Chapter 2

Isat up in bed and stretched. I wasn't looking forward to this afternoon at all. Most of the Barons were terrible, greedy men. They came sniffing around when I was younger and I didn't want them then either. When I married the first time, I didn't have to choose out of three men. I really loved him and talked my father into allowing the marriage. I'd had been sure when Rivannus had left eighteen years ago to search for Lisana that he wouldn't be gone long and would return with her. He was such an excellent hunter and tracker.

I'd had met him on a day like today, when Leodos snuck me out of the castle to the forest outside. Leodos always brought his bow and sword to protect me. He had left me by this gorgeous serene pond I always loved to sit at while he hunted for lunch. I saw a wolf appear and charge toward me, but my back was to the pond and I had nowhere to go.

Before I could panic or even process the situation I was in, an arrow flew through the air and the wolf fell over, dead. I thought it was Leodos since most people didn't know about this place and ran straight into Rivannus's chest.

I didn't know him and was afraid of him at first. He held his hands up, so I knew he meant me no harm. I looked at him and he was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen. His blond hair was tied back with a leather strip, and he had very unusual eyes. One was a deep green, and the other was a bright blue. I'd never seen eyes like that before.

For a minute, I just stopped to look at him. He apologized for scaring me and told me he didn't know I was out there when he was tracking the wolf. I invited him to sit at the pond with me and we talked until Leodos returned. At first, Leodos was suspicious of him and told him to leave me alone and go away.

I liked him. I managed to convince him that Rivannus had saved my life and meant me no harm. I wanted him to stay. Leodos gave in and didn't chase him off, as he usually did when I begged him for something. Rivannus had a rabbit on his belt and offered that for out lunch, in addition to what Leodos had found. Leodos slowly relaxed and stopped giving him suspicious looks as our lunch cooked over the fire, and he saw the way Rivannus made me laugh.

Leodos was my first love. If I hadn't met Rivannus, I would have begged to marry him instead of a Baron. Leodos only said something when I invited him back to the palace and reminded me nothing could come of it. But I was going to be queen one day. I knew the laws, and I knew the loopholes. The council of Barons only passed a law that I had to marry a human. There was nothing saying it had to be one of them, and I reminded them of that when I told them who I was marrying. I didn't give them a chance to complain because, technically, I was following the law.

A few months after the marriage, I became pregnant with the Princess Lisana. My tutor, Belisarus, who had taught me since I was a child on how to hide my gifts and history, came back to help with the little princess. But one night, when Lisana was three months old, I put her to bed like I always did and my whole life changed.

We didn't use nannies because no human could be around them when they were young. A crying fit as an infant could set things on fire. Lisana rarely cried or had fits. We darkened her hair with herbs as soon as my father cleaned her off after she was born. I rocked her to sleep and put her in the crib, that was only a few feet away from the bed in our bedroom, and went to sleep myself.

I woke up intending to feed the baby, a little surprised Lisana had not woken me up that she was hungry. I was groggier than usual as I walked to the crib to check on the baby and to move her over to the chair to feed her, but when I pulled the blanket back, she was no longer in the crib. Rivannus was still asleep, and I woke him up, screaming. Neither of us had heard anyone come into the bedroom and I would have thought with all the senses Rivannus had when he was outdoors, he would have sensed something.

Our bedroom door was still locked from the inside, and it didn't look like anyone had forced their way in. The windows in the room were bolted shut because it was storming. We immediately notified the guards, who searched the entire castle. No one could figure out how she was taken from a locked room, nor was there any sign of her in the castle. Rivannus left in the middle of the night to track outside the castle. He couldn"t find any clues, nor any tracks.

That was when the Barons stepped in. They were convinced the tribes had done this, but honestly, my father and I suspected them. They launched their own investigation and wouldn't give us updates. Leodos decided to get involved since his family used to torture and study the tribes. He had no intention of torturing anyone. He inserted himself, found out what the Barons were doing, and reported it to my father so he could put a stop to it.

Which made them hate him even more than they did when he refused to carry on his family's barbaric practice of torturing the tribes trying to figure out their magic. I wanted my child back, but not like that.

