Read Online The Black Queen (Book 6) by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Free Book Online Page B

black hair in a single braid, revealing her pointed ears.
    “Leen,” he said in greeting. “It’s quiet as ever up here.”
    And then she smiled. It was her smile that had once intrigued him. He had thought it like Arianna’s. He and Leen had tried to be lovers once, several years before, but it ended quickly when they both realized that the only woman he’d ever wanted was a woman he could never ever have.
    “Rue the day when it’s no longer quiet,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder as she passed him. She bent down and picked up the chair, moving it away from the swords and the boulders that blocked her sight.
    She had very little magick—she was a minor Visionary, good enough to lead an Infantry troop, but not good enough for anything else—and she had come into that magick late. She had been twenty when she had her first Vision. By then, she had already lived through the loss of her family, slaughtered by the Black King as Failures, and the battle against the Black King himself. All her life, she had been a valued member of Gift’s extended family. That was why she was here; because she too could be trusted to guard the cave.
    “You think a day like that will come?” he asked.
    She carried the chair to the edge of the platform, perilously close to the stairs and the ledge. If she wasn’t careful, she would fall. He picked up the chair, as he always did, and moved it back a few feet.
    Ritual. They both enjoyed it. It was like a silent banter between them.
    “I’m Fey,” she said. “I’m suspicious of quiet.”
    “I rather like it,” he said.
    She nodded. “They want you in the school. It seems you had a visitor again today.”
    “Matt.”
    “Yes.”
    Coulter cursed under his breath. Fourteen-year-old Matt was a powerful Enchanter, as powerful—maybe more powerful—than Coulter. But his parents had forbidden him to come to Coulter’s school because the Fey ran it. They taught him using the Book found in the Vault beneath the Place of Power. He was learning the ancient magick without learning the controls that the Fey had modified for their own magick over thousands of years.
    Matt wanted that control, and he knew he could get it from Coulter. But Coulter was afraid if the boy were discovered at the school, the boy’s father would retaliate. That confrontation would be horrible.
    “Did you tell him I was here?”
    “Yes,” she said. “He said he wanted to come back tonight. And bring his brother.”
    Coulter swore again. “That’s just what I need.”
    “You can’t deny them. They may be more important than all your other students combined.”
    “I know,” he said. “But they’re dangerous too.”
    She didn’t say any more. She knew how dangerous. And she knew why. “Things are never easy.”
    “I never said I wanted them to be.”
    “Oh? Didn’t I hear that a moment ago?”
    “No,” he said. “I want things quiet, not easy.”
    She sat down. “I guess I can accept that.”
    He double-checked the chair’s position. Even if he was no longer her lover, he still cared about her. She was a unique woman, one who deserved better than what he had given her. “Who relieves you?”
    “Dash, at twilight.”
    Dash was one of the few Islander guards. He was young, had great strength, and was one of the best with a sword that Coulter had ever seen. He also had incredible night vision, and could see so well when light was uneven or poor that it was better to have him on the mountainside as things grew dark than a Fey who relied too much on magick and not enough on skill.
    “Good,” Coulter said. He was about to leave when the hair on the back of his neck rose. A sensation came out of the northwest. He turned, and saw a golden light threaded with black. It flowed like a river through the sky, but the light had a beginning and an end.
    “What is it?” Leen asked.
    She couldn’t see something like that; she didn’t have the abilities for it. “I don’t know,” he said.
    He