Page 4 of The Sun He Buried

Another child has hold of her. Same age, a little taller, a blonde braid half shaken loose—both hands clamped around the small one’s arm, holding her there. That one’s afraid. Ordinary afraid, the same as everyone else in the hall.

The small one isn’t.

Tears run over her fingers.

She’s looking at me.

…What.

Everyone else in this room sees blood on my hand and has reached the obvious conclusion. The child sees the same thing. Her little chest jerks with another sob.

The mask catches the room.

It doesn’t catch her.

That sob reaches me cleanly, past the silver and the runes, into a place nobody else’s emotions can enter. I still feel her when the guard blocks her from sight. I feel her when the human man pulls her against his leg. I feel every frightened breath, and under the fear is grief meant for the person who did the killing.

I know exactly what’s happened.

I know what it hasn’t done.

Nothing in her answers me. She doesn’t know me. She isn’t reaching for me. Those tears belonged to her before this new reach opened inside me.

Only my side has changed.

Good.

She’s a child.

The man beside her sees me looking and draws her behind him. His fear cuts through the mask. He thinks I’m deciding whether to kill her too.

The easiest way to end this has occurred to both of us.

I don’t kill children.

There. A reason.

I lock every response in me behind the walls that hide me from my own kin. I give the new reach nothing it can use. No word. No touch. She can have a life that never includes me.

Baldr rises from the floor with blood on his hands.

I turn away before he can speak.

Nobody tries to stop me. Steel remains raised. The hall makes room.

At the doors, I look back once.

The court’s formed a wall around the child. She’s found a gap between two shoulders and is still watching me, tears bright on her face.

Glacial blue eyes.

Chapter One

The hall cat has five inches of my yarn in his mouth and is working on a sixth.

“Sir.” I brace one hand under his chin and tug the blue strand with the other. “We’ve discussed this. Wool isn’t food.”

He closes his eyes.