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“He does. Small, black ones.” I remembered how Draven had sawed them off during the Blood Rise. And then cut out a piece of his own heart. “You’ll like him, Kaye. He’s very...” I searched for the right word. “Well, he’s impressive.”
“He loves my sister, so that’s good enough for me,” Kaye said loyally. “But if he hurts you, I won’t stand for it.”
I tried to hold back a laugh. Kaye sounded so grown up. “Thank you, Brother. I don’t think it will come to that.”
I’d decided to leave out the unnecessary parts of my story with Draven. Such as how he had lied about my being his mistress back at the Court of Umbral Flames. No, Kaye did not need to hear that bit.
I snuck a look at my little brother. “How bad was it at the war camp, really? Don’t hold back, Kaye.”
He went very still. “The worst part was feeling so alone.”
“Oh, Kaye,” I murmured. I turned over and leaned my head against his. “You were never alone. Not really. I was always with you in my heart. In my dreams.”
“I dreamed of you, too. I had some terrible dreams while I was there, Morgan,” he confessed. “Some of them were to be expected, I guess. At times, we could hear the battlefield. And I saw the wounded and the dead brought back.”
I gritted my teeth. He should never have seen any of that. He was a prince, yes, but still hardly more than a child. It would have been different at least if Arthur or I had been with him. But Kaye had been all alone, without even someone like Sir Ector accompanying him.
“But my dreams, they were the worst. You were never in them. But Arthur was. And... sometimes he was hurting me.”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
“I could never remember them clearly when I woke up,” Kaye said slowly. “But in the dreams, I could swear it was like I was dying. Arthur was there. And there was another voice, too. A man’s.”
I thought of the strange man I had seen in my dream the other night and felt a chill go through me. “Whose voice? What man? Did you recognize him?”
Kaye looked at me with amusement. “It was just a dream, Morgan. It wasn’t real.”
“Of course, it wasn’t,” I agreed quickly. “Just a dream.”
I felt a prick of guilt. I hadn’t told Kaye everything.
Like about how I wasn’t his real sister, not flesh and blood. Telling him that truth would mean telling him about my real father, too. And that was something I hated to dwell upon.
Kaye had commented on my changed appearance, but only to compliment it. He hadn’t seemed overly interested in why I had changed, so I hadn’t elaborated.
Now he let out a huge yawn, obviously not put off from sleep by all of this talk of horrid dreams.
“Tired?” I asked. I smoothed his hair back from his forehead like I’d done when he had been a much younger boy. “You’ve traveled so far.”
“Mmm,” was all he said. His eyes were already starting to close.
I got up and fetched a blanket to drape over him, not wanting to make him move to get under the covers. By the foot of the bed, the mother cat had taken up a new position. Now she lay there, looking very content with her eyes slanted in the firelight, purring as her little brood rested around her.
I lay back down beside Kaye and curled up on my side.
I watched his peaceful, sleeping face for a long time before I, too, finally fell into a deep slumber.
