Free The Royal Hunter by Donna Kauffman

told you tales of her life. What do you remember of those nighttime stories?”
    Just enough to frustrate her, Talia thought, and not enough to fully convince her that they were telling the truth. After all, it was a pretty damn fantastical truth. And there were no other explanations forthcoming. “They were just stories,” she said stubbornly. But they both knew she was beginning to believe they had been much more than that.
    He didn’t push her. “Perhaps in return for all ourhard work,” he said, “I can tell you some of what I knew of her.”
    He certainly knew the right carrot to dangle. “I would like that,” she said honestly. In fact, it was learning about her mother as much as anything else that had prodded her to go along. “But I can’t see where studying harder will change anything. Surely if I’d had any healing powers, they’d have surfaced by now.”
    “We’ve only been at this a day. Patience.” But his eyes clouded ever so briefly, betraying his own anxiety. Wonderful.
    “I am trying,” she said quietly. “I just don’t want to mislead you into believing I can actually help this … this—”
    “Catriona.”
    Talia felt a little shiver along her spine. “Why are you doing this? I mean, I know Archer is doing it for the money. Are you doing it because you’re close to the … the queen?” Just saying that felt strange … and yet …
    “I’m doing this because I loved your mother. She was, perhaps, the daughter I never had.” He shrugged, for the first time looking uncomfortable. “I suppose I was more mentor to her than father. We shared a great love for exploring the powers of the mind. She had an endless thirst for knowledge.”
    Talia had gone completely still. She had no doubt Baleweg spoke the truth. It was there in every note, every fiber of his very electric being. She asked the question that had been on her mind since she first realized he was close to Eleri. “Did she tell you who my father was?”
    Baleweg looked even more sorrowful. “I’m so sorry. She didn’t confide in me as a rule. Our relationship wasn’t of that nature. When her life wasthreatened because of her alliance to the king, her power to help him, she knew the only way to protect you was to leave her own time. So she came to me and I helped her. I’m here now to prepare you for a task she never had the chance to.”
    “I don’t want to disappoint you,” Talia said honestly.
    His expression cleared and he seemed relieved to return to his role as mentor. “I believe that if you can begin to connect with humans, your hidden talents should begin to surface.”
    “I’ve never once felt anything from another person. Only animals.”
    “It’s all in the focus. I can teach you to shut out external stimulation and see with your mind’s eye.”
    Everything inside her shied away from this. If she took on animals’ pain as her own and found that draining and potentially destructive, she couldn’t imagine taking on human pain and surviving with her own soul intact.
    “It need not always be pain, Talia. Surely you connect with other emotions.”
    She paused, then nodded. “Usually only after I’ve known the animal, though. I generally don’t have an animal long enough to have much experience with that.” Just Marblehead, Beatrice’s old tom. She connected with him effortlessly and usually it warmed her. But that was rare.
    “Empaths, at least in our time …”
    Our time
. He did that, talked about them as if they were both of his time. As if she were little more than a visitor in her own. Oddly, if she thought about it, hadn’t she always felt like that? A misfit, an outcast?
    “… must have some strong feeling about their subject to make the connection. Your connection with these unknown beasties is your empathizingwith their suffering. For one as sensitive as you, this qualifies as a strong feeling. But the feeling can manifest itself in other ways. There might be depression, pain,