Iron Kin: A Novel of the Half-Light City Read Online Free PDF Page A

hand itched and Anthony Killington droned on about his latest victory in banking in a voice that buzzed like a very dull bee.
    Across the room, my mother smiled approvingly and tipped her head in Anthony’s direction, urging me closer. I resisted the desire to stick out my tongue in response. Surely one definite and one imminent engagement were enough? My brothers were settling down, hopefully ensuring the family line for another generation. Couldn’t my mother let that distract her from trying to match me up as well?
    Apparently not, if I read the gleam in Hilary’s eyes correctly.
    Perhaps because of the women Simon and Guy had chosen, my mother’s determination to marry me and, in a few years or so once she turned twenty, Hannah, off to suitable—for which one could read
human
—men seemed to have intensified.
    Well, she was just going to have to wait for any form of marital triumph when it came to me. I was only four years into my studies at the Guild. Marriage, if it ever did tempt me, would come after I became a Master.
    Anthony changed the topic of conversation to currency valuation and the impact of the silver stockpiles. The itch intensified. It was warm in the ballroom, the candles in the chandeliers and the press of bodies heating the air to an unpleasant closeness. My hands were damp in my gloves, sweat stinging the burn. My fingers flexed unwittingly to ease the pain.
    If I’d been sensible I would have asked Simon to heal it for me, but if I ran to my brother every time I had a minor scrape or burn at the Guild, I’d spend all my time traveling to and from St. Giles.
    Hardly conducive to clinching the race for the top spot in my class and securing my inclusion in the delegation.
    Beside which, I’d have to put up with Simon teasing me about a metalmage burning herself each and every time I asked for help. He knew as well as I did that, while metalmages can’t be burned by metal being worked with their power or fire they have called, we are perfectly susceptible to the whims of other sources of heat. But he was also my older brother and therefore duty bound to tease me when he could.
    Determined to ignore my hand, I excused myself from the group of Killington hangers-on and made my way slowly through the crowd, trying to look like I had a destination in mind. My attention was only half on the endless parade of couples whirling around the room while I looked for a place to hide away for a few minutes. I didn’t understand how they could all be so cavalier. Acting as if they didn’t have a care in the world and as though the looming treaty negotiations were nothing to be worried about.
    Denial seemed to be in fashion amongst my mother’s set. And she kept up the charade as well, moving amongst her guests, laughing and smiling and making sure everybody was having a good time, though in reality she knew more than most about the trouble that lurked in the heart of the City.
    I caught sight of her across the ballroom, smiling determinedly. Trouble indeed. She only had to look at the women standing beside her sons to be reminded of that.
    I didn’t know exactly what the trouble was. Guy and Simon both turned stony-faced and closemouthed when I asked. Yet here was Simon with Lily, a former Night World assassin and Guy had risked a trip to the Veiled Court to help Holly—a relative stranger at the time, not to mention half Fae—rescue her mother. Lord Lucius had disappeared around the time Simon had met Lily and there were all sorts of rumors flying about the Veiled World being in an uproar since Guy and Holly had been there. Whatever trouble was driving the undercurrents of unease swirling through the City, my brothers were at the center of it.
    And totally determined to keep me ignorant in their knuckleheaded belief that it would keep me safe.
    Stop me ending up dead like our sister Edwina.
    But just as my mother was wrong in her belief that I was her perfect lady of a daughter apart from that whole