Healer's Touch
Authors: Amy Raby
Tags: #Fantasy Romance, #Historical Romance, #Historical Paranormal Romance, #Paranormal Romance, #Witches, #Warlock, #Warlocks, #Wizard, #Wizards, #Magic, #Mage, #Mages, #Romance, #Love Story, #Science Fiction Romance
| Healer's Touch | |
| Number IV of Hearts And Thrones | |
| Amy Raby | |
| Amy Raby (2014) | |
| Rating: | **** |
| Tags: | Fantasy Romance, Historical Romance, Historical Paranormal Romance, Paranormal Romance, Witches, Warlock, Warlocks, Wizard, Wizards, Magic, Mage, Mages, Romance, Love Story, Science Fiction Romance |
| Fantasy Romancettt Historical Romancettt Historical Paranormal Romancettt Paranormal Romancettt Witchesttt Warlockttt Warlocksttt Wizardttt Wizardsttt Magicttt Magettt Magesttt Romancettt Love Storyttt Science Fiction Romancettt |
Marius believes himself to be an ordinary small-town apothecary - until the imperial guards show up at his door. Then he learns the truth: he is cousin to the Kjallan emperor. Before he was born, his mother eloped with her beloved, leaving the palace and its intrigues behind.
Now Marius returns to the imperial seat, where he will learn healing magic and struggle to adapt his small town soul to big city life.
Meanwhile, the neighboring nation of Sardos has collapsed, and refugees are pouring over the border. Isolda, a Sardossian shopkeeper, is among them.
She has fled her cruel husband and now ekes out a living on the streets of the imperial city.
When Marius meets Isolda in the aftermath of a factory explosion, he falls for this determined woman who, like him, is far from home and struggling to find her place. But Isolda faces daily discrimination and harassment, while Marius’s imperial relatives parade before him a bevy of women they deem more suitable to his station. Marius must decide:
is he the emperor’s dutiful cousin, grateful for the gifts that have been given him, or is he his mother’s son, prepared to sacrifice everything for love?
Healer’s Touch
A Hearts and Thrones Novel
Amy Raby
Copyright © 2014 by Amy Raby.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Healer’s Touch/ Amy Raby. -- 1st ed.
ISBN 978-1-940987-05-7
Also by Amy Raby
The Hearts and Thrones Series
The Coalition of Mages Series
Chapter 1
Marius had never seen a carriage like this one. It sat before a backdrop of sagging storefronts and fading paint, as incongruous with its surroundings as a swan in a mud puddle. Bars of gold and ivory swooped upward to outline its form, and a crystal lamp sparkled at each corner. Four dapple gray horses waited in harness. He could not imagine what even a single horse of such quality would cost, let alone four of them. A thousand tetrals? More?
He pushed open the wooden shutters of his apartment window for a better view. The carriage was escorted by two others, one in front and the other behind. The escorts weren’t as fancy as the middle carriage, but they were finer than what anyone in the village could afford. Who could be the owner of this assemblage? It was rare for the nobility to pass through a backwater like Osler.
He was due back at the apothecary in a few hours, but his mother had told him that if he ever saw a rich man’s carriage in Osler, he needed to tell her immediately. Apparently she’d once had a serious quarrel with a nobleman.
Marius leaned out the window in hopes of seeing the great man, or perhaps it was a great woman. But he saw only servants. A coachman stood at the lead horse’s head, and a groom was draping blankets over the horses’ backs. Why would a noble personage carry a grudge against his mother for so many years? It didn’t make sense, but he would tell her about the carriage anyway. On his way out, he grabbed a bottle of tincture he’d been meaning to bring her.
The carriage guards paid him not the slightest attention as he climbed down the stairs. A pair of them were going into Lev’s Inn and Tavern. Marius smiled. Gods help them if they tried the special.
A quarter mile down the road, he angled onto the dirt path that led to his parents’ home. Once inside, he hung his hat on the rack and called, “It’s me.” A savory scent wafted past his nose. His mother must be cooking.
She came into the entryway and folded him into a hug.
He hugged her back gently. His mother, Camilla, wasn’t young anymore. She’d borne her children later in life than most women, and Marius feared that he and his younger sister had been a strain on her. She was delicate as a bird, yet he felt strength in her small frame.
He took the bottle of tincture from his pocket and pressed it into her hands. “I brought you more of this. Promise you’ll take it this time?”
She smiled, looking sheepish. “Of course.”
“Your joints will feel better if you do. It’s concentrated, so go easy on it, one swallow in the morning and another at night—”
She waved a hand. “I know how willow bark works. Are you off duty until evening? I’ve got soup on. Won’t do it any harm if we take it off the fire early.”
Marius shed his cloak and followed her into the kitchen, where the aroma of onions and carrots and herbs hung heavy in the air. “I’m not here for supper. I came because I saw a fancy carriage in town.”
