Hero by Alethea Kontis Read Free Book Online Page B

the turrets at Starburn, but he had never seen this place before. He only knew that he was warm and safe and loved and that she was there, smiling at him over the dinner table. The light from the sun twinkled in her bright eyes and caught her hair and turned it gold.
    “Or not,” said Betwixt. “You can’t be sure it’s her. You haven’t seen her since you were small children.”
    “You’re such a killjoy.” Peregrine slapped the witch’s ratty dress against the side of the cauldron and wrung it out in frustration.
    Betwixt sighed and gave in. He was too kind to demean any visions of loveliness, however fleeting, insubstantial, and wholly untrue. “Go on. Tell me about her.”
    Peregrine nodded. “I see her as a goddess wrapped in waves of blue-green sea, or a terrible angel in a white gown sullied with blood, rising like the moon above a battlefield. Sometimes she holds a sword in one hand, sometimes an ax. Day or night, rain or shine, there is always a wind in her long golden hair and a fire in her bright eyes.” Peregrine sobered and moved on to the next item of laundry—it fell to pieces as he lifted it. He flung the rent fabric into the pile he used for torch rags. “I am a fool for getting myself cursed on the way to fetch her.”
    “You can’t keep torturing yourself,” said Betwixt. “If the circumstances had been different, who knows what might have happened. If Leila had encountered you together, you or Elodie might have come to harm.”
    “I might have fought back. Or declined her accursed wish.” Oh, all the things he might have done then. He’d gone over each scenario in his mind, futilely weighing his chances of success and defeat. “But you don’t think the woman I’m seeing is Elodie? I don’t see how it can’t be. I don’t know any other women.” Except the witch, her daughter, and some chamber and scullery maids he recalled as a child.
    “Peregrine.” That name was never uttered in the company of the witch. The chimera used it now to get his attention, and he had it. “You were an earl’s son betrothed to a towheaded little girl with pigtails. The woman you’re envisioning might be Elodie fully grown, but she might just as easily be one of those goddesses you’re always praying to, or a figment born of desperation and Earthfire fumes. I just wish you would stop using her to regret your past. Fact or fiction, she wouldn’t want that. I don’t think the real Elodie would want that either.”
    “You’re right.” But saying the words did not dispel the guilt he would forever feel for disappearing before he’d even had the chance to get to know his betrothed. He wondered if Elodie ever thought about him, or if she still waited for him. He wondered if she hated the idea of an arranged partnership, or if it would have afforded her the same freedom it had him. He wondered if similar visions haunted her sleep. Sweet Elodie. He would return to her one day, when he had learned all there was to learn. When he was worthy of her. For now, he would settle for visiting her in his dreams.
    “Stop it,” said Betwixt.
    “What?”
    “You’re beating yourself up again! I can tell by the look on your face. She’s a dream. Let her fade into memory like dreams are supposed to.”
    Peregrine stuck his tongue out at the dogsnake. Betwixt could decide what that facial expression meant.
    “If Elodie of Cassot still thinks of you at all, I’m sure she feels what the rest of us do: pity that you never had a chance to live your life once it finally belonged to you.”
    Peregrine’s childhood had been consumed with caring for an ill father, so he’d never enjoyed a life outside his family estate. Elodie embodied everything that might have been. “She was the only thing I was ever responsible for, and I let her slip through my fingers.”
    “So go back to her. The mountain is waiting.”
    “Waiting to kill me,” said Peregrine. “If it had been that easy, I would have left long