The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire, #1)(3)
“Did the most incredible impression of a Morcantian farm boy you’ve ever heard.” He sped up the cadence of his voice, hitting his consonants hard and running all the sounds together. “I was a Morcantian peasant angry that the blight in Ravenspire is seeping across the border and killing my goats.”
“He yelled at the treasury officers long enough to give me time to hide in the wagon, but they never got a good look at him.” Lorelai shoved the dangling mouse away from her face.
Gift. For you. Dinner. Sasha’s thoughts flitted through Lorelai’s mind with quick precision.
Thank you, but I don’t eat mice. Lorelai’s throat closed as the little body brushed against her hair while images of Sasha’s beak enthusiastically shredding the mouse’s skin to get to its internal organs blazed from her bird’s mind into hers. She swallowed hard to avoid insulting Sasha’s gift by gagging out loud. Most of the time she was grateful for the day nine years earlier when she’d found the dying baby gyrfalcon and sent her magic into the bird to heal her. But sometimes the telepathic link that had formed between them as a result gave Lorelai far too much information about the inner workings of her bird’s mind.
Strange human. Delicious mouse. Sasha spread her wings and glided to the barn floor, where she tore into her prize with relish.
“My performance was impeccable.” Leo looked smug as he wiped dust from his curly black hair.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Lorelai said as Gabril finished inspecting the bags and then limped over to a sizable crack in the barn’s wall to peer outside. “You’ve never even been to Morcant. You overheard one conversation three years ago, and you sound like you were born there. I couldn’t do that if you aimed an arrow at my heart.”
Leo grinned. “That’s because you’re good at magic, and I’m good at everything else.”
Gabril turned from the door. “Enough talking. Lorelai needs to practice while there’s still light left to see. Leo, take the sacks up to the loft. My contact in the village will collect them and distribute the food to those in need.”
Leo looked aggrieved. “I’m always the one who has to do the heavy lifting.”
Lorelai’s smile was smug. “That’s because I’m good at magic, and you’re good at everything else.”
“That was cruel, Lorelai.” Leo sighed dramatically and hefted the first sack. Gabril fetched a bundled-up blanket from the corner of the barn and laid it on the floor. When he opened it, several items lay beneath the dim light filtering in through the cracks in the walls. There was a length of rope, a tinderbox, and a brilliant green jewel half the size of Lorelai’s palm.
Lorelai’s stomach clenched, and the air felt too thick to breathe as she slowly crouched beside the blanket and pulled off her gloves. The fabric stuck to her suddenly clammy skin.
It wasn’t enough to rob treasury wagons and build loyalty among the peasants. It wasn’t enough to escalate the robberies and gradually move further south—closer and closer to Konigstaadt, the capital of Ravenspire—to widen her base of support while she weakened the queen’s.
Confronting the most powerful mardushka to come out of Morcant in a century required a careful, step-by-step plan. Nine years ago, Lorelai had challenged the queen, and her father had paid the price because Lorelai hadn’t thought through every possible way her plan could go wrong.
She wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
“I bartered for these from an Eldrian refugee. None of them have touched Ravenspire soil,” Gabril said.
Lorelai nodded and thanked the heavens that her voice didn’t shake as she said, “So there’s no chance the magic Irina is using to drain the land tainted these, and no chance that if I touch them, Irina’s magic will recognize mine and tell her that I’m still alive.”
“And exactly where to find us,” Leo said in his I’m-being-helpful voice from the loft above. “Don’t forget about that.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” she said. The knowledge that if she touched something that was bespelled by Irina—which could be anything in Ravenspire considering how much magic Irina used to keep herself on the throne—the queen would come for them was the silent fear that crouched in the corner of her mind and kept her thinking, planning, and thinking some more every hour of the day.
The only way she could become stronger was to practice her magic whenever Gabril found items that couldn’t possibly have been touched by the queen’s magic that threaded its way deep throughout the kingdom. Magic that was sucking the heart of the land dry, withering crops and destroying livestock as it forced the living heart of everything it touched to submit to the will of Ravenspire’s queen.
“You don’t have to do this,” Gabril said softly as Lorelai hesitated, her hand hovering over the three objects on the blanket. “You’ve already had a long day. If you want to practice tomorrow night instead—”
“I’ll practice now.” Her voice shook a little.
“You know how to do this,” he said. “Use the incantor that works best for what you want to do. Let your power do the work for you. You’re as strong willed as they come. You can subdue the heart of any living thing, or any object made from a living thing. You don’t have to fear what you are, Lorelai. Being a mardushka isn’t a choice. It’s how you use your power that matters.”