Michelle West - Sun Sword 06 - The Sun Sword by Michelle West Read Free Book Online

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    Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas
    NIGHT over Terafin.
    Adam was past gaping at the size of the Terafin Manse, although Finch had
gone and left him in the den's foyer because he'd forgotten to keep walking. She
had ordered—well, as much of an order as anyone ever gave Ellerson—rooms to be
opened for his use, and Ellerson had gravely complied.
    It was the first time, since they had arrived in Terafin and been given the
wing, that new rooms had been opened; Daine, technically part of the den, was
often confined to menial tasks—and quarters— in the healerie.
    "Shouldn't I be with Daine?" Adam asked, watching the older healer vanish
down the hall.
    "Only if you want Levec to murder me," Finch replied, with a wry smile.
"Don't worry about Daine," she added, when she realized that he was worried.
How much do you know, Adam? How much do you see
? "Daine isn't allowed to
heal."
    "W-what?"
    "In the healerie, all healing is done by Alowan. Daine is… like any of his
other aides. He cuts bandages. He binds wounds that Alowan considers too minor
to expend power healing. He sets bones. Things like that."
    "But—but—"
    She shook her head. "Most of the House doesn't know Daine's a healer."
    "Why do they think he's here, then?"
    "They
think
he's here as another one of our flotsam and jetsam crew.
House Terafin is one of The Ten, but Jay is a bit unusual."
    He smiled and nodded. "She's strong, though."
    "Always has been." Her smile faded; she looked to the South. "And she's
impossible to kill. Mostly." Praying, as she said it, that it was still true.
    "I want to see the healerie."
    "Not at this time of night, you don't."
    He raised a brow.
    "Alowan is an
old
man. Levec just pretends. You can meet Alowan in
the morning."
    But the morning—that morning—never came.
    Instead, the night fell, loud and fast. The footsteps that had padded away
down the long hall came back in a thunderous roar. She heard them through closed
doors; saw them in Adam's sudden stiffness.
    Ellerson appeared, cutting through the dining room and swinging the gabled
doors wide. "ATerafin!" he cried, his voice as loud as she had ever heard it.
    "Ellerson?"
    His eyes were wide; they seemed almost silver, a trick of the lights that
never went out. Teller's door swung open, and it was followed in quick
succession by everyone else's. Even Arann's.
    "Master Daine has… returned from the healerie," he said. Just that.
    "Oh, gods," she whispered, or thought she whispered. She was in motion. She
felt her feet move, her knees bend, her stride lengthen; she cursed her skirts,
the daywear that the title of House Council member demanded.
    Her hands pushed the doors wide; she collided with the nearest chair, bruised
her ribs, swore, and kept moving.
    Not this
, she thought, as the small foyer loomed in view.
Not
this, too
.
    She heard swords being drawn. She heard voices being raised. She heard
something like her heartbeat, but it was too loud to be that.
    Daine was standing in the frame of the double doors that kept the rest of
Terafin out of the den's hideout. His hair was wild. His face was glistening.
Sweat, she thought. It was hot. Humid.
    Sweat.
    But his hands were turned toward her, his palms exposed, and she knew that
sweat wasn't that color.
    Red. Not yet sticky, not yet the impersonal brown of something that could no
longer be healed because it no longer bled.
    His eyes were wide; his eyes were dark. She no longer knew what color they
were. But she knew that his expression was sliding into something cold and
dangerous, something that, dark and cruel, lay dormant within him.
Needed
to lay dormant.
    She crossed the distance between them, put her arms out, caught his, stiff as
the dead, and held him close. He was taller than she was. Everyone was taller
than she was. But he was younger. She tried to remember that.
    "Daine," she said, not speaking his name so much as calling it with all the
force she could muster. "
Daine
."
    And