The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [78]
The cat man.
Here, in this time. Indeed, the path of unmagic she had followed to this inn was more likely the cat man’s than it was the royal steward’s.
The hound had to force herself to breathe again. The sight of the cat man in person was enough to make her vomit. But she had eaten nothing that day, so it was only dry retching.
When she was finished, she was trembling.
Truly she could not imagine anything more terrifying than the cat man. He had destroyed her forest home and it must have been he who had dribbled his unmagic throughout Richon’s kingdom, destroying the animal army en masse.
Thinking of it made her feel cold, as if she herself had been touched by the cat man.
She had meant to attack the royal steward alone, to kill him and bring back evidence of his death to Richon, to show him he need worry about the man no more. Now her task had just increased a hundredfold. She did not know if she had any hope of destroying the cat man, but she knew she had to try.
Within the inn, she heard the royal steward and the cat man laugh together, a terrible sound. And then she turned away and went into the woods to hunt.
She dared not go into the inn, as a human woman, and ask for food. She had no coin, and begging would draw attention she could not afford.
But she needed sustenance, and it would not hurt her to remember the violent rush of the chase, and the way that turned away fears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Richon
RICHON RAN TOWARD the lord chamberlain, and justice.
By the time he reached him, the man had fallen off his horse and was trying desperately to get back on. All around him men were scrambling away from the battlefield, if they could still move. The ground was soaked with blood and there were dead Nolirans everywhere.
Richon called out to the lord chamberlain’s horse in the language of horses.
“Away! Leave him and do not look back!”
The horse needed no more encouragement than that. He fled with the rest of the army.
The lord chamberlain gave a cry of despair, then turned and saw Richon approaching him.
He looked around, as if hoping to find help. But his guards had disappeared and left him to his fate. He turned back and put on a smile.
“King Richon, you cannot know how glad I am to see you!” he exclaimed, waving his arms widely as if that would distract Richon from the truth. “I thought that when the wild man had changed you into a bear you were gone forever.”
“And so you turned to aid my enemy instead?” Richon asked.
The lord chamberlain swallowed, then stared at Richon. The spineless, foolish boy king he had last known had turned into a man.
“You misunderstand,” he sputtered. “The royal steward—he took control of the armies. I knew that was not what you would want. He would have destroyed your kingdom, or if not that, taken it entirely for himself. Surely you noticed how power hungry he always was. When he saw the wild man turn you into a bear, he thought it was the perfect opportunity to take over your kingdom and crown himself. I had to stop that.”
“Stop it by making yourself king instead?” asked Richon.
“No, no, Your Majesty. It was not for my sake. I only thought I would hold the kingdom for you until you returned. But I knew the royal steward would do no such thing.” He was babbling, panicked enough that he was inadvertently letting truth spill out.
“Until I returned from being a bear?” asked Richon, his eyes narrowing. “What on earth made you think that I would have the power to fight the wild man’s magic?”
“But you—your parents—”
Had the lord chamberlain suspected all along that Richon might one day inherit his parents’ magic? He had never given the least hint of it in all the years that Richon had ruled. He had certainly never encouraged Richon to discover his magic.
Just to see the lord chamberlain’s reaction, Richon turned himself into a bear.