Camilla’s eye flicked back to him. “The governor’s?”
“No.”
She walked to the soup pot over the fire, lifted the lid, and stirred. “There’s no reason for the nobility to come through Osler. They take the Nigellus Road. What did the carriage look like?”
“Fancy. There were three carriages, actually. The guards are in orange livery.” His stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
Camilla dropped the lid back onto the soup pot and turned. “Orange?”
He nodded.
She raised her eyes to his, and Marius became conscious of the lines on her face. She did not speak, and Marius gathered that his answer was not the one she’d wanted.
“Is it the one you’re worried about?” he asked.
She blinked and stammered something that wasn’t a word. Then she left the kitchen.
“Mother?” he called after her.
Her voice shook. “He’s found us.” From the kitchen, he heard her pounding on the door to the workshop. “Tertius, come out. The Legaciatti are here.”
Marius shook his head as if to shake cobwebs loose. Legaciatti? Those were the emperor’s personal guards. They lived in the imperial city and would have no reason to come to a remote village like Osler. “I’m sure they’re not Legaciatti,” he called to her. He cocked his head and listened. She did not answer, but he heard banging and rustling as someone, perhaps two someones, moved around in the workshop.
His mother returned to the kitchen, lugging a rucksack.
“You shouldn’t be lifting that,” said Marius, reaching to take it from her.
She let him have it. “Take this and go.”
Marius blinked. “Where? I have a shift this evening.” She had to be wrong about the guards being Legaciatti. His family was of no importance whatsoever and would have no business with the Imperium. Neither she nor his father could have committed the sort of crime that would attract the attention of the imperial seat, or, for that matter, any crime at all. His parents were the most straight-laced, law-abiding people he knew. They never gossiped or gambled. They rarely even drank.
“Forget the apothecary,” said his mother. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“Tell me, then.”
“Some things it’s better not to know.”
She was shaking like a twig in a storm. As absurd as her fears might seem, it was clear that to her, they were absolutely real. Marius felt an icy chill along his spine, like the time his sister had dropped a snowball down the back of his shirt. “Explain this plan to me. Where am I to go? I’ve no money to travel with.”
“Away from Osler. Your father and I will catch up.”
She tried to push him toward the door, but he wouldn’t budge. “What about Laelia?” If the danger was real, they couldn’t leave his sister behind.
His father entered the kitchen with a rucksack of his own heaved onto his wiry back. He moved to the larder, snatching up supplies: the rest of the day’s bread, a bunch of carrots, a pair of wrinkled apples. “I’ll run and fetch Laelia. You leave now and get a head start.”
Marius gaped. His father was quiet and sensible by nature, the steady counterpart to his mother’s fire. If his parents were united in their determination to leave Osler, the situation was serious. “What’s Gratian going to say?” Laelia’s live-in lover wasn’t the friendliest of men.
His father shook his head. “He’ll have to let her go. If he doesn’t, he’ll regret it. Get moving, son.”
Marius went to the entryway, grabbed his cloak, and slung it around his shoulders. His parents’ sincerity had convinced him to follow their directions, at least for the time being, but he could not pretend he understood what was going on. “Are you in trouble with the Imperium?”
“Yes,” called his mother. “We’ll explain later.”
What could his quiet, reclusive parents have done that would induce the empire to hunt them down? He stuffed his hat on his head and grabbed a blanket from the nearest bedroom. “I’ll help you fetch Laelia.” Strength in numbers, when it came to dealing with Gratian.
A loud noise made him jump, and he turned. Someone was banging on the front door with something heavy.
“Out the back, quickly!” shrieked his mother.
Marius lost no time in following her. It appeared her lifelong fear was justified. Someone really
was
after them.
His father yanked open the back door to a wall of orange livery, and a host of imperial guards swarmed into the house.
∞
Marius sat at the kitchen table with his mother on his left and his father on his right. Guards encircled them. His stomach was in knots, and so far nothing was happening either to alleviate or to sharpen his fears. He and his parents were being held here for some event yet to come, and the guards refused to answer his questions. His parents surely knew something about what was happening, but when he sent them desperate, questioning looks, they stared down at the table and didn’t meet his eyes.
Turning from them, he looked to the guards, trying to determine if they really were Legaciatti. They did have the sickle and sunburst insignia, but did that prove anything? Anyone could make up an insignia and sew it to a uniform. The guards were intimidating, each of them carrying a sword and pistol at his belt as well as a heavy, bronze-tipped stick. Perhaps the stick was for beating people into submission. Or, now that he thought about it, for knocking on doors.
So far the guards had not been violent. One had grabbed his mother when she tried to slip away, but not roughly. Marius recognized the guard standing across from the table as the one he’d seen outside Lev’s earlier in the day.
“Could you just tell us what’s going on?” Marius blurted.
