A Little Fate Read Free Page B

Twylia?”
    Gwayne looked into the forest, gently stroking her hair. “What did she say to you?”
    â€œShe said the True One’s hour is midnight, in birth, in death. Then she held out her hands, and in them were a globe, bright as the moon, and a star, clear as water. Take them, she told me. You will need them. Then she was gone.”
    She rubbed her cheek against his knee as the sadness she’d felt came back on her. “She was gone, Gwayne, and I ached in my heart. Beside me stood my wolf with his green eyes and dark hair. I think he was the True One, and that I’ll fight for him. I think this dream was a portent, for when I woke, there was blood on the moon. A battle is coming.”
    Gwynn had said he would know when it was time. He knew, sitting in the quiet forest with spring freshening the air. He knew, and it grieved him.
    â€œNot all battles are fought and won with the sword.”
    â€œI know. Mind and heart, vision and magic. Strategy and treachery. I feel . . .” She rose, wandered away to pluck up a stone and cast it into the silver water of the river.
    â€œTell me what you feel.”
    She looked back. There was silver, bright as the river water, mixed with the gold of his hair, and in his beard. His eyes were a pale blue, and it seemed to her there was a shadow in them now. He was not her father. She knew her sire had fought and died in the Battle of the Stars, but Gwayne had been her father in all but blood all of her life.
    There was nothing she couldn’t tell him.
    â€œI feel . . . as if something inside me is waiting, as the world is waiting. I feel there is something I must do, must be beyond what I am, what I do know.” She hurried back to him, knelt at his feet. “I feel I must find my wolf. My love for him is so great, I will never know another. If he’s the one of prophecy, I want to serve him. I honor what you’ve given me, Gwayne. You and Rhiann, Nara and Rohan and all my family. But there’s something inside me, stretching, growing restless, because it knows . It knows, but I can’t see it.”
    She rapped a fist against his leg in frustration. “I can’tsee. Not yet. Not in my dreams or in the fire or the glass. When I seek, it’s as if a film covers my vision and there are only shadows behind it. In the shadows I see the snake, and in the shadows my wolf is chained and bleeding.”
    She rose again, impatient with herself. “A man who might be king, a woman who was a queen. I know she was a queen, and she offered me the moon and a star. And while I wanted them with a kind of burning hunger, I feared them. Somehow, I know if I took them, everything would change.”
    â€œI have no magic. I’m only a soldier, and it’s been too long since my courage was tested. Now I taste fear, and it makes me an old man.”
    â€œYou’re not old, and you’re never afraid.”
    â€œI thought there would be more time.” He got to his feet, just looked at her. “You’re so young.”
    â€œOlder than your Cyra, and she marries at the next equinox.”
    â€œThe first year of your life I thought the days would never end, and time would never pass.”
    She laughed. “Was I so troublesome an infant?”
    â€œRestless and willful.” He reached out to touch her cheek. “Then time flew. And here we are. Come, sit with me on the riverbank. I have many things to tell you.”
    She sat with him, and watched a hawk circle in the sky. “There is your talisman. The hawk.”
    â€œOnce, long ago, and most often behind my back, I was called the queen’s hawk.”
    â€œThe queen?” Aurora looked back sharply. “You were the queen’s man? You never told me. You said you fought with my father in the great battle, but not that you were the queen’s man.”
    â€œI told you that I brought your mother out of the city, into the Lost