The Hidden Queen by Alma Alexander

felt quite dizzy from the hypnotic depth of his look. “But not just yet, I think. In time. You are still so very young,” he murmured. “It’s astonishing to me that already we have been able to tell. In most children Sight does not show until they are into their teens. But you…” He shook his head. “I think you may well be a melding of two very strong Sight lines, my child. It runs in your mother’s family, although it seems to have passed by all her sister’s children. And by all I can gather from the history I teach, Red Dynan’s line had it as well, although they always shrouded it carefully away. I wonder if some of the old kings ever really knew the potential they were leaving untapped…but most Kir Hama kings wedded Sighted women. That alone should tell us something. Like calls to like, and you may be more than just a strong melding—you may be a culmination of many generations.” Feor let her go, and his smile was warm, full of comfort and support. Freed from the terror of having betrayed herself so easily to a stranger, Brynna found herself smiling back. It was hard to like Feor—he had a distant, other-worldly air that precluded closeness—but he could be a tower of strength to his friends, and Brynna suddenly realized he wanted to be her friend. That by itself was worth a great deal; another layer of safety added to her precarious existence, another ally in the devastating and swiftly emptied world in which the exiled child-queen had been set adrift.
    But ally or not, Feor was an odd and rather troublesome companion. He wandered Cascin like a restless spirit, popping up unlooked-for at unexpected moments, liable to come out with barbed double-edged remarks which could pass at face value with anyone who wasn’t listening for hidden messages but which would reveal a great deal to those who were. He seemed to take pleasure in this baiting, and while Feor was capable of judging his audience very finely, never actually saying more than was prudent, two days of this was quite enough to completely unnerve Brynna in his presence. It did not help that there was always the menace, all the more frightening because it was shrouded in silence, of impending instruction in arcane matters concerned with Sight. But having told her she had it and that he would help her learn to deal with it, Feor seemed to have forgotten about the whole thing. But Sight does not allow itself to be easily forgotten or thrust aside. It was only a matter of days before it rose to haunt them all.
    Less than a week after her first lesson with Feor, sitting once again in her by now accustomed seat by the fire, a shaft of indescribable agony lanced through Brynna’s skull and she doubled over with a moan of pain, clutching her head. Ansen glanced up, and Kieran surged out of his chair, but both were forestalled by Feor who, languid though he looked, could nevertheless move with remarkable swiftness and agility. He was already crouching by Brynna’s chair, his long, bony hands gentle on her hair.
    “It hurts! It hurts!” she moaned.
    “Don’t fight it,” admonished Feor in a low voice. “It will pass. Ride it.”
    “Are you a healer, too?” asked Kieran, his attention diverted briefly. Feor spared him a swift glance.
    “I was a lot of things in my time,” he said. His eyes were flooded with a strange sort of compassion, but Kieran could tell that, although Feor had looked directly at him, he’d been very far from seeing him. His compassion was all for Brynna.
    His attention was back on the girl, who sat small, fragile and somehow lost in the great chair, with tears streaming down her face. Feor seemed to be observing her with a furious concentration, his hands never leaving her temples. At length Brynna drew a ragged breath and he nodded, straightening up. “Good. You’re through it.”
    “Is she feeling ill? Shouldn’t she lie down or something?” asked Kieran, prompted, perhaps, by his memories of his own first days in