The Eunuch's Heir Read Online Free PDF

about to blink against the settling of dust. It was a kind face, well formed, if not handsome in the classic way. “Wolfram,” Lyssa said, and it took him a moment to realize she referred to the stone, not to himself. She glanced back to him. “This is your namesake, Prince Wolfram of Bernholt—as I remember him, anyhow.” She smiled wistfully, tracing again the curve of the stone cheek, and Wolfram’s throat ached a little, watching her.
    Laying the carving back into the rubble of its creation, she raised the other stone, and he knew the face immediately, feeling his own features grow hard. It should have been likelooking in a mirror, at least in some small way—the eyes perhaps, or the delicate nose, or the tremulous smile about to spread upon the lips. Instead, Wolfram’s eyes were drawn to the curls upon the brow and tucked behind the roughed-out ears.
    “Maybe now’s not the time,” Lyssa said, shifting her grip to lower it to the table.
    Wolfram shook his head. “No, now’s the perfect time. I’ve seen the portraits; this just makes it even more obvious that I’m nothing like him.” He ruffled a hand over his remaining hair. “I must be some kind of family freak. I guess bleaching my hair was one way to make it seem as if I could follow in his footsteps, but it’s a lie.” The cold anger began to seep its way up his spine, and he gritted his teeth. He would not let it come, not here, not with Lyssa looking on.
    She shook her head. “Rhys was human, too, Wolfram. He made mistakes and drove his grandmother mad when she was trying to teach him to be a king.”
    “So when I’m king, I’ll suddenly be wise and kind and miraculous?”
    “No, not that.” She frowned at him. “Sometimes we forget the other parts, the human parts, when somebody’s gone. We want them to be remembered as perfect, even if they were just like us.”
    “Yeah? I wish I was dead—like him.” He thrust a finger at the stone face of King Rhys. “I wish I were in the stars, and everyone thought the best of me, too, if there is anything worth remembering.” The demon anger sprang into him, full-grown and howling.
    “You don’t mean that, Wolfram.”
    “How do you know what I mean? Aren’t you my friend? Aren’t you supposed to listen to me?”
    “Bury it, Wolfram, I am your friend. You’re angry at your parents, and you’re not thinking straight! You don’t want to die.”
    He flung up his hands. “Maybe I do, if it’s the only way to be like him, to finally make my mother happy.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous! The Lady would give you pity, notglory for that. Besides, nobody would be happy if you died, Wolfram, least of all Brianna.”
    “Maybe I would be! Maybe I’d find my saintly father and tell him what I really think of him.”
    “Tell it to the stars, Wolfram.”
    He laughed. “You can’t yell at a star. You can’t beat it, and you can’t make it hurt. If he had a grave someplace, at least I could spit on that.”
    “You dare speak heresy in the Lady’s temple?” Her eyes were dangerously dark.
    “Oh, of course, we bury criminals, not saints. Chances are, they’ll bury me some day—even in death, I won’t stand by my father.”
    “But he’s not even dead,” she howled into his face.
    Wolfram stumbled back a step, fetching up against the table. “He’s what?”
    “Great Lady,” Lyssa mumbled, “now I’ve put my foot in it.”
    “He’s what?” Wolfram repeated, voice shaking.
    “Rhys”—she sighed—“he’s not dead.”
    “What are you talking about?” he breathed. “He was taken into the stars, directly, to the Lady.” The anger that had sustained him threatened to let him collapse now, into some weak and crawling thing.
    Lyssa shook her head sadly, frowning at herself. “It was magic,” she said, “a trick; I don’t know all the details.”
    Knees trembling, Wolfram grasped at that. “But you knew he was alive.”
    “Yes,” she said. “Yes, me and a few other people.