The Rival Read Free

stopped about waist high.  Solanda had had it built special, with long hinged glass panes that opened over the garden.  She believed that air was important to well-being  —  a Fey thing that Arianna's father reluctantly agreed with.  A tapestry depicting the coronation of Constantine the First was tied back.  Arianna hadn't looked at it in weeks, disliking the square poorly stitched faces, and the symbols of Rocaanism that dotted the tapestry.
    Rocaanism, the state religion, was tied to her father's family.  Her father was a direct descendant of the Roca, God's first representative on the Isle.  Rocaanism was also deadly to her mother's people, the Fey.  Some believed that the union of the Fey and the Roca's descendent polluted the blood, and resulted in Arianna's brother Sebastian. Many believed that Sebastian was dumb.  He wasn't dumb, but he was slow.  Rapid movement  —  and rapid thought  —  seemed impossible for him.
    She sat on the piled cushions of the window seat and tilted her hand toward the sun.  Then she frowned.  A stain discolored the skin over the cut.  It looked as if she had spilled Solanda's root tea on her hand.  Everyone would know that Arianna was covering up the blemish instead of having found some way to spell it away.
    She clenched her fist and felt the skin pull.  The cream dried hard.  Her skin would have felt like caked mud by the end of the evening.  She would have to go to the ceremony, witches' wart and all.
    Then the hair rose on the back of her neck.  Someone was watching her.  She didn't move, but pretended to study her hand.  The birds had stopped singing.  The scent of roses was overpowering, like it was when the gardener was working with the flowers.
    Someone was in the garden.
    Slowly she tilted her head and looked down.
    Sunlight dappled across the flowers.  The roses spotted the green with color, red, pink, white and yellow.  Pansies littered the ground with purple.  The oaks, maples and pines were still; there was no wind.  The garden, her father's pride and joy, the place she had spent most of her childhood, appeared empty.
    Then she caught a flash of movement near the bird bath.  She squinted. The bath was clear, the water smooth.  The shade of the nearby oak trees covered the marble inlay, making it look gray.  No birds were in the trees, none were overhead, and clearly none had been in the water, moments before.
    She leaned back, and scrubbed her hand with the sleeve of her dressing gown, keeping her gaze on the garden below.  Then a tree branch rustled, but she forced herself not to turn her head.  Instead she watched, as seemingly preoccupied with cleaning as she could be when she was in her cat form.  After a moment, her patience was rewarded. 
    A man stepped out of the small copse of trees near the bird bath.  Not a man, exactly, more a boy.
    A teenage boy.
    Her brother, Sebastian.
    This time, she did turn her head.  Sebastian was supposed to be in his rooms, dressing for his coming of age ceremony.  It took him longer to dress than it took anyone else because he insisted on doing it himself.
    She placed her palms on the window seat cushions and leaned out.  "Sebastian!" she yelled.  "You're supposed to be inside!"
    He looked up, and her breath caught in her throat.  For the first time in his life, Sebastian's eyes were filled with a quick intelligence.  They were blue pools of flashing light.  That was odd.  Sebastian's eyes had never looked blue before.  They were a stone gray. 
    His dark hair was mussed, as it always was, hiding his faintly pointed ears.  The exotic features of his face  —  his dark skin, his swooping eyebrows, his small nose  —  blended perfectly with the slight roundness their father had given to his bone structure.  For the first time in his life, Sebastian looked integrated, whole, not like something slapped together from mismatched pieces of clay.
    He made a small panicked noise in the back