Read Online Cast In Courtlight by Michelle Sagara - Free Book Online

time she looked like she might fall. He took care not to touch her; it seemed odd. Had she been with Teela or Tain, they would have given up on her half a block past, and carried her the rest of the way. Oh, she would have cursed them in at least three languages, but they were used to that.
    Andellen gave her space.
    He made certain that anyone whose curiosity was stronger than their self-preservation instinct also gave her space, and she finally reached the door of her apartment. She fumbled with the key and dropped it twice, while he watched, impassive. Waiting.
    She tossed out a few recreational Aerian curses, just to keep in practice, and made a third attempt at the lock. This time, it worked.
    The stairs looked very, very steep from where she stood. She made her way up them, hanging on to the rails until she ran out of railing. Her door was there. She was surprised that it was open. And more surprised when she saw who was waiting in the room. Severn, in the moonlight. He’d even opened the shutters, the bastard.
    Andellen was behind her. She knew this because the stone of Severn’s expression shifted into something a lot less friendly.
    “When did I give you a key?” she muttered.
    “You didn’t.”
    “What the hell are you doing here?”
    “Waiting.”
    Sarcasm took too much energy. She stumbled over the threshold. Andellen followed.
Great
, she thought,
they’re going to fight. I’ll lose the apartment
. But… they didn’t. Nothing made sense. Severn was stiff, and obviously angry, as he made his way toward her.
    “Waiting?”
    “Someone sent word,” he said as he caught her. His hands were cold. And stiff.
    “The fieflord entrusts her to your care,” Andellen’s voice said. She didn’t actually see him. Couldn’t. She could see the hollows of Severn’s collarbone, and they were the whole of her vision.
    “You’re bleeding,” he said in her ear.
    “Not my blood,” she replied dimly. “But the baby was a girl.”
    It was the last thing she said, and she thought she smiled.
    Sunlight was the bane of her existence. Mirrors were also the bane of her existence. And the inside of her mouth? That was bad, too. Her eyes were crusted together, her arms felt as if she’d been doing chin-ups in the drill yard, and her legs – well, never mind; they were worse.
    The mirror was snarling. Covered, and snarling.The glare of the damn sun made her glad that opening her eyes was difficult.
    “Kaylin Neya!”
    No one, she thought bitterly, should have to wake up to
that
voice. Marcus Kassan was in a mood.
    “Kaylin, take the bloody cloth off the damn mirror and answer me!”
    “Coming,” she managed, and rolled over.
    Either her bed had changed shape significantly over the course of the night, or someone else was in it. She jumped up, hit the open shutters with the back of her head, and cursed in loud and angry Leontine.
    Which, of course, Marcus heard. It certainly added color to
his
reply.
    Severn lay on his side, propped up on one elbow. His hair fell over one eye, and the scar along his cheek was white in the sunlight. He didn’t look sleepy.
    “How long have you been
here?
” she hissed as she crawled off the bottom edge of her mattress.
    He shrugged. “Long enough.”
    “Why didn’t you answer the damn mirror?”
    “The Sergeant is in a mood,” he replied. He sounded almost amused. But he didn’t look it, so she didn’t hit him.
    There were rules that she tried to follow when she undertook a healing of any difficulty – and chief among those was Don’t Crouch; crouching for hours at a stretch almost destroyed her knees. Unfortunately, emergencies tended to drive common sense out of her head, as if it were something sheeplike.
    Oh, it was bad. The sun was well past high, and the shadows it cast were a very strong reminder that she was – yet again – late for something.
    Marcus was practically
eating
the mirror by the time she got to her end and pulled the cloth down from its less than