Rivannus thought we should search other areas besides the villages around the kingdom and left to search for her. He believed what my father and I did. It could have been one of the Barons. He promised to get her back and expose whoever did it. I received ravens from him for a year. Then the ravens stopped, and I heard nothing else from him. My child had been missing nineteen years and there were no new clues now as there had been no clues when she was taken.

I knew she was out there somewhere. I would have felt it if something happened to her. I didn't want to marry someone I hated and have a child with him, but I also knew what would happen if my line ended. There was only one other man that I loved as much as Rivannus and Leodos didn't feel that way about me. He'd been a constant in my life and he'd do anything for me, but it wasn't that kind of love. Even if it was, Leodos had been stripped of his titles and banished. I got away with Rivannus. If I tried to marry Leodos, they'd probably try to assassinate him.

After breakfast, I met Leodos at the back of the castle, where we could sneak out into the forest. We'd been doing this for a while. My home was massive, but it could also be oppressive and sometimes, I just needed to get away from being royalty for a little while. The Barons were constantly sucking up to me, but they couldn't stand me. Oh, I knew they all wanted to bed me, but they hated that they wanted to bed me because I was Tempris.

When we finally got to the pond, there was a swan there. A big, beautiful white swan with large, black eyes. There had never been one before in the twenty-five years he had been taking me out here. I didn't want to scare it, so I didn't sit as close while Leodos went hunting for lunch. He wouldn't dare leave my side in public, but we'd been coming out here a long time and aside from Rivannus finding it by accident while he was tracking a wolf, no one knew about it.

The swan appeared to be watching me. I'd never seen something so graceful before and didn't want it to leave. I was a little shocked when the swan started swimming toward the bank. I thought for a moment it might be a Farkhi, but they were all functional birds. They were either birds of prey for hunting or they were small enough to spy for the tribes. I was under no grand notion that any of my secrets were safe from the Farkhi king, Volaris. I also didn't think I'd done anything to anger him. I didn't think he'd sacrifice one of his tribe members to have them turn into a swan just to hurt me in this clearing.

When the swan reached the bank and I saw the air around it vibrate, I began to panic. It was a Farkhi. What could they want with me? Was this an assassination attempt? I called my fire to me just in case, but I was completely shocked when the air stopped moving and standing in front of me was not a dark-skinned Farkhi, but a very tiny, pale-skinned girl.

She had long, dark hair and big, blue eyes. She was shorter than me and looking at her was like looking in a mirror. The Farkhi all had ebony skin and dark eyes. The tribes all wore the same kind of robes. The men were bare up top and the women's robes covered their breasts but left their shoulders and back bare. There were rumors they were made with magic that allowed them to survive the shift with them.

The tribes all had their colors. The Farkhi wore yellow, but their robes had green and red accents to announce their station. It was the same for all the tribes. Before the humans tried to tame them, the Tempris wore black robes, but I'd been wearing the latest human fashion my entire life. The girl in front of me was wearing plain white. Which none of the tribes wore.

"What are you?" I whispered in fear.

"I'm not here to hurt you," the girl said. "I have a message for you from Belisarus. I don't know why, but he says before I give it to you, I have to touch you. I won't hurt you."

I relaxed a little hearing the name Belisarus. I hadn't seen him since Lisana was taken, but I grew up learning from him. I needed to know who this girl was. She looked exactly like me and she was the right age to be Lisana, but my child wouldn't have an affinity for air. Belisarus had been like a second father to me. He wouldn't have sent someone here to my secret spot if they meant me harm, and there was probably a reason he wanted this girl to touch me.

She placed her hands on my shoulders, and I realized she was Tempris, too. I didn't really know how that was possible. The humans would have found the baby of two tribes mixing an abomination. I didn't really know what the tribes would do, but I knew this kind of thing wasn't done. I could also feel her calling to my blood, which meant we were related.

I fought her because I needed her to slip. If her eyes were blue, it was because someone taught her to change them, so she'd be safe from humans. My daughter had two very distinguishing features. Her hair was covering her ears, but if I could fight her long enough for her control to slip and show me her real eyes, I'd know exactly who she was.

"Lisana?" I asked as soon as I got my answer.

"I'm not your daughter," she said, calling to my blood harder.

