The Tiger Queens Read Online Free Page A

“I think there’s more to you than you show the world, Borte Ujin.”
    “You don’t know anything about me.”
    “I know you don’t want to marry me.”
    I sighed, wishing I was gathering stinging nettles or lancing a boil on my mother’s foot. Anywhere but here. “No, I don’t want to marry you,” I finally said.
    “Because I’m coarse, rude, and beneath you in every way that matters.” His voice was angry, but his shoulders slumped under the weight of his words.
    He spoke the truth, but I didn’t care to injure him further. My mother’s warning filled my mind, the words that had sworn me to secrecy years ago. There seemed so many reasons to tell him the prophecy, and so few to keep the truth hidden any longer.
    I shifted behind him, unable to find comfort. “No, there’s something else,” I said, each word drawn out. “My mother cast my future when I was born.”
    “So did mine,” Temujin said. “I was born with a blood clot held tight in my fist. My mother claimed the sign meant I was destined for greatness.”
    I smiled sadly, glad he couldn’t see my face. “She may be right.”
    Temujin seemed to sense my melancholy. “What was your prophecy?”
    I hesitated, prompting a low chuckle from deep in his chest. “Consider who my father is, Borte Ujin. Nothing you can say will shock me.”
    Still the words lodged like stones in my throat. Temujin deserved to know the truth if he thought to marry me one day. Or perhaps he might abandon me now and avert the whole tragedy.
    “My mother cast my bones while bits of her womb still clung to me and blood ran down her legs.”
    “And?” Temujin’s hand covered mine and he pulled it to his chest, as if giving me the strength to speak the words.
    “I will cleave two men apart and ignite a great Blood War that will rain tears and destruction upon the steppes.” The words tasted like ash in my mouth, and my mother’s warning echoed in my ears. Suddenly it wasdifficult to breathe, as if giving voice to the terrible words had cost me more than I knew.
    Temujin covered my arms with his, his fingers weaving between mine in the filly’s mane. I leaned forward, letting my head rest on his back and daring to breathe deeply of his scent. “I battled a wolf once to get this tooth,” he said, his bones vibrating with the sound as he touched my fingers to the necklace at his throat. “You can’t scare me away with a warning of blood and war.”
    My head jerked up. “Then you’re a fool.”
    “No,” he said. “I happen to think you may be worth fighting for.”
    The air around me grew suddenly cold, and I shook my head at his audacity. “You’re worse than a fool, then,” I said. “You shouldn’t taunt the spirits with such jests.”
    “It’s no jest,” he said. “I promise I would fight for you, Borte Ujin.”
    I heard the spirits’ shocked whispers in the flutter of birch leaves and the shifting grasses at the filly’s feet. I wrapped my arms tighter around Temujin, needing his warmth to ward off the cold that had seeped into my bones.
    “Still,” I whispered, shivering, “I pray it never comes to that.”
    *   *   *
    Temujin sought me out often over the next few days to ask my opinion about the goats my father set him to herding or to bring me a gift of brown partridges strung by their wings, each shot through the eyes by his arrows. Once he gave me a purple globe thistle he’d found while riding the dun-colored filly, claiming it reminded him of me. I had nothing to say to that, only stuttered as he smiled and sauntered off, pausing to rub the muzzle of each horse he passed.
    It startled me to see the people of our camp warm toward this coarse youth from the Borijin clan, the flock of boys who trailed him and the indulgent smiles of old women as he waved to them each evening. Temujin possessed the talent of drawing people to him, a rarer ability even than my mother’s gift of sight.
    A few nights later, an unfamiliar boy spattered