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His skin was pale. Almost translucent. As if he was never in the sun.
This was my uncle. Kaye.
I had never met him. I had never known him awake. He had been like this since I was born. Afflicted with this cursed sleep since that very first night I came into this world.
I stared down at him, curious for the first time about who he was and what had happened to him.
Why, he looked younger than I was now. Somehow, I had expected him to be older. He was older, of course, in human years.
What a strange life—to simply lie in this bed all day. Stranger than mine. How long would he rest here? Was he dreaming? It must be very boring to sleep and sleep.
Who cared for him? I glanced around the room but no one else was there. He must have had a caregiver. They must have panicked and fled, leaving him there unattended.
I scowled, feeling oddly angry with this unnamed person who had abandoned my uncle.
What did I do now? Leave him as I had found him? Try to carry him to the temple and find Crescent? I was strong enough to lift Kaye from the bed, yes, but I wasn’t sure I could carry him all that way. I supposed I could make some sort of a litter and drag him along.
But then, he wasn’t my responsibility. He seemed fine enough where he was.
I half-turned to go.
He was family. My family. He had been abandoned, just like I had been.
With a sigh, I moved back to the bedside.
Kaye looked so childlike, so frail. And there was no one to care for him. He was all alone.
My Aunt Morgan had left him, too. Did he even know that? I doubted it.
Feeling unexpectedly moved with sympathy for the boy in the bed, I reached out a hand and touched his cheek.
The world around me quivered and disappeared.
BOOK 3
CHAPTER 29 - MORGAN
It was becoming abundantly clear to us all that things could not continue like this.
Guinevere was reaching her limits.
Oh, she hadn’t shown any signs of advanced aging like Rychel. At least, not yet.
But she was growing weaker by the day. This morning she’d hardly been able to mount her horse, though she’d hid it well.
She had only fallen once and had blamed the wind. Convenient. She had twisted her ankle, and Lancelet had been furious. With Guinevere or with me, it was hard to say. But she didn’t bother to hide the fact that she thought we were both mad.
The horrible thing was that I couldn’t stop Guinevere. Because I needed her.
I needed sleep. I needed to stay alive. I needed to block my father until we reached the Black Mountain so that we could destroy the three objects. And try as I might to do it all myself, I couldn’t. I needed Guinevere.
And she knew it.
So she kept on, urging sleep upon me like a doting mother.
Some days, I could get by with just three or four hours of rest. But that seemed to be my limit, fae-blooded or not. It was terrible to admit, but I had limits. Sleep, just as for mortals, was one.
Before we’d entered the mountains, three or four hours might have been nothing for Guinevere to shield me as I slept.
