The Seer - eARC by Sonia Lyris Read Free Book Online

retainer red and black regalia instead.
    “I like the green better,” she had said stubbornly.
    “That’s not important,” he’d said, already losing his patience with her but desperate to make her understand. He tried another approach. “Servants don’t work with the birds.”
    That had been sufficient. The subject never came up again.
    Today she wore appropriate colors, though her trousers were too long, her shirt overlarge, her shoulders spotted with bird droppings, and her hair uneven, as if someone had cut it in dim light using a dirty stew bowl as a guide.
    Her gaze speared him and she charged, faster than he would have thought her capable. Once close, she began to batter him with tight, hard fists. He pushed back, trying to hold her at arm’s length. With his greater reach it should have been easy, but his exhaustion and her wild thrashing made her nearly impossible to control.
    While he was busy trying to keep her from hitting him she kicked him in the knee, quite a bit harder than he expected. He swore and stepped back.
    Again she rushed him, lips pulled back, snapping her teeth. Instinctively he raised an arm, the way he would have with one of the fighting dogs, and cocked it back as if to hit her in the snout. He doubted it would even slow her down, though, not when she was like this.
    Across the room his mother stood, holding her hands over her ears, and gave a piercing scream.
    At this the door opened. In burst three palace guards, all of whom Innel knew. As he tried to make sense of this unlikely intrusion, Cahlen came at him again, and the three guards sprinted toward her.
    This had gone far enough. He let Cahlen step in close and put his weight behind a full-force push to the middle of her chest, propelling her backward while the guards stumbled to the side to avoid her. Cahlen sprawled ass-first onto an open space on the carpeted floor. Now on her back, she stayed there, breathing hard, glaring up at him.
    He turned his attention to the guards.
    “What are you doing?”
    He had never before seen palace guards break into a private residential room. Not for screaming, not for crashes of ceramic broken against walls. Not even for cries for help. Gossip would follow all that, certainly.
    But guards? Never.
    “Get out,” he told them. They hesitated, the two looking to the one clearly in command. Nalas, a man he knew. Then, with more force, he repeated: “Out. Now.” Nalas tilted his head toward the door, taking the other two outside.
    Innel looked at his sister on the floor, still breathing hard, and wondered what was going on in her head. Cahlen could go from dead calm to bruising fury in an instant, then be over it in the next. A drenching rainstorm turned abruptly to blue skies. Once it had fully passed, the storm would be over. But had it?
    Her expression shifted, mouth went slack, eyes unfocused. There it went, the storm. He waited a moment to be certain, then with a nod at his mother, who stood as if frozen, he left.
    Outside the three guards waited.
    “What in the seven hells was that about?” He stepped up close to Nalas, pushed him sharply with both hands, harder than he intended. Nalas stumbled back, tensed, and Innel found himself unreasonably hoping for a fight.
    Nalas raised his hands in appeasement.
    “His Majesty’s orders.”
    At this Innel forced himself to calm. He wanted to hit something, but a fight here and now over this would be foolish.
    “All right,” he said, breathing deeply. “Why?”
    “Protecting you?” Nalas replied, a tinge of wry apology in his tone.
    “From Cahlen ?” Innel said, incredulous. “But she’s harmless.”
    Nalas gave a shrug that said he didn’t disagree.
    The king was guarding him? From what?
    While he was formulating what he might sensibly ask Nalas, knowing that every word would get back to Restarn, Cahlen emerged. Behind her his mother’s face flashed a moment in the doorway and then vanished, the door slamming shut. She wanted nothing