Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,2

bedrock. ‘You’ve arrived at an awkward time, if it’s family you seek. My granddaughter and I leave tomorrow on the Aestival progression, and won’t be back until the gadderen. Come. I’ve had rooms prepared for you. I’m sure you’ll want to change at least,’ she said, raking an eye over my aunt’s red gown.

Beneath the cream, hot colour stained Helena’s cheeks and made her eyes glitter.

Standing between them, heeded by neither, I looked from Helena’s temper-flushed features to Grandmother’s implacable expression.

‘So.’ Helena folded her hands. ‘We’re back to this. I had hoped for more.’

‘As had I, a long time ago.’

I stepped forward, thrusting myself in between them. ‘Aunt Helena,’ I said, claiming her kinship and attention both. ‘You’re welcome in the Turholm. My parents spoke of you so often this feels more like a homecoming than an introduction.’

Helena rewarded me with a smile which unfolded like petals stretching towards the sun. ‘You have the look of your mother about your eyes,’ she said. ‘Her height, too. I wonder you remember them – you were young when they passed.’

Warmed by the comparison, I beamed back at her. ‘I also have my father’s dislike of the chill. Come, let’s inside. We’ve rooms with fires prepared for you all.’

Like an oak picking up its roots, Grandmother turned and walked ahead, gathering Sepp to her side as she did so. Helena’s frown hinted at darker thoughts as she watched her firstborn walking away, a thrall’s collar around his throat.

Falling into step beside me as we followed, she leaned close and murmured, ‘Well, you have my ability to prick her temper.’

I smiled back at her as we crested the steps, but dared not reply. Grandmother had a bat’s hearing.

The Turholm’s great oak doors stood open, and we stepped through into the white-marbled foyer. The seneschal waited for us, his bronze collar intricately carved; Jonas had been in thrall to House Svanaten since his birth. Now, catching sight of Helena, he blinked away tears.

Sigi, Jonas’s granddaughter, waited by his side, her hands dusty and her feet bare. She spent most of her time in the dovecote and rarely wore shoes, for they made too much noise and disturbed the birds. Sigi had Jonas’s large, dark eyes, which were now fixed on Grandmother. Her presence meant the birds had brought a message of import.

Grandmother turned to Helena. ‘Jonas will show you to your rooms. You must excuse me.’ Without waiting for an answer, she gestured for Sigi and Sepp to follow her, and swept away.

Ashamed of such churlish hospitality, I surrendered the Iltheans into Jonas’s care and led Helena to her rooms myself. Though her Ilthean companions weren’t welcome, Helena was still kin.

She stared at everything we passed, from the tapestries cloaking the walls to the carved wood panels depicting past victories, the standards of loyal and conquered Houses and the many statues. Perhaps she was noting changes from her own days.

‘Thank you, Tille,’ she said when we reached her rooms. ‘May I call you Tille? It’s what I used to call you when you were little. Such a quiet thing you were back then, with such wild hair! But perhaps you don’t remember,’ she said, laughing.

Instinctively I touched my hair, smoothing it behind an ear even though my braid was still tight.

Helena noted the gesture, sharp eyes belying her easy manner.

‘No. I don’t, I’m sorry,’ I said, uncomfortable beneath her gaze. ‘I’ll leave you to prepare now.’

‘Stay,’ she said. ‘Sit with me a while. It would be a kindness, to talk of old times.’

I hesitated, then decided against it. ‘We’ll talk at supper. You must rest, get warm. Prepare for the battle,’ I added with a smile.

She flinched at my joke, her answering smile watery and too late.

I took a step back. Perhaps Grandmother was right to have treated her coldly. Helena had been years absent, after all, and probably all of them among the white serpents of the south. Maybe this wasn’t a simple visit home after all.

‘Before you go –’ she began, and I braced myself for a question on politics, or how best to win over Grandmother these days.

Instead, slipping her hand into the folds of her skirt, Helena fetched forth a closed fist. ‘I have a gift for you,’ she said, opening her hand to reveal a necklace.

My breath caught in my throat as I bent over it. The central piece was solid gold, worked in the shape of a swan with a slender pointed shaft growing from its brow.

‘The swan, for