Fire of the Soul Read Online Free PDF Page B

stop her breath. “All this time, since I first came
here, you have known. And you never said a word.”
    “Did you imagine that Adana would send you to
me without revealing something so important? What do you think was
in that letter you carried to me from her, if not the entire
truth?”
    “All this time and you never said – never
hinted-” Calia stammered her way to a confused halt.
    “I have been waiting for you to trust me
enough to tell me,” Lady Elgida said.
    “I do trust you. And I love you as I would
have loved my mother, if only I had known her,” Calia cried. “But
lately I’ve been afraid you’d cast me out if I confessed
everything.”
    “Then you do not trust me at all. You
disappoint me, child, if you think no better of me than that.”
    “I have been so afraid. First my mother, then
my father, and then Mallory – no one wanted me. I feared you
wouldn’t want me, either.” She did not add what Lady Elgida surely
already knew, that if she were forced to leave Saumar, she’d have
no place to go.
    “The time has come for me to hear the rest of
it from your own lips,” Lady Elgida said. “Now, Calia; this very
moment. Speak your father’s name. I’ll wager you haven’t said it
aloud since the terrible news reached Catherstone.”
    Calia had to draw several deep breaths before
she could pronounce the hated name and admit her dreadful
parentage.
    “My father was Walderon, the lord of
Catherstone. Almost four years ago he abducted my two cousins – my
legitimate lady cousins who were both heiresses – and ordered the
murder of one of them, so he could inherit her estates. That girl’s
name was Chantal and she was secretly betrothed to your grandson,
Garit.”
    “I know.” Lady Elgida’s expression was
inscrutable. “Go on, Calia.”
    “Walderon almost succeeded in killing the
other girl, Jenia, when she learned of his traitorous scheme to
assist an invasion from the Dominion. Fortunately, Jenia was
rescued by Garit and his best friend. Thanks to the three of them,
my father was captured, tried, and then executed for treason and
murder.”
    “I am glad you finally found the courage to
speak.” Lady Elgida sat looking at her, a half smile curling her
lips.
    “But I haven’t told you everything yet,”
Calia whispered.
    “I didn’t think you had.”
    “Catherstone was confiscated by the
crown.”
    “The estates of traitors are always
confiscated.”
    “Mallory and I were turned out of our home,
with just the clothing on our backs, though we had known nothing of
our father’s schemes.”
    “Are you sure Mallory didn’t know?”
    “I – oh, dear Lady Elgida, as heaven is my
witness, I am not certain. He may have known and not told me. I’ve
come to realize since we parted that Mallory always kept something
from me. It was his way of holding power over me, by keeping me in
ignorance.”
    “Rather like his father, I suspect.”
    “Yes, sadly.” Calia drew another long, shaky
breath as she considered how to explain a relationship that was
half fear and half desperate love, for she’d had no one else to
love. “I do not trust Mallory. He frightens me.”
    “How?” Lady Elgida’s gaze sharpened. “Did he
beat you?”
    “Occasionally, he’d slap me. I’ve seen other
men do much worse to their womenfolk. But after our father was
executed and word came that Catherstone was confiscated to the
crown, Mallory became very cold and hard. Every bit of kindness
seemed leached out of his heart – what little kindness he’d had to
begin with. So, he ignored my protests and left me at Talier
Beguinage. Then he hied off across the sea to the northern border
of Kantia, there to insinuate himself into Prince Dyfrig’s court,
knowing that Dyfrig would be the next king of Kantia. And now we
learn that Mallory has wed Garit’s stepmother.”
    Calia stopped then, uncomfortably aware of
Lady Elgida’s tense silence and of the way her aged hands clutched
at the arms of her chair. The