Read Online The Black Queen (Book 6) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Free Book Online Page A

against them, though, to draw strength from them. They made him feel the ancient power that he was able to share. The power he was only beginning to be able to control.
    Coulter, whose parents were Islander, was born an Enchanter. That was the Fey term. The Islander term varied depending on which region of Blue Isle heard of him. Here, in the Cliffs of Blood, where his birth family was from, he would have been known as demon spawn . But his parents had been smart enough to leave, and he had been born on the other side of the Isle. His parents were slaughtered in the first Fey invasion, and a Fey Shape-shifter recognized his magickal abilities, and took him to be raised by the Fey.
    Only they didn’t raise him. They neglected him. But he got to observe their magick, and by the time he was five, he knew how to use it—not well, not correctly, but enough to save Gift’s life one horrible night. In doing so, Coulter had Bound the two of them together, mingled their life forces so that if one of them died, the other would too.
    That Binding had been a mistake—there was a less risky way to perform the spell, one that didn’t tie their lives together—and it had been the first of many. Coulter hadn’t received real training until Arianna became Black Queen. She sent for the only remaining Fey Enchanter from the Galinas continent, as well as a group of Spell Warders, to train Coulter.
    Even then, he wouldn’t go to her. She had wanted him to, and he wouldn’t because he was afraid their emotions would run away with them. He loved her. He had from the moment he met her, and he was afraid if he were at her side, he would hurt her somehow.
    So he had forced the Enchanter and Warders to come to him. He let them train him, and now he was using that training in other ways. When he was not up here, guarding the cave, he worked in Constant, teaching Islander children with wild magick how to control and use their powers. Without planning to, he had started a school, and in the last year, parents had sent him students from other parts of Blue Isle, places where Fey and Islanders had intermarried and were creating children with new stronger powers, powers that sometimes frightened Coulter with their intensity.
    So now when he came to the mountain, he came here to rest. When he was in his school, he had to be on his guard constantly. The problem with half-Fey, half-Islander children was that they were born with their magick powers fully formed. The Fey didn’t come into their magick until puberty. So the Fey child had already learned about life, about control, before his magick overtook him.
    But the interracial children and some of the Islander children had no such buffer. Parents who had no magickal ability or whose magickal ability had been effectively suppressed by the Islander religion didn’t know how to deal with two-year-olds who could create fire simply by snapping their fingers.
    Coulter did. He could remember being such a child, and the way the Fey would grab his hands, deflect his spells. He had help now, with these little ones—Domestics who were used to raising children, the Warders who had come to train him, and the Enchanter brought in by Arianna. That Enchanter not nearly as skilled as Coulter was, but helpful nonetheless.
    Coulter had a hunch the need for his school would grow, and if he allowed himself to dream, as he sometimes did, sitting in his chair with his head leaning against the sword, he imagined schools like it all over the Isle.
    “Anything?”
    The voice wasn’t unexpected. Coulter had sensed someone coming up the stairs for some time now, but it hadn’t been anything he concentrated on.
    He brought his chair down on all four legs, and stood. The Fey woman at the edge of the carved stone plateau was taller than he was—but then they all were—and she held herself with a soldier’s grace. Her face was narrow, her eyes slanted upward in an angle that matched her sharp cheek bones. She wore her long