Free Ravenmarked (The Taurin Chronicles) by Amy Rose Davis Page B

he was slowly infiltrating his own father’s ranks all this time with men loyal to him. It was only recently that someone loyal to the Sidh queen was able to get a message to her.”
    “And the second reason?”
    “Me. I was delayed in reaching Taura. I was escorting a merchant train and didn’t arrive until yesterday morning.”
    Mairead frowned. “Do you think Fergus knew I was there?”
    Connor walked for several paces before he responded. “I don’t know. Did the sayas ever talk to you about taking the throne?”
    “Only in vague terms. They said I was the first person in a thousand years who met the requirements.”
    “Why keep you in Taura? Why not send you away years ago? You’d have been safer.”
    Mairead bit her lip. “I asked Sayana Muriel once. She said she wanted me to know the country I would lead. She wanted me to be Taurin in more than just blood.” She shrugged. “Everyone believes the rightful line died out when Brenna and Aiden died. No one ever found their son. There was no reason to think I’d be in danger as long as the sayas kept the secret.”
    “But somehow, Braedan found out you were there.”
    Her stomach twisted. All those women—dead or hurt or scattered because of me. “Somehow,” she whispered. Did a saya betray me?
    The breeze picked up. Though the morning had dawned clear, dark clouds now obscured the channel and encroached along the coastline. Connor raised his face to the sky. “This is going to be an ugly storm. I guess you’ll be walking in the rain.”
    “I don’t mind.” But when the torrent began, she pulled her cloak around her and wished for a warm cup of tea. The mud crept up their boots and the bottoms of their cloaks. Connor’s stride was long and quick. The ground in the meadow quickly grew soft and muddy, and when she tried to keep up with him, she slipped and fell.
    He held out his hand and helped her up. “Are you all right?”
    Her hips hurt from the shock of the fall, and water seeped into her boots. Her toes and fingers ached with the damp cold. Her nose dripped, and she wiped it on her sleeve. “Fine. I’m fine.”
    His gaze softened. He pointed toward a copse of trees. “My feet are soaked. Let’s dry off and wait for it to pass.”
    He slowed his stride so that she could keep up. The canopy of firs brought instant relief from the storm. Connor sat on a bed of dry needles under a fir tree. He pulled his boots and stockings off and wrung them out.
    Mairead forced her boots off. “Not the best time of year to travel, is it?”
    He spread his stockings out on the fir needles. “I don’t mind it. I like being out of doors.”
    “Where are you taking me, anyway?”
    “Sveklant.”
    She shuddered. “Sveklant? Why?”
    “Apparently there are people waiting for you in a town called Albard.”
    “Do you know anything about them?”
    “No.”
    So I’m to be shuffled off to some pagan land to live with people I don’t know who could be enemies just as easily as friends. How will I know who to trust? She rubbed the feeling back into her feet. “Have you ever been to Sveklant?”
    “A couple of times. It’s not my favorite place.”
    “Because it’s so pagan?”
    He laughed. “No, because of all the snow. I’d rather be somewhere warm.”
    “But you said you don’t get cold.”
    “I still prefer the sun.” He leaned back against the tree. “How do you know Sveklant is so pagan if you’ve never been there?”
    “Sayana Muriel always told us to pray for the kirok in Sveklant, that the kirons might build kiroks and win followers to Alshada. She said kirons have died for defying the old pagan gods.”
    “Perhaps you filled your reading with too much kirok history. Sveklant was one of the Western Lands once—Taura, Culidar, and Sveklant were one united kingdom before the breaking. When the Svek went to war with Taura centuries later, they sought only to reunite the kingdom.”
    “The Svek destroyed northern Taura,” she answered.