The Queen of the Tearling Read Online Free PDF Page A

It was only a year or so later, reading one of Carlin’s books, that she found the word she’d been seeking all along: not alone, but anonymous. She had been kept anonymous all those years, and for a long time she had thought that Carlin, if not Barty, had hidden her out of cruelty. But now, with the two tall men right on her heels, she wondered if her anonymity had been a gift. If so, it was now a gift long gone.
    The men would sleep around the fire, but they had put up a tent for Kelsea, some twenty feet away on the edge of the clearing. As she stepped inside and tied the flap closed, she heard the two guards stationing themselves on either side of the opening, and after that there was silence.
    Dumping her pack on the floor, Kelsea dug through clothes until she found an envelope of white vellum, one of Carlin’s few luxuries. Something shifted and slithered lightly inside. Kelsea sat down on the bedding and stared at the letter, willing it to be filled with answers. She had been taken from the Keep when she was barely a year old, and she had no memory of her real mother. Over the years, she’d been able to glean a few bits of hard fact about Queen Elyssa: she was beautiful, she didn’t like to read, she had died when she was twenty-eight years old. Kelsea had no idea how her mother had died; that was forbidden territory. Every line of questioning Kelsea undertook about her mother ended at the same place: Carlin shaking her head and murmuring, “I promised.” Whatever Carlin had promised, perhaps it ended today. Kelsea stared at the envelope for another long moment, then picked it up and broke Carlin’s seal.
    Out slid a blue jewel on a fine silver chain.
    Kelsea picked up the chain and dangled it from her fingers, staring at it in the lamplight. It was a twin of the necklace that had been around her neck all of her life: an emerald-cut sapphire on a thin, almost dainty silver chain. The sapphire glimmered merrily in the lamplight, casting intermittent blue flickers around the inside of the tent.
    Kelsea reached into the envelope again, looking for a letter. Nothing. She checked both corners. She tilted the envelope up, peering inside against the light, and saw a single word scrawled in Carlin’s writing beneath the seal.
    Careful.
    A sudden burst of laughter from the campfire made Kelsea jump. Heart racing, she listened for any sound from the two guards just outside her tent, but heard nothing.
    She took off her own necklace and held the two side by side. They were indeed identical, perfect twins right down to the minutiae of the chains. It would be all too easy to mix them up. Kelsea quickly put her own necklace back on.
    She held up the new necklace again, watching the jewel swing back and forth, puzzled. Carlin had told her that each heir to the Tearling throne wore the sapphire from the day they were born. Popular legend held the jewel to be a sort of charm against death. When Kelsea was younger, she had thought more than once about trying to take the necklace off, but superstition was stronger; suppose she were struck with lightning on the spot? So she had never dared to remove it. Carlin had never mentioned a second jewel, and yet she must have had it in her possession this whole time. Secrets . . . everything about Carlin was secret. Kelsea didn’t know why she had been entrusted to Carlin for fostering, or even who Carlin had been in her old life. Someone of importance, Kelsea assumed; Carlin carried herself with too much grandeur to live in a cottage. Even Barty’s presence seemed to fade when Carlin entered the room.
    Kelsea stared at the word inside the envelope: Careful. Was it another reminder to be careful in her new life? Kelsea didn’t think so; she’d heard chapter and verse on that subject in the past few weeks. It seemed more likely that the new necklace was different in some way, perhaps even dangerous. But how? Kelsea’s necklace certainly