A Shiver of Light Read Free Page A

path. He’d been a storm god once, and his eyes still reflected his moods as if the sky were still his to command. Centuries ago the true sky would have reflected his anxiety. His own black suit made his gray hair look almost charcoal dark, as it fell around his shoulders and swept below the table edge. He wore a white dress shirt half unbuttoned, tucked into his pants, but fanned open to reveal a hand-stitched linen undershirt. The linen was from his old wardrobe. He’d found that wearing something that felt “normal” against his skin helped him deal better with all this frightening newness.
    I sat there surrounded by some of the most beautiful men in all of faerie, feeling like a small, less than beautiful jewel in their midst, but it’s hard to feel glamorous when you’re eight months pregnant with triplets. I hadn’t seen my feet in weeks. My back ached as if someone were trying to saw me in half about a third of the way up. It was the worst my back had hurt, as if now that my body knew it was carrying triplets it didn’t have to pretend to be brave anymore.
    “How could all the tests and ultrasounds have missed a third baby?” Galen asked.
    Dr. Heelis, tall, with white hair cut short, smiled his best professional smile at us. He had to be sixty, but he looked about a decade younger with his handsome square-jawed face and clear gray eyes behind their silver-framed glasses.
    “I won’t make excuses, except that two large babies in a small space just hid the third. It happens sometimes when you have more than twins.”
    “Is that why there was that echo with the heartbeats a few weeks ago?” I asked. I shifted in my chair, but there was no true way to be comfortable. If my back had just hurt a little less, or the pressure had let up, I’d have felt better.
    “It would seem so,” he said.
    “So all those tests that Merry and the babies had to go through were because you couldn’t figure out there was a third baby?” Galen asked.
    “We thought there was a heart issue with the twins, and it is possible that what we were picking up was the third baby’s heartbeat.”
    “How did you miss this?” I asked, finally. Heelis had built up months of confidence, and now I doubted it all. Or maybe it was just the pain? I shut my eyes for a moment; it felt like someone was sawing my back in half and trying to push the pieces apart at the same time.
    “Are you all right, Princess?” asked Dr. Lee, the only woman on the team.
    I nodded. “My back hurts from all the weight. I’m tired of being pregnant.”
    “It’s normal,” she said, smiling. Her face was square and always pleasant somehow. Heelis exuded confidence, but Lee was calm, like the eye of the storm. I liked her for it, but then probably all her patients did.
    “Multiple births are always a physical challenge, but for someone as petite as you, Princess Meredith, it can be more uncomfortable. We will do everything to make you as comfortable as possible.”
    “How about if Dr. Kelly just tells us why he’s here?” My voice rose a little as if I were fighting not to yell at someone, and maybe I was. I just hurt, and I was just so tired of it all. One of the babies moved, rolling in their sleep, or maybe playing, I didn’t know, but it was still an odd sensation for something to move inside me that wasn’t me. It wasn’t a bad feeling, but it was … odd.
    Dr. Kelly was having trouble concentrating because he could see that Mistral’s eyes were streaming with storm clouds, and a slight movement of wind, as if his irises were a tiny television set forever to the Weather Channel.
    “Would Dr. Kelly be able to concentrate on his job if Mistral put his sunglasses on?” Galen asked.
    Dr. Kelly startled, and said, “I’m so sorry, I was staring, I … I just … I’m terribly sorry.”
    Doyle said one word in his deep, thick voice: “Mistral.”
    Mistral fished a pair of expensive sunglasses out of his pocket and slid them on. They were silver,