Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) Read Free Page B

feeling.
    She turned her legs over the edge of the bed, inching them toward the floor until the smooth boards touched her bare toes. Feeling around with her feet, she found her boots, leaned over to grab them and then brought them into her lap. For a long time she just sat there holding them, not entirely sure if she wanted to put them on or lie down again and try to go back to sleep.
    Judging from the exhaustion in her body she hadn’t slept for long, but that could have been the journey finally catching up to her. She only knew she was tired; she wanted to go back to the warm place she’d been only moments before in her dreams, but the memory escaped her no matter how much she grasped at it. She’d been dreaming of her mother and father—her real father, Rognar, but beyond that she couldn’t guess. It was a happy dream, she knew that too, and she wanted desperately to return to that blissful place again.
    Outside the door the floorboards creaked, footsteps taking extra precaution for silence but failing miserably, and for a moment she wondered if it was Finn come to tell her he couldn’t sleep without her after all. Maybe there was time enough to invite him back into the room, to find that cramped but comfortable position their bodies worked so desperately to achieve the night before and sleep a few more hours, but when no knock came she realized it probably never would.
    He wanted her to come to him.
    Wriggling into her boots, she made quietly for the door, opened it and peered down the darkened hallway. Finn was not there, but a low-burning light lingered just beyond the hall in the main room where the family took their meals. There was definitely someone out there, she could hear the body shuffling around, and then it occurred to her perhaps it was Brendolowyn. Her brother mentioned sometimes the mage slept in their home when he wasn’t too preoccupied with his work at the lyceum, but Finn and Lorelei were given his room.
    Not that she needed the added confusion of her strange feelings for the mage at the moment, but if they were going to be traveling together she might do something to set them aside. Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the hallway and followed the light of that lantern into the spacious main room. Only it wasn’t Finn or Brendolowyn shuffling around the kitchens. It was her brother. He hadn’t heard her coming at first and he startled a little when her weight came down on a particularly noisy floorboard.
    Logren spun around, a bottle in one hand, a mug in the other. He gasped to see her standing just a few feet away from him.
    “Llorveth’s horns, girl!” he cursed. “You damn near scared the wits out of me.”
    “Sorry,” she shrugged, turning a sheepish gaze to the dark floor beneath her. “I heard someone out here and thought maybe it was Finn.”
    Or Brendolowyn, she thought, still staring at the floor.
    “Only me, I’m afraid,” he chuckled in a gruff whisper. “Did the two of you have a falling out?”
    “No,” shaking her head, she finally brought her eyes up and let them adjust to the low light of the room. “Nothing like that. He just…” She wasn’t exactly sure what Finn was trying to accomplish, putting up a wall between them as he’d done. “I don’t know, he just didn’t think it was a good idea to sleep in the same room, things being as they are.”
    “And how are things?” Logren cocked his brow, the left shooting slightly higher than the right and the skin above them both wrinkling with curiosity. “Between the two of you, I mean.”
    “Complicated,” she shrugged.
    “Aye,” he nodded agreement. “They always are, aren’t they?”
    “I don’t know. I guess.” Her shoulders were still hitched close to her ears, a certain tightness building in the muscles as she held them there. “I don’t exactly have a lot of experience in that area, not really.”
    “No,” he nodded. “I suppose you don’t.”
    Turning back toward the counter behind