Page 4 of Beyond

The first irony was that Kordas and Isla liked each other very much, were indeed the best of friends, but theirs had been an arranged marriage (as nearly every marriage among the nobility of the Empire was), and they weren’t in love with each other. Not even after three children. And Delia? Delia wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for the fact that she and Isla had no brothers. When their father had died, the Emperor had swooped in, assigned the Baronial title and estates to one of his sycophants, and cut Delia out completely. She’d been lucky to be allowed to take her personal belongings with her when he unceremoniously threw her out.

Could be worse. I could’ve been forced to marry the Emperor’s puppy to cement his position. Fortunately for her, he already had a wife and was disinclined to divorce her or otherwise put her away, in order to marry someone who was in many ways that woman’s inferior. Delia had gotten a good look at her while she was packing; there was no doubt she was beautiful, and probably had been the Emperor’s mistress at some point or other. She was also tall, willowy, graceful, and wealthy in her own right, all things Delia was not. The perfect trophy of a wife, a living display of the Emperor’s favor.

“You’ll be moving out, of course, girl,” the wife had said. She could still hear that distant, dulcet voice in her mind. It hadn’t been more than a moment after she had been introduced to the new Baron of Sterngal and his wife. The wife hadn’t even bothered giving Delia her proper name; she’d just stared down her nose at Delia, and said, “You’ll be moving out, of course, girl,” in tones that suggested Delia should do so on the instant.

Delia had been at her wits’ end. Her father was barely in his tomb by a day, she was still in grief and shock at his sudden passing, and at the very least she had expected that she would be allowed to move to the dowager house or at worst the gatehouse on the grounds. She’d have been perfectly happy in either place. Her needs were few, and she’d still have been home.

But no.

They had shown up out of the blue, parading through the activated Portal with their entire household, which had included enough armed men that she had felt utterly intimidated.

And as she had stood on the steps of what was no longer her own home, wondering what the hell she was going to do, with the Ice Queen glaring down at her from one side, and the Ice Queen’s husband looking everyplace except at Delia, she had been tempted to run inside, flee up the stairs to the highest tower, and fling herself off it in despair to land messy and dead at their feet. Not being one of the Emperor’s mage-built edifices, that tower wasn’t that tall and she wouldn’t have splattered their lovely garments when she hit, but she’d at least have made an inconvenient mess for them to clean up and explain.

And that was when there had been a flurry of trumpets above as the two Heralds announced yet another group approaching the manor. She’d stopped herself—because it might have been the Emperor’s people coming to fetch her to the Capital, and while that was far from ideal, if the Emperor was fetching her, it meant he would probably make sure she wasn’t stripped of everything.

But it hadn’t been the Emperor’s representative.

It had been Kordas.

Riding in on one of his beautiful Valdemar Gold horses for which he was famed—she knew now it had been Arial, the mare she had just helped—and trailed by three empty wagons, he had come trotting up to the steps of Sterngal Manor as if he were the owner, not this trumped-up Emperor’s lapdog. And he didn’t even bother to greet the new owner and his wife; he came down off his horse and went straight to Delia, and embraced her as if he had known her all his life instead of meeting her no more than a handful of times at best. “Delia, my dear, I am so sorry,” he said, as she involuntarily responded to the kindness in his eyes and the warmth of his embrace by burying her face in his tunic with a mufled sob. “I’ve come to take you home to Valdemar, of course,” he continued. “You can’t possibly go anywhere else, I won’t have it.”

Then, and only then, did he look up at the usurper. “Ah, good, you’re here. That’s convenient. See that your servants pack up Delia’s things and load them in the wagons, will you? I’m going to take her up to her rooms so we can make sure that anything breakable is properly protected.”

And just like that, he put his arm around her shoulder and urged her up to her rooms, while the new Baron and his wife stared at them in slack-jawed astonishment.

They’d done what he’d asked too, probably assuming the Emperor had sent him, and not daring to do anything to contradict him. Or, more to the point, to interfere with what Delia said was hers. Which, among other things, were all the items that Isla had left behind when she’d married, and all the books in the library.

So instead of having to fight that gorgeous, rapacious harpy over every single possession that wasn’t an article of clothing, with Kordas’s help she had managed to make off with enough valuables to count as a decent legacy.

Kordas had actually done far more than she had in that regard. After her rooms had been packed up—not the furnishings; he’d taken one look at them and said “We’ve got better” and instructed the servants to leave them—he’d taken her around the manor, pointing to this and that, and saying “Your father left you that, right?” and she had just nodded. He had an uncanny eye for small, extremely valuable objects, and they kept well ahead of the new Baron and most especially his wife, snatching up treasure after family treasure before the interlopers even laid eyes on the pieces to know what they were losing.

Then he’d ordered her horse—pony, really, she had only been thirteen at the time—put her up on it, and led the whole cavalcade back to the Gate at the edge of the manor grounds, and through it, straight to the matching Gate here at Valdemar.

She had been in almost as much of a daze at the end of the sweep as the usurper and his wife had been. It was only when she was within sight of the manor of Valdemar that it hit home for her.

She had been saved, literally, by a knight on a shining horse.

She’d managed to be fervently grateful, but the second she laid eyes on her sister, she’d broken down and started crying her eyes out. Isla had taken her to these rooms, let her cry until she couldn’t cry anymore, then put her to bed.

And when she’d awakened, every one of the treasures that had been carried away had been lovingly installed here. Her clothing had been put away in the wardrobe. The family heirlooms Kordas had helped her abscond with were on prominent display in a suite of rooms that was easily a match for the ones her father had occupied. Where, in fact, those treasures were now. If she looked up from contemplating her mead-cup, she could see them all over the room. Here the gleam of the arm of a delicate statue, there the sparkle of gemstones in an ornamented cup, yonder the glint of gilding on the spine of a book. It was all still here, and all hers.

The only things that weren’t still here were all the books on magic. She wasn’t a mage and couldn’t use them, so she had given them to Kordas and Isla.

Now that she thought about it, that moment when she had looked up at the Duke of Valdemar and realized he had come to save her out of the kindness of his heart was probably the moment she had fallen in love with him.

She hadn’t realized that, of course. She’d only been thirteen. All she’d known then was that she worshipped him like a god, and would have done anything he asked of her.

And I still would, she admitted to herself. Then shook her head. She was just ridiculously lucky; she had a sister who loved her, she had a brother-in-law who could not have been more unlike most of the Emperor’s nobles, she was fed and housed in ridiculous comfort and had the freedom to do practically anything she wanted.

And I need to start concentrating on all the good things I have, and not on the things I can’t have.

Good things, like that adorable little filly. A Valdemar Gold! Never in a million years would she have imagined she’d ever own a Gold!

The memory of the darling little beastie being thoroughly cleaned by her dam made Delia smile with incredulous delight. And she’s mine! Which means that rather than sitting here in my cups feeling sorry for myself because my brother-in-law regards me as a sister, I should be thinking of a name for her.

She glanced down at the cup in her hand—one of a set of six she and Kordas had made off with. Something to do with honey or mead? Isla’s mount was “Sundrop,” after Isla’s favorite flower.

I know! she decided, swallowing the last of her drink. Daystar. Star for short. It had a nice sound to it.