The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen Read Free Book Online

conversation.
    â€œLady,” Carroll said apologetically, “many of us spent our lives guarding your mother. We don’t cease to protect her just because she’s dead.”
    â€œI was never in Queen Elyssa’s Guard,” Pen ventured. “Couldn’t I—”
    â€œPen, you’re a Queen’s Guard.”
    Pen shut up.
    Kelsea looked around the circle. “Do all of you know who my father is?”
    They stared back at her in mute rebellion. Kelsea felt her temper begin to rise, and bit down hard on the inside of her right cheek, an old reflex. Carlin had cautioned her many times that a wild temper was something a ruler couldn’t afford, so Kelsea had learned to control her temper around Carlin, and Carlin had fallen for it. But Barty had known better. He was the one who’d suggested Kelsea bite down on something. Pain counteracted the anger, at least temporarily, sent it somewhere else. But the frustration didn’t go anywhere. It was like being back in the schoolroom with Carlin. These men knew so many things, and they wouldn’t tell her a single one. “Well, then, what can you tell me about the Red Queen?”
    â€œShe’s a witch,” the handsome blond guard announced flatly. It was the first time Kelsea had heard him speak. The fire highlighted his face, chiseled and symmetrical. His eyes were a pure, wintry blue. Had her mother chosen them for their looks? Kelsea shied away from the thought. She had a very specific idea of what her mother should have been like, an idea created in her earliest days and then woven, embellished, each year she remained trapped in the cottage. Her mother was a beautiful, kind woman, warm and reachable where Carlin was cold and distant. Her mother never withheld. Her mother would be coming for her someday, to take her away from the cottage and its endless routines of learning and practicing and preparation in a grand rescue. It was just taking a bit longer than expected.
    When Kelsea was seven, Carlin sat her down in the library one day and told her that her mother was long dead. This put an end to the dreams of escape, but it didn’t stop Kelsea from constructing new and more elaborate fantasies: Queen Elyssa had been a great queen, beloved by all of her people, a hero who made sure that the poor were fed and the sick doctored. Queen Elyssa sat on her throne and dispensed justice to those who couldn’t seek justice for themselves. When she died, they carried her body in a parade through the streets of the city while the people wept and a battalion of the Tear army clashed its swords in salute. Kelsea had honed and polished this vision until she could invoke it at any moment. It dulled her own fear of being Queen, to think that when she returned to the city at nineteen to take the throne, they would give her a parade also, and Kelsea would ride to the Keep surrounded by cheers and weeping, waving benevolently the whole way.
    Now, looking around at the group of men around the campfire, Kelsea felt a trickle of unease. What did she really know about her mother, the Queen? What could she really know, when Carlin had always refused to say?
    â€œCome on, Mhurn,” Dyer replied to the blond man, shaking his head. “No one ever proved that the Red Queen’s actually a witch.”
    Mhurn glared at him. “She is a witch. Doesn’t matter whether she’s got the powers or not. Anyone who lived through the Mort invasion knows she’s a witch.”
    â€œWhat about the Mort invasion?” Kelsea asked, interested. Carlin had never explained the invasion or its causes very well. Twenty years ago the Mort had entered the Tearling, carved their way through the country, and reached the very walls of the Keep. And then . . . nothing. The invasion was over. Whatever had happened, Carlin skipped right over it in each history lesson.
    Mhurn ignored Carroll, who had begun to scowl at him, and continued,