Kumari's Kitsune

Chapter 2: By The Grave Side

When he stood not two metres away, he bowed.

"Kumari?"

"Will you sit with me, Kael?" she asked quietly.

She could demand it of him, but he was her brother and she would not force his company.

"If Kumari wishes it." His voice did not give way to gentleness. It had been that way for years now, ever since he became old enough to accept his role as her Chief Protector.

"Bae wishes it."

The quiet reminder that she was not only his Queen but his sister had him plonking himself down in the grass next to her.

"Bae," his voice gentler now, "I really wish you'd return to the castle."

"Not yet."

He didn't push. He knew better than to argue. Instead his eyes returned to their task of scanning the clearing. They were currently sat beneath their mother's favourite tree in the Forest of Elivade. It was within walking distance of the palace but Kael and the other protectors were always on edge when Bae left the grounds of the castle.

"I can't believe she's gone."

Without looking her way, he took her hand in his.

"She's not gone. Can't you feel her here?"

"No. I can't."

"Close your eyes. Breathe." His words were quiet. "Listen. Feel. See."

She did as her brother said and closed her eyes, allowing herself to really stop for a moment. Her mind began to calm and her breathing slowed; in, out, in, out. The magic that was permeating the air around her began to sing. There was something familiar about it while at the same time it was altogether foreign. She could sense her brother's rich power coming from beside her but equally there was something sweeter, softer that was altogether her mother. Her magic was still there in the air, tingling with awareness. It wasn't alone though; it was woven together with a thousand other strands of equally powerful magics that when combined hissed with such potency that it intimidated Bae.

"She'll never be gone. We don't live and we don't die, we merely exist in one form or the other. We come from magic and we return to magic," Kael told her after a small silence.

Recalling the words of her mother, Bae smiled. There was so much that hadn't made sense until her mother's death. So many secrets still left untold and answers yet to be found, that this small piece of knowledge felt even more important. Finally, something made sense.

"When she said that we can fortify our own magic with the magic of those that came before us and those that will come after..."

"This is what she meant." He grinned. "If you can sense it, you can use it."

She nodded her head, eager to know more. Being Kumari was not all it was cracked up to be. She had not received the same teachings that her siblings had, had not played the same games that they had, she had not even shared a nursery with them. Where they were Royalty, she was of Kumari blood and the two were incomparable. She had often been jealous of her siblings when she was younger. She'd watched them play in the palace grounds and had desperately wanted to join them, but that had never been allowed. Each of the siblings had their own challenge to face but if you were to ask Bae, hers was the greatest challenge of all. Being Kumari meant being protected at all costs, at the cost of a brother or even a mother.

The late Kumari, their mother, had been something else entirely. She had been both kind and stern, strong yet meek, just but always merciful and Bae's role as the Kumari child was to stay by her mother's side until she was deemed ready to rule.

That day hadn't come.

The day before her eighteenth birthday - the day of her commencement - Bae had been out riding with her mother. The guards had been with them of course, but the attack had come from nowhere. Someone had spelled the trees, causing vines to grow obscenely fast, curling around the legs of the horses. It was an attack on the Kumari child, an attempt to end the bloodline. At the age of seventeen and three hundred and fifty-five days, Bae had watched her mother sacrifice her own life for the life of her daughter, and perhaps more importantly the line of Kumari.

Only upon the death of her mother had Bae become aware of the other attempts that had been made on her life, more than twenty a year. That was the first of the secrets that had come to light within the last twenty-four hours. The first of thousands.