Chapter Ten

“Up to?” I repeated trying for innocence. “I don’t think I know what you mean.”

“Mhm. I was very flattered when your parents named you after me,” Daerton stepped over the bench and sat next to me. “And I have been nothing but proud of the young woman that I have watched grow ever since. But I must admit, never so proud as a few moments ago when you manipulated that fool of a knight into doing precisely what you wanted him to do,” he nodded around his smile. “Whilst preventing him from beating your mage to a pulp.”

“I… Ah,” I felt my cheeks heat. “Aien isn’t my mage.”

“Darling girl,” Daerton drawled. “As a mage myself, I recognize when another of my ilk becomes a liegeman. I remember the moment that your mother won me as her mage. We were traveling in a wagon, watching your father flying overhead, and she compared her crown to a shackle, and herself to a sacrificial lamb. I realized then that my magic was hers, that there never would be another Queen or King whom I could serve with as