Dawn of Purple and Gray by Caroline Sciriha

Author:Caroline Sciriha [Sciriha, Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Castrum Press
Published: 2019-11-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

“W-what?” She couldn’t—mustn’t—do that. No one had ever seen her hair. Not with it leached of all color.

“I smelt the dye on you,” Dracon said, “and I at least have eyes to see, if Theis and Kasha haven’t worked things out yet.”

Theis straightened, swung his gaze towards her. She saw something in his eyes that stole her breath away. Disbelief? Hesitation?

And, perhaps, a thread of hope.

Her legs weakened. That he could look at her like that. Like an equal. Like someone worth having by his side.

Dracon strode up to her, blocking her view of Theis, of Kasha still seated on the ground by Gray’s lifeless form, as if her strength had departed with Gray.

“I very much doubt any Inlander can control all those birds like you did,” Dracon said. He waved vaguely towards where Kasha sat. “Even if you cut yourself on the Gift of Animals, certainly no Inlander can increase a wolf’s size as you have—which you did before you cut yourself with Kasha’s gift. No Inlander heals as quickly as a Hyllethan, yet you and Kasha healed at the same rate after the Outcasts’ attack. And no Inlander looks as Hyllethan as you, despite the headscarf.” His tone chipped away doubt; his gaze hardened and hammered into her, as if he could strip her to the bone and unmask her secrets.

Shael’s heart stuttered, missed a beat, then raced. I’m NOT Hyllethan! Dracon’s words flared her doubts, her buried dread.

Of course she’d wondered why Ma’s mistress had felt the need to change her, and why Ma never wanted to talk about the woman. Bastian, Tomas, and Andrey all shared Pa’s stocky build and Ma’s swarthy complexion, so different from hers.

As if they weren’t her brothers, her family.

“It was a Hyllethan witc—woman—who gave me Hyllethan features.” Shael unwound the headscarf and let her silver hair tumble down over her shoulders, hair that wasn’t the silvery white of old age, but the true silver of a moonbeam on a leaf, just like the Hyllethans’.

Theis drew in his breath, and Kasha stared open-mouthed. She got to her feet.

Shael shifted her gaze away, refusing to meet their eyes. She ran her fingers through her hair to bring some order into it.

“You’re Hyllethan!” Theis strode up to her and ran a strand of her hair through his fingers.

At his touch, heat rushed to her cheeks. She shook her head. “My ears are round, unlike yours. Ma said my appearance was her Hyllethan mistress’ way of gifting me when I was born. Some gift! That woman’s meddling marked me for slaughter.”

Shael bundled the headscarf and threw it onto her pack. “I have to hide my hair from everyone. It’s bad enough that I’m the tallest of the family. I can’t hide that. If Lord Jothan thought I was Hyllethan, he’d have sentenced me and my family to death.”

The Hyllethan woman had likely not foreseen the consequences of her gift—Ma had said she had meant it kindly, and wouldn’t hear a word against her, ever.

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