Read Online Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 by Louise Cusack - Free Book Online

anguish of trying to live with himself, knowing his small royal charge had died such a pointless death, the second king to die due to his negligence. Lae, however, was very much alive and she had loved Lenid as fiercely as any natural mother could. So large a love must surely leave a fearful wound when it was wrenched away. Pagan could not begin to comprehend her pain.
    ‘Though sadness lies in our hearts at these recent losses,’ she said at last, ‘I see also strength and the potential for joy.’ Her hand rose, pointing to someone behind Pagan whose aura she had read. ‘You are with child,’ she announced, ‘a healthy daughter,’ and as Pagan turned to look, the woman gasped in delight and the man at her side enfolded her into an embrace.
    Lae’s eyes moved on, but Pagan continued to stare at the woman, knowing how Lae must covet the child within her, marvelling that his beloved had not betrayed that envy by tone or expression. How Pagan longed to give Lae a child, to stand at her side through this adversity. But she had chosen to adhere to the grieving traditions of her House, leaving her chambers only to perform the religious ceremonies that were demanded of her as The Dark. Few though they were.
    There had been no scythe of death come to cover the face of their sun since the time of The Catalyst’s birth, and therefore no need to banish it with ceremony and the sacrifice of an evil one. This had been The Dark’s chief responsibility. Before The Catalyst had come to the Volcastle, when Lae had still been married and Pagan desperate to win back her love, they had discussed this change to the cycle of their world and wondered at it. Pagan had admitted no knowledge within his Guardian heritage that could explain it, and Lae had told him of Khatrene’s assertions that on Magoria the darkness was an ‘eclipse’, the rhythmic passage of an object between themselves and the sun. Yet if that was the case on Ennae also, why had it stopped?
    Pagan had no answers, and now Lae seemed not to care. Her rituals were reduced to their barest minimum: reciting the prophecies and reading auras, but these familiar traditions gave comfort to a people grappling with the daily terrors the Maelstrom produced. The elements of the Four Worlds had begun to drift across the void and now air-thin Magorian water fell from the sky on Ennae, sometimes daily. Wind tore clothes from the bodies of those caught out; the earth shook with the Maelstrom’s fury; and on some days the sun was so hot, the cook baked ort on the courtyard cobblestones.
    Lae was oblivious to it all and Pagan tried to understand how she must feel, wishing he could compare her grief to something he had experienced, but, with no memory of his years on Magoria, Pagan could feel no loss for the son he had left behind there. All he had was a letter with facts. His son’s name was Vandal. The boy’s mother was Sarah, with whom Pagan had apparently shared a bed for fourteen years. The letter had also confirmed that The Catalyst, whom he had taken as a baby into exile, had been raised. His duty to the throne had been fulfilled, but the details meant nothing — flashes of faces in his mind, and a memory of tenderness towards Sarah who had borne him a son, but no grief at leaving them.
    Y OUR LIFE IS HERE NOW , the voice said inside his mind, and Pagan felt his agitation ease. It had taken him time to accept that the Great Guardian spoke to him directly, and had apparently done so even while he had lived in exile. But now he took heart from his God’s wisdom, reminding himself that he and Lae were meant to be together, no matter the obstacles fate put in their way.
    I will marry Lae , he told the Great Guardian.
    Y OU MUST BE PATIENT , the voice replied, and Pagan frowned. Her grief was so deep and wide, he was unsure how to bridge it. The Great Guardian had told him once that time healed, but Pagan had lost so much time already. While Lae’s world had aged only three years