Child of Darkness-L-D-2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

wrapped up in Court politics and her own selfish pursuits! She could not blame Cerridwen, only herself.
    But this time, the guilt did not come. She was angry, angrier than she had ever been with her daughter.
    Perhaps it was because Cerridwen had left the safety of the Lightworld. Perhaps it was fear that drove her anger. She certainly knew, better than most at Court, of what danger there was to fear beyond the boundaries of the Lightworld.
    No, it was anger. An ugly, naked anger not polite enough to wear a mask of fear for her convenience.
    She could not bear to stare at the walls of her room any longer. Beautiful though it might be, with its configuration of electric stars on the ceiling and the grass growing forever verdant beneath her feet, she did not take comfort in fine things the way Mabb had. Tying the ribbons of her bedrobe, she went to the passage in the wall, the one that Cedric had begged her to seal off, rather than risk dying as Mabb had. She had refused for a number of reasons that had sounded sane and logical on the surface. Truly, she had done it because the way to the King’s chamber, now the chamber of the Queene’s Consort, was too public, and she did not wish her servants to know her comings and goings. Mabb, though she had never had an official Consort, nor a King to rule at her side, must have felt the same. Ayla slipped out of the secret door and walked cautiously, looking for guards. Revelers from the party would not be in this part of the Palace, but she did not wish to listen to another report of her missing daughter, or be reassured that she would be found. She went through the passage to Malachi’s chambers and fished the door key from her sleeve, where she wore it loosely tied at her wrist. The door opened and she stepped through just as the main door to the room slammed open and against the wall.
    Malachi stood in the doorway, his expression changing from surprise to anger. Ayla moved to quickly close the door behind her, so that no passing servant would see. They stood in the antechamber. Malachi had been Garret’s prisoner there, until Ayla had come to save him. She remembered how she had trembled that night, in fear and uncertainty, and the feeling crept back to her now.
    He stared at her, his face gray with fatigue. He looked different now than he had when he’d first come to live in the Palace. Since his fall from his former, Angelic nature, he’d aged as a Human, rapidly. In what had seemed a blink of an eye, his features had become sharper, etched with hard lines. A streak of silver stood out from the ink-black of his hair, and though he was as large and physically powerful as he had been twenty years before, he did not exert himself with the vigor that he had in his youth. Every day he seemed older, the way mortals, distressingly, became. Ayla did not wish to dwell on it, and she looked away from his hard expression.
    “How could you do this?” he asked in a raw whisper.
    Ayla snapped her head up, glared back at him. “Cerridwen has run off on her own! If you wish to blame anyone, blame her governess, blame her guards!”
    “I am not talking about her running off!” He slammed the door closed behind him, and it shook as though it would fall from its hinges. “Do you have any idea what you have done?
    To her? To Cedric? They have both run off now, and if I were him I would never return!”
    This stunned her. Over the past twenty years, they had disagreed. And how they had disagreed, and over such petty things. But while he’d raged at her—his emotions ran high, another mortal trait—what he said now was somehow more hurtful. Most hurt was her pride, and she sought to defend this crumbling wall without reason. “I did what I had to do! Cerridwen is out of control. She runs from me, she runs from this Palace. At this very instant she is out of the Lightworld altogether. She needs someone who will be better suited to keeping her here, and safe.”
    “And she won’t run