a cloud of fog.

Rin was about to coax Tansy into letting her move enough to find Drake when Dmitri and Talyrin returned together from their scouting trip. “No sign of the witch,” Dmitri grunted, “but Tal did find this.”

Drake was slumped across Talyrin’s dark back, looking worse for wear. Rin could see the red stains on the side of his tattered shirt. One look at the purple spiderwebs down his side told her she had guessed the poison correctly. Shrilynda had always loved poison.

“Can you fix him?” Tansy asked, her green eyes pleading.

The simple answer was no, Rin could not tangle with a magical poison right now, but she could help another way.