The Invasion of the Tearling

Father Tyler shook his head. “He doesn’t match any Raleigh monarch I’ve ever heard of. He is exceptionally good-looking, though; perhaps he was a companion to one of the Raleigh Queens. Several of them never married, but all of them managed to produce heirs. They had an eye for the handsome men.”


Kelsea picked that unfortunate moment to look at Pen, and found his eyes on her as well. The night he had rejected her sat between them like a vast gulf, and Kelsea had a terrible feeling that they would never get back to the easy friendship they’d had before. She wanted to say something to him, but there were too many people nearby, and after a moment even the impulse at reconciliation vanished. The eyes of the man from the fireplace were hypnotic, but Kelsea dragged herself away and moved on to the next portrait. They were into the Raleighs now; all of these portraits had their plaques intact, and the engravings became clearer, less worn by the passage of time, as Kelsea moved closer to the present day.

All of the Raleighs wore both sapphires, the jewels appearing changeless from one portrait to the next. These were Kelsea’s ancestors, her blood, but she found them somehow less important than the three Tears, less real. Carlin had never admired the Raleighs; perhaps her prejudices in this, as in so many things, had simply trickled down to Kelsea over the years.

In the tenth portrait, Kelsea was confronted with a woman so beautiful that she almost defied description. She had the same blonde hair and bright green eyes as many of the Raleigh queens, but her face was creamy-skinned and flawless, and she had the most gracefully proportioned neck that Kelsea had ever seen on a woman. Unlike the previous portraits, which had focused on one person at a time, this one also portrayed a child, a pretty girl of nearly six years, who sat on her mother’s lap. And in this portrait Kelsea noticed a new development: the woman wore one sapphire, the child wore the other. Kelsea bent down to the attached plaque and read, “Amanda Raleigh.”

“Ah, the Beautiful Queen!” Father Tyler moved down to join her in front of the portrait. Kelsea’s guards, most of whom had been scattered down at the far end of the room, slightly bored, moved closer as well, staring avidly up at the portrait. Kelsea felt irritation bite against her mind, but then she spotted a second child in the portrait, tucked almost behind the Beautiful Queen’s skirts. This girl was even younger than the child on the Queen’s lap, perhaps no more than three or four, but already she was dark-haired and sullen-looking, and Kelsea was suddenly reminded of her own childhood self, staring back at her in the pool of still water behind the cottage. In the radiance of the Beautiful Queen and her daughter, the girl was easy to miss, and Kelsea realized that this must have been the artist’s deliberate choice: to highlight one child and obscure the other.

“The Beautiful Queen had only one child, so I’m told. That must be Queen Elaine on her lap.” Kelsea pointed to the little girl who cringed behind the Beautiful Queen’s skirts. “So who’s this?”

Mace shrugged. “No idea.”

Father Tyler considered the girl. “A disfavored child, would be my guess. Amanda Raleigh had a husband, Thomas Arness. He was Elaine’s father. But I’ve heard that Amanda was hardly faithful to Arness, and there may have been other children. Disfavored children sometimes showed up in royal portraits from the pre-Crossing, but never in positions of prominence. A cruel thing, really, almost worse than not being included at all.” Father Tyler studied the portrait for a moment before remarking, “This is the worst case I’ve ever seen. That child is completely marginalized.”

Kelsea stared at the little girl, pity stirring inside her. Unlike the smiling princess on the Beautiful Queen’s lap, the hidden girl had dark, unhappy eyes. She wasn’t looking at the artist, as the other two subjects did; rather, she was staring up at the Beautiful Queen, her gaze filled with poorly concealed longing. Kelsea suddenly wanted to weep, and didn’t know whether it was for the child or for herself.

In the next portrait, the child on the Beautiful Queen’s lap had grown up and borne a child of her own. The engraving identified them as Queen Elaine and Crown Princess Arla. Elaine was not as beautiful as her mother—but who could be? Kelsea wondered bitterly—but she reminded Kelsea of someone. Andalie? No, for although this woman was a brunette, she didn’t have Andalie’s pale, ethereal style of beauty. Queen Elaine did not smile for the artist; she, too, looked extremely annoyed at having to sit for a portrait.

“See here, Lady!” Dyer pointed at Elaine’s face. “She has your stubborn jaw!”

“Hilarious,” Kelsea muttered, but she could not deny that there was a likeness, even now, when so many changes had overtaken her own face. Before Dyer could remark on anything else, she continued to the next portrait.