Heritage: Book One of the Gairden Chronicles Read Online Free PDF Page B

the sword, staring at it with large, intent eyes.
    “What happened?” Aidan whispered.
    She was silent.
    “Mother?” he asked, reaching out to touch her shoulder. She jumped and looked up at him as if just realizing he was there.
    “I’m sorry, Aidan,” she said. “Heritage does not accept you.”
     

Chapter 3
    Under Shadow

     
     
     
     
     
    C YNTHIA A LSTON THREADED BETWEEN clansmen and horses until she found her husband in Sunfall’s stables. Romen of the Wolf, war chief of the west and a man chiseled from stone, looked like a mountain bowed from the wind. He brushed his stallion absently, stroking the same patch of hair over and over. Wolf Runner snorted his displeasure at the lack of attention, but Romen ignored him. His eyes were clouded with worry.
    Cynthia placed her hand over his until it came to rest.
    “Aidan will be fine,” she said to him in the Darinian tongue.
    He looked at her but said nothing.
    “Are you certain you wish to leave?” she asked, taking the brush from his hands and running it along her mare’s fine coat. Narra leaned into Cynthia’s strokes, her tail swishing. The horse had been a wedding gift from Annalyn and Edmund and seemed to take as much pleasure in her appearance as Cynthia took in beautifying her.
    “Nichel needs us,” Romen said, cupping his wife’s chin in one rough hand. “And you need to be with her.”
    “I do,” Cynthia admitted. “But you’re worried about our friends, as am I.”
    Romen’s hand fell away. He was silent for several moments. “It was as if the sword slapped his hand away. I have never heard of an object able to do such a thing.”
    “The Gairdens are a mysterious people,” she said. “Annalyn can consult her ancestors. Surely they can solve this matter.” She hesitated. “Unless you think we should stay?”
    Romen turned her words over. “No. What happened is a family matter, and as you say, the Crown of the North will know what to do. And...” He gave her that small, almost sheepish smile he reserved only for her, as soft as the man who wore it was hard. “And I am worried about our daughter. It will do my heart good to see that she has recovered fully.”
    His smile faded as he looked up at the sky and glared at the clouds as if they were enemies boiling over his mountains. Cynthia followed his gaze and shivered, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders. The snowfall had stopped during Aidan’s Rite of Heritage, but the Lady bled into the sky. Soon, this half of the world would belong to the Lord of Midnight. Torches lined the path leading out of the stables and down the mountain to the city. Shadows danced over the snow. The world seemed a different place under shadow.
    “Are you sure we should leave tonight?” she asked, truly torn. As much as she wanted to see with her own eyes that Nichel was on her feet again, the thought of the Lord of Midnight’s gaze on her as they traveled made her skin crawl.
    He began to speak, caught her gaze, hesitated. “If you would rather...”
    She forced herself to stand straighter and spared a quick glance around. The clansmen were preoccupied with their horses, preparing them for the journey home. That was good. Her husband’s clan respected her, but she knew many of them saw her as soft. As the daughter of one of Leaston’s wealthiest merchants— and one of the most influential members of the merchants’ guild besides—she had grown up swaddled in the most expensive fabrics, not the rough, sand-scoured hides of animals stalked and killed across the sand-swept plateaus and fiery mountains of the west. Draping those fabrics over her body felt like wrapping herself in the softest clouds, a dalliance in decadence her husband encouraged. Unlike so many clan chiefs, he did not want his mate to give up who she was after taking his clan’s sign. Still, she wanted to be worthy of him as he was worthy of her.
    Besides, Kahltan’s shadows held nothing her husband could not swat