She was. My daughter was the only person with those eyes. I had no idea how she was also Farkhi or where Belisarus found her, but she was definitely my child. I was about to let her feel my fire so she knew we were related and I could explain it to her when Leodos finally came back from hunting.

"Step away from the princess and get your hands off of her!" he yelled, nocking his arrow.

The girl let go of me and ran. I was even more confused as the girl flung her arms behind her and turned into a hawk to fly away. Where had my child been this long? How was she also Farkhi and breaking all the rules of being Farkhi?

"Don't hurt her!" I yelled, hoping it was not too late as I watched the arrow sail. I watched the arrow pierce the hawk.

"I said ‘don't hurt her!'" I screamed as I watched the hawk spiral to the ground. I rushed over and just as the hawk hit the ground, I saw the air vibrate and the hawk changed back into the girl. I rolled her over and could see the arrow piercing her arm and the girl was passed out.

Leodos was by my side, looking down at the girl, confused. "Who is this? Why doesn't she look like the Farkhi? What did she say to you?"

"It's Lisana."

I knew he was going to argue because he cared about me. Since she was passed out, she couldn't control the magic keeping her eyes changed. She must have been using magic instead of herbs to hide her hair, because it was now flaming red. I pulled her hair back and showed him her ears. Lisana had been born with pointed ears.

"Look at her hair and ears. It's her."

Leodos just grunted.

"You don't go to Guttertown, but you've seen the Baron's wives. They all want red hair. You can buy the herbs from any barber. They don't really know the right shade of red, so it's all different colors. And it slipped out that her ears were pointed. There were some butchers offering to cut up kid's ears, so they looked like hers. You don't know this, but some of them showed up at the palace trying to palm off their kids as Lisana with mangled ears and asking for a reward."

"I do know about that," I insisted. "Her hair was black before and her eyes slipped. She has one violet eye and one green eye. No one knew about that."

Leodos grumbled because he knew I was right. No one knew about her eyes because I changed them before anyone saw her. I couldn't change her ears. Yeah, it was easier to believe the Barons had killed her than Lisana standing in front of us with powers neither of us could explain, but this was definitely her.

"How can she be Lisana if she can turn into a hawk? Your family has mixed with humans a lot, but everyone in Nestran is against people with magic mixing."

"What if Rivannus was such an excellent tracker because he was hiding something from us?"

"Rivannus was tan from spending time in the sun, but he was nowhere near as dark as a Farkhi. Rivannus couldn't have been hiding that. This girl is dangerous, and I don't want her anywhere near you."

"Look at her. She looks exactly like me. Don't hurt her, but can you find out what Belisarus wants?"

"How do you know she's not here to hurt you? Do you know how dangerous it is to bring her into the castle? We should just kill her right now while she can't harm us."

"No! She's not dangerous. She could have hurt me. She chose to appear to me initially as a swan. When she revealed herself to me, she told me she wasn't going to hurt me. Belisarus sent her. How would she even know him? I asked her if she was Lisana when she was calling me and she said no, but what if she just doesn't know who she is?"

"She can't be Lisana. I don't know what she is other than dangerous. What do you think the humans and the tribes are going to do when they find out we've snuck a girl into the castle who manages to be both Farkhi and Tempris at the same time and is not locked in by one form? How did she even come by Farkhi abilities? She's way too pale to have Farkhi blood and the tribes don't mix because the magic doesn't. If someone from two different tribes mate, the baby is always stillborn. This has to be some sort of dark magic."

I really didn't think she was dangerous, but I didn't have the heart to hear it if Belisarus sent her to me knowing what I was going to think and she was somehow not my child. I could just feel it that she was.

"She spoke to me. She doesn't sound like she's from here. She has the accent of an Idric Islander. You know there's no magic there."

"That makes me even more suspicious of her."

"Can you please just do this for me? Find out why she is the way she is. But do it in a way that doesn't hurt her. I don't want her hurt."

"You know I can't tell you no. This is against my better judgment and this will end badly. If she really does have a message from Belisarus, I'm getting it from her and sending her back to Idric Island where she can't hurt anyone," he said, scooping up the passed-out girl and carrying her through the forest.

Leodos and I usually agreed on everything. I didn't care she also had Farkhi gifts. There were so few Tempris left. If she wasn't my child, she still belonged with us.