Blood of Mystery Read Free Page B

cousin dwelling with the unwashed rabble,” Ephesian said, jowls waggling in outrage. He had taken to calling Grace
cousin
, much to her chagrin and—she was forced to admit—her secret delight.
    “Nonsense, Your Excellency,” Melia said soothingly, “there are a large number of bathhouses in the Fourth Circle, and your subjects appear to be admirably well washed. We shall be quite comfortable at the hostel.”
    “Absolutely not!” Ephesian pounded the arms of his throne with chubby fists, and his attendants—he was back to eunuchs now, all fully clothed Grace was glad to see—edged away, eyes wide. “You already have something of an irregular reputation, Lady Melia. But for Lady Grace to stay in the Fourth Circle would besmirch the exalted station of the empire.”
    Melia raised on eyebrow. “You mean unlike the centuries of pillaging, corruption, and slaying of innocents?”
    However, despite their protests, there was no swaying Ephesian. Nor was Melia about to give in to his demands; she refused to take an apartment in the First Circle. “You’re every bit as bossy as a mother hen, Ephesian. You’d never stop pecking at us if we didn’t do exactly as you wished.”
    It was Grace who finally came up with a compromise. She asked Ephesian if there might be some accommodation outside the city that would be of both appropriate station and suitable distance. After Melia’s caustic remark, Ephesian seemed none too keen on the idea of having her nearby, and the idea of the villa was settled on.
    “That was very diplomatic of you, Your Majesty,” Beltan whispered with a grin as they left the palace.
    These words took Grace by surprise. On retrospect, she had to admit it
was
a good solution. Maybe she was better at this whole royalty thing than she gave herself credit for. Maybe it was in her blood.
    Sometimes, long before the others awoke, Grace would slip from her bed, part the gauzy curtains that were the only barrier between her and the last breath of night, and step onto a balcony outside the room. She would touch the steel pendant that hung at her neck—a pendant that was in truth a fragment of a sword—and ponder that thought. Could fate really be contained in the suspension of one’s blood?
    Once there was a patient in the ED whom she diagnosed with symptoms of leukemia. She remembered him clearly. He was one of those big, burly men who moved with exaggerated care, as if afraid he might accidentally break someone. He taught high school, still lived with his elderly mother, and had a gentle laugh. Grace had liked him.
    They put him on a list for a bone marrow transplant. But a few months later Grace learned that no donor match was ever found, and he had died. She felt a pang of sorrow, but his fate hadn’t been up to her. The answer of whether he would live or die had been locked in his blood, determined by his genetic code, and there was nothing anyone could have done to change it.
    Maybe she had been wrong all of those years. Maybe everything really was fate.
    For a while Grace would stay there on the balcony, gazing at the distant city. The white houses of Tarras glowed in the ghost light that always came a full hour before the sun, and low in the sky, just visible over the chalky cliffs south of the city, pulsed a single spark of crimson.
    The red star.
    Once the star had been a harbinger of change and death; it was the Great Stone Krondisar, first raised into the sky by the Necromancer Dakarreth to spread a plague of fire across the land. But Travis Wilder had defeated the Necromancer, and the mute, red-haired girl Tira had taken the Stone and risen to the heavens: a goddess newly born. Now the star was a symbol of hope, and a reminder of a closeness Grace had felt, if only for a fleeting time.
    “I love you, Tira,” she would whisper.
    While it all seemed as if it had happened long ago, the red star had appeared just that spring. It was Sindath now; back in Colorado it would be November.