Read Online Soulwoven by Jeff Seymour - Free Book Online

the ears of the rich they so loved to talk about, but that didn’t make it any less true.
    There were no guards on Quay’s door. The only person Cole saw while approaching it was a wide-eyed, frightened-looking kid in the colors of House Galeni. The kid froze when he spotted Cole and then ran off in the other direction.
    Odder and odder, Cole thought.
    He knocked lightly and entered the prince’s suite.
    Inside, all the doors were open. No fire had been laid, despite the rain. Quay himself was standing alone in the big stone archway that led to his private balcony. The prince was still as relatively small as he’d been in childhood, but he’d grown into his body. He looked comfortable in his skin, strong in a way that had nothing to do with muscles. A rich black doublet trimmed with silver rested over his shoulders and his thick gray trousers, and high boots and riding gloves covered his feet and hands. He faced the city with his fingers laced together tightly behind his back, motionless.
    Cole whistled—one low note, then a high one that slid back down. His friend didn’t move, so Cole took up position next to him in the archway, staring into the rain.
    “In the slums,” Cole said, “they say that it rains this hard because Yenor loves pissing all over them.”
    Quay didn’t laugh, but he did turn to look at him, and Cole’s heart fell into his stomach. Quay’s lips were pursed together. His cheeks were drawn in. There was a seriousness in his eyes that Cole had seen only a few times before: When his mother had died. When Cole’s father had nearly lost his palace contract. When drought had pushed the city close to riot.
    “I’m glad you’re here,” Quay said.
    The words me too died on Cole’s lips. He swallowed and couldn’t find a joke.
    “Last night the heart dragons in the Old Temple were broken,” Quay said. The prince’s eyes glittered, and Cole remembered the damaged statuette that the Twelfthman had dropped. “Do you remember the legend of Sherduan, Cole?”
    The low rumble of thunder echoed over Sentinel Hill, and Cole nodded. In some parts of the slums, you couldn’t go twenty feet without some crazy person grabbing you and talking your ear off about the end of the world.
    Three sets of golden heart dragons. One here, one in Aleana, and one in the White Forest. And if all of them are broken, a dragon comes from the depths of the void to burn the world. The histories said it had happened once before, when the old kingdom of Mennennar had sunk beneath the waves and the plains in the center of the continent had been burned to a blackened crisp from which they’d never recovered. Cole had read part of one of the histories once, before his mother and the tutors she’d hired had given up on making a scholar out of him. He’d had nightmares for weeks.
    “It had a black-scaled face and fiery eyes, a mane of flames, claws the size of a man. As it tore my men to shreds, I could feel it laughing, and I knew for the first time the insignificance of my life, my wealth, my power, in the face of something much larger than humanity.” Cole swallowed and adjusted his shoulders against the archway. His vision from the night before raced unwanted through his mind. Just another nightmare, he told himself, that’s all it was. A coincidence. A story remembered from childhood. It isn’t real. It never was.
    The rain over the city grew stronger, and Quay went on. “My father’s position amongst the Seven has become terribly weak, Cole. War is coming. House Eldani’s only choice is whether it comes against Menatar or between the Great Houses.”
    A lump formed in Cole’s throat. There hadn’t been open civil war in Eldan since the Nutharians had rebelled 1,200 years in the past. “C’mon…” he said. “It can’t—”
    “My father’s chosen Menatar.” Quay’s eyes narrowed. “Warships are being summoned to Densel. Troops are being pulled back from the Nutharian border and sent to the Black