The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 by Michelle West Read Free Book Online

was her loyal servant. Hers, not House Terafin’s. He had spent the better part of a decade using the two—The Terafin, House Terafin—as synonyms. That was gone; what remained was a bitter, simmering resentment, for it was the latter that would destroy the former, and she would offer herself up to it with a willing, terrible grace.
    The privilege of power.
    He was surprised when she returned to him early, for he had sat this vigil night after night for almost a month, and he knew the hour of its ending almost as intimately as he did the minute of its commencing.
    “Morretz,” she said quietly.
    He bowed, waiting until she stepped off the path before he spoke. Or intending to wait. But she stood, her feet to one side of the line that divided the tended stone walk from the inner recess of the garden, awaiting his acknowledgment.
    “Terafin,” he said at last. He looked up, the grace of the movement marred by the hesitance, subtle and deep, with which he met her gaze.
    She was standing in the shadows between the contained light of two glass lamps, and as he lifted his chin, she smiled. It was a weary expression, which did not alarm him, but it was also unusually gentle, which did. “Terafin—”
    She lifted a hand. “I am not yet finished for the evening, but before I am, I must ask a favor.”
    He waited.
    Her smile lessened, ebbing from the familiar terrain of her face as if it were tide. “Please summon the men and women who serve Jewel ATerafin.”
    “Summon them?”
    “Yes. I will meet them here.”
    “Terafin—”
    “Don’t ask,” she said quietly.
    He bowed, but he did not move. They both knew that the only time men and women were summoned to this place was to give their oaths of service to the House, and even then, it was rare for any but the Chosen to be so called. “Did the House demand their presence?”
    “No.”
    He looked at her face; she had chosen to stand where the shadows—in a garden where light was scattered in artful abundance—were strongest. Funny, that.
    “What will you do?” she asked him, as the silence stretched.
    He chose—as he rarely chose—to misunderstand her. “My pardon, Terafin, I will fetch the den.”
    But she raised a hand before he could retreat, and the movement, as subtle as command could be to one who understood it, held him fast. “Morretz, when your service here is ended, what will you do?”
    He could not speak, although he understood that he could serve her best at this moment by offering her the words she asked for.
And what of me
? he thought, bitter now, the words so foreign they were almost another language.
What of my needs
?
    It was so wrong.
    And yet, beneath the weight of hers, beneath the years of the service he had willingly undertaken, his needs had been met. Until now.
    She had always accepted his silences before. But he knew that she must want companionship very badly, for she did not choose to do so now.
    “Will you return to the Guild? Will you teach? Will you return to the home that you have never once spoken of in your years in my service? Or will you choose to take another master? There are few who would not value your service, given what you have built here.”
    “Terafin.” The familiar syllables smoothed the anger out of his voice, although it was there, it was suddenly present. He wondered if she understood how deeply she had just insulted him, and decided that she was Amarais; she
must
, and she had chosen to do so deliberately.
    “I will never seek another Master, no matter what the outcome of this current situation is. I am done with power. I am done with the hopes—” He stopped, then, seeing, for a moment, not the glorious evening gardens of House Terafin, but the enclosed classrooms of the Guild of the Domicis.
    I will serve a lord I admire.
    That had been the right answer; it was the right answer now. But no one had asked him—not himself, especially not himself—what he would do when that service ended. He had made it