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Kaye. It was Kaye’s voice.
I struggled to open my eyes. A trickle of light filtered in, blinding me.
“You have to stop him. Morgan, he’s going to kill us all...”
Iwoke in a cold sweatwith the certainty that every one of my vivid dreams had been real.
The village I had seen burning in Tintagel.
My mother running through the streets of Valtain. My mother, the High King’s wife.
I woke with the knowledge that I was improbably, impossibly, but truly somehow 150 years old, that Uther Pendragon had never been my real father at all, that Kaye was not my true brother but that he was calling for me, his sister, beyond time and beyond dreams and with the wild hope that I would hear him, that I was still alive, and that I would get to him.
I woke with the knowledge that I would probably die today in the Blood Rise but if by some precious gift of the Three I managed not to then I would leave the dark Siabra court and seek Kaye that very night.
I woke with the realization that someone was knocking at the door.
No, not the door. The wall in the sitting room.
I sat up.
Beside me, Draven slumbered like a prince in a fairytale.
Nothing had changed. He could not help me now.
I crossed the bedroom into the sitting room.
The panel by the bookcases had opened. A small face peeked out.
“Beks?”
His shiny hair fell across his face, almost obscuring his eyes.
Slowly he clambered out and stood before me.
“Not going to invite me in?” I asked, a little amused.
“You’re taking Prince Kairos’s place in the Blood Rise.”
Was it any real surprise he had already found out?
“That’s right. The Queen Regent has set the next trial to begin today. Lyrastra tells me I can take the prince’s place. There’s no other option if we want to save him, Beks.”
The boy’s lower lip quivered slightly. “It will be... very dangerous.”
“Yes, I know.” My voice was quiet.
“I had to make sure you weren’t still angry with me,” he burst out. “I didn’t want to tell him anything.”
“Angry with you?” I stared at him. “Oh, Beks. I’m not angry with you. I never was.”
“But I told him,” he said, miserably. “About what we saw. About Avriel killing Pearl and how he did it.”
“Did he force you to tell him?” I demanded.
But Beks shook his head. “He heard me, crying out in my sleep. I had a nightmare. He was trying to comfort me.”
I was pleasantly shocked to hear Javer would be so tender.
