The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas Read Free Book Online

twenty minutes. I plan to be on it. Make it happen.”
    â€œYes, sire. And, sire, Prince Alectus and Lady Callista await below. They request an audience with Your Highness.”
    The regent and his mistress resided in Delamer, the capital, and rarely called upon Titus’s mountain keep. 
    Titus swore under his breath. “Show them into the throne room—and have Woodkin exercise Marble.”
    Dalbert hurried off. Titus took himself two levels below, shrugging into a day coat as he went. He rarely entered the throne room except on the most public of occasions—it was ridiculous for him, essentially a puppet, to be in a room meant to symbolize the justness and might of his position. But today he wished to get rid of his visitors fast, and the throne room discouraged small talk.
    The ceiling of the throne room rose fifty feet on two rows of white marble pillars. The obsidian throne was set upon a waist-high dais. Titus walked past it to the arched windows. Beneath him was a drop of a thousand feet to a ravine cut by a blue, glacier-fed river. Beyond, purple peaks shifted like slow waves. 
    Alectus and Lady Callista appeared on two of the four low pedestals that transported audience seekers from the reception room to the throne room.
    Alectus was the youngest brother of Titus’s grandfather, a handsome, morally flexible man of fifty-eight. Lady Callista was a beauty witch—the greatest beauty witch of her generation. Of the last three hundred years, it had been argued. 4
    She was on the brink of forty. Unlike many other beauty witches, she had not resorted to questionable magic to keep herself looking half her age. Instead, she had aged gracefully, allowing a few wrinkles to spread here and there while maintaining her sway over legions of hearts.
    Ever since Alectus had been appointed regent, she had been his mistress. Some whispered that Alectus had even proposed to her, but she had declined. She was the capital’s leading hostess, its arbiter of style, a generous patron of the arts—and an agent of Atlantis.
    Alectus bowed. Lady Callista curtsied.
    â€œTo what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” asked Titus, offering neither seats nor refreshment.
    His bluntness surprised Alectus, who looked toward his mistress: Alectus had no appetite for confrontation, or any kind of unpleasantness. 
    Lady Callista smiled. It was said that to this day, love letters arrived for her by the wheelbarrowful. There was a great deal of skill in her smile, a smile meant to make a boy who had done nothing with his life feel accomplished and remarkable—virile, even.
    Titus felt only revulsion—she was most likely the one who had betrayed his mother, informing the Inquisitor of the latter’s secret participation in the January Uprising.
    â€œWe received a note from the Inquisitor,” she said, her voice a dulcet murmur. “Her Excellency is concerned that she doesn’t see enough of you. She’s quite fond of you, Your Highness.”
    Titus rolled his eyes. “She is getting above herself. What do I care whether she is fond of me? She was a nobody before the Bane plucked her out of obscurity.”
    â€œBut now she is the Inquisitor, and can cause much unpleasantness.”
    â€œWhy would she do that? Does she wish to incite a new uprising?”
    At the word “uprising,” Lady Callista’s smile faltered slightly, but she was quickly all warmth and concern again. “Your Highness, of course she does not want that. Once you come of age, the two of you will see a great deal of each other. She hopes for a respectful, productive, and mutually beneficial association.”
    â€œI appreciate your diplomacy,” he said, “but there is no use gilding a turd. I cannot stand that upstart, and she is jealous and resentful of me. Save me the time and tell me what she really wants.”
    Alectus choked at Titus’s language. Alectus never had