The Raven Throne by Stephanie Burgis

Author:Stephanie Burgis [Burgis, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526614476
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2023-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

14

Giles woke, as was usual, with a song in his head. This time, it was full of such overwhelming heartbreak that it threatened to sink him into despair … until something soft and ticklish suddenly bumped against his nose, making his eyes fly open.

‘Oh, you!’ Half laughing, half sighing, he reached out from under his piled covers to pet the small and pointed chin of the nosy little hedgehog who stared expectantly at him from the cloth floor beside his head. She had waddled up to him in the royal stables last night, just as he’d been about to finally mount his horse for the journey, and had insisted with a series of noisy grunts and snorts that she ought to come along.

In that moment, he hadn’t had the heart to turn her away, no matter how foolish he might look to all the adults around him. He had needed the comfort of her steady presence, tucked snugly against him as he and Ros rode away from the castle, leaving the rest of their family behind.

Now, though … ‘I thought you’d leave once I fell asleep,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t you want to be wild and free?’

She snorted in his face and then turned to waddle purposefully across the small tent that the duke had given him, coming to a stop at his lute case.

‘Sorry,’ he told her as she nosed hopefully at it. ‘No music for you today. My lute isn’t even in there any more.’

His fingers tingled with the old, familiar yearning to start his morning by strumming a chord; he shook them out, as he had every morning for nearly six weeks, and then pushed himself upright, tossing aside his covers. He might only have had a few hours of sleep, but there was no more time to waste – and outside, he could hear brisk footsteps and adult voices already sounding through the thin black-and-silver tent walls.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘No time for singing or despair. Let’s find food and my sister.’

He and Ros needed to talk. Last night, when he’d arrived at the stables too late and found chaos erupting, he’d fumbled everything. He’d been so wrecked by his confrontation with Wincester that he’d faltered and failed to find the right words for that perilous moment. Even if he’d dared to use magic on the duke or the duchess, by then, he couldn’t have managed it. His magical reserves had been trickling away, like sand in an hourglass, to maintain his first casting and hold Wincester safely unconscious.

Of course, he hadn’t been able to explain that in front of the others, though, so who knew what Ros had made of it? Even beforehand, she’d spent so much of the day being inexplicably angry at him. He’d hated to leave his failure unexplained – but by the time their whole party had finally come to a halt, hours later, the sun had been creeping up over the horizon and his head had been spinning with exhaustion. He’d barely even managed to slide off his horse and fall into the tent he’d been given.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.