The Hidden Queen by Alma Alexander Page A

a strange house as a new foster child—and other, deeper memories whose roots lay in his own childhood.
    “I’m fine,” said Brynna, wiping the tears with the back of her hand, sitting up straighter. She would not look at him, however. Kieran’s acquaintance with his newest foster sister was still very short, but already he had seen how her eyes mirrored everything she was feeling, her emotions revealed for anyone to read. Kieran knew what would have been written in Brynna’s eyes if she had looked at him—a residue of her pain; resentment she had succumbed so abjectly and a strange, still sort of fear, whose cause he could not pin down but which was always about her like a faint scent. Ansen, looking at him, suddenly snorted in what sounded like derision; Kieran looked away into the flames in the fireplace, aware that his own face must have been mirroring Feor’s compassion.
    Kieran would have liked the chance to have lingered, more curious than ever about this strange new classmate. But between them, Ansen and Feor gave him no chance—the former dragging him out of the room at the conclusion of the lesson, and the latter claiming Brynna’s attention, excluding the two boys almost before they’d left the circle before the fire. Kieran glanced back from the doorway, but the teacher and the young girl were deep into a softly spoken conversation he could not hear—and then he was out, with Ansen closing the door almost pugnaciously behind him. He turned away, following his foster brother with ill grace.
    Back in the schoolroom, Feor was once again by Brynna’s chair. “You did very well,” he said encouragingly, “very well indeed for one so young. Perhaps I was wrong to wait. Perhaps you are ready to begin to learn.”
    “But what happened?” murmured Brynna, sounding a little lost, her eyes filling with tears even at the memory of the pain.
    Feor, who had stretched his angular features into a rare smile, looked sober once more. “As to that, I cannot say,” he said. “Something grave, though, else it would not have caused so much pain. Something very deeply connected to you. I do not know what might be happening in Miranei right now, but something of great importance for you has probably occurred there. If you were a little older, and maybe a little more trained, it would have come to you as an image, a sign. But you still do not know how to interpret these signs, even though you are obviously capable of receiving them. Let me speak to Lady Chella. Perhaps she could give us some answers.” He rose. “You look better. But you are likely to nurse a headache for a while longer; go to the kitchens and ask Mariela to give you an infusion of wirrow. It’s as well to try and prevent a major…”
    The door opened behind them, very softly and gently, but they both looked up with a sudden feeling of doom. Lady Chella stood there, her normally serene face drawn and white and her gray eyes dark with tears. Feor stiffened, glancing from aunt to niece, for the first time putting together this shared vision of pain into a picture that made all too much sense. The hand that suddenly dropped back onto Brynna’s hair was no longer that of a healer with Sight, instead it was the hand of a friend helpless to shield a child from a mortal hurt. He did not speak, merely giving Chella an awkward little bow before lifting the edge of his blue robe and gliding out of the room. Watching him leave, Brynna had an abrupt, unaccountable vision of Feor guarding the door from outside, as implacable and perhaps far more dangerous than any soldier. Chella came inside and knelt by the chair, taking Brynna’s small, cold hands in her own, lifting her face to the child’s. There was something subtly different about it today, and Brynna suddenly knew what it was—Chella’s eyes, the eyes that had reminded her so of her mother. They were unfamiliar now, eyes which might have had a passing resemblance to those of someone she loved, but