In the Time of Dragon Moon by Janet Lee Carey

Author:Janet Lee Carey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-eight

Pendragon Castle, Wilde Island

Wolf Moon

September 1210

IT SEEMED THAT a night with her husband had eased the queen. She looked calm, even contented when I brought in her morning potion. If she wasn’t already with child, last night’s visit gave her another chance. A flicker of hope brushed light as a butterfly wing against my chest.

Bringing the king’s cure hadn’t been easy. “Mix a single spoonful of this powder with an equal amount of honey against the bitter taste, Your Majesty, and make sure to take the dose just before you . . .” I’d paused then, sweat trickling down the back of my neck. I was seventeen and had never even kissed a man, yet here I was instructing the sovereign king of Wilde Island, a man old enough to be my father. I’d fixed my eyes firmly on the semi-precious gems decorating his gaudy shoes as I spoke, and excused myself as quickly as I could.

The queen was gazing out the window. “Look, there he is.” Jackrun rode into the courtyard below. She tipped her head, looking down with her glass eye as he jumped from his mount. Horse and rider were both mud-spattered.

“He is looking very fit,” she said. Her Majesty gave a little frown as Jackrun tossed the reins to a groomsman to lead his horse away. “Where has he been?” she said. “I’ve been missing him. And what is Desmond wearing?”

“Your . . . Majesty,” I said. “Desmond—”

“Yes, Desmond.” She turned. “What about him?”

By the Holy Ones, if she was mad enough to mistake Jackrun for her son, what would happen now? All my bapeeta was gone. There was none in her morning brew to treat this lunacy; still, I held it out to her.

“Your secret fertility herbs?” she asked.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Good. The king and I must have another child. Another—” She stopped before taking the chalice. Her left hand shook. She held it in her right like a caught bird whose wings she could not still. “My . . . my . . . son.” Tears sprang to her eyes. Her mind had cleared enough to remember it was not her son in the foreyard below, that he was dead.

She snatched the goblet, drank it all, and shoved the empty cup in my hands. “Go now,” she shouted. “Leave me alone!”

I stood partway down the stairwell, swearing under my breath at my father’s stubborn dragon who would not stoop to herbing when I needed her so much, when I was out of the one thing that seemed to balance the queen.

Lute music drifted up from the queen’s presence chamber below.

Lady Olivia came halfway up and stopped. We were alone; still, she greeted me in whispers. “How is the queen, Uma?”

“Not . . . well, my lady.”

“I left her well and happy earlier this morning. What has happened since?”

I couldn’t bear to repeat what the queen had just said about Jackrun. The delusion had passed. She had remembered her son was buried now in the family tomb.

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