Page 68 of The Sun King's Noon

Because it was no longer Corwin, the grown brother, baring his teeth at him. No. It was a little boy with dark hair and dark eyes like their mother’s. A little boy who had once crawled intoRichard’s bed during a thunderstorm and pressed his forehead between Richard’s shoulder blades to sleep.

Richard’s arm hung in the air. His fist would not fall.

Corwin bucked and flipped them over. Richard’s back slammed against the carpet, the breath knocked out of his lungs.

“Coward!” Corwin spat, straddling him. “We are not pawns! We are your blood! We deserved to know! They were our parents, too! My father and mother! And their killer still breathes! How am I to face Father in the heavens?”

His fist drew back, and Richard braced himself?—

“Corwin!”

Suddenly, Kaelen was there, hauling Corwin off Richard in a single wrench. Corwin kicked out, twisted, snarled curses, but Kaelen dragged him backwards to where Elara stood white-faced with Briony.

“Let go of me!”

“He’s your brother, Corwin!” Kaelen gave him a firm shake. “Your brother! Get a hold of yourself!”

Kaelen released him, and Corwin sank to his knees. He buried his head in his hands and sobbed. Briony dropped to hug his arm, and Elara knelt to fold Corwin against her chest, cradling his head and stroking his hair.

Richard rose, wiping along his jaw where blood dripped from the split lip. His ribs throbbed, and his back ached where the mantlepiece had bitten into it. He looked down at the huddle of his siblings—Corwin in Elara’s arms, Briony nuzzling into Corwin’s shoulder, all three glaring up at him.

As if he were a creature from the dark.

Richard sneered back. “Very well.” He had never heard his voice sound so blank. “Do as you will.”

“My king—” Kaelen started towards him.

Richard held up a hand and limped past the knight to the door. The quiet of the hallway was welcome, but it did nothing to soothe his pounding headache.

Nor the burn in his eyes.

CHAPTER 27

The library was empty. Moonlight poured through the tall windows overlooking the eastern gardens. It illuminated the spiral staircases that coiled up to the upper galleries, their balustrades sculpted to resemble ivy. Reading nooks, hollowed into the stone walls, held pillows and blankets. The air smelled of fresh parchment, and the gilded spines of ten thousand books gleamed along the numerous shelves.

Richard moved down the central aisle and turned into the children’s section. Here, the shelves were shorter, and a fluffy rug stretched under a nest of large, faded cushions. Richard hung the lantern from the ceiling hook and lowered himself onto a cushion, wincing at the throb in his upper back.

His fingers knew the shelf behind him from memory. Third row, second from the left, a slim volume with ornate lettering.

‘The Girl and the Dwarf’.

Richard settled the book in his lap and opened it with a hum, trailing his hand over the first illustration. A farmhouse on a windswept moor, chickens pecking in the yard, a little pink-haired girl in a pinafore watching from the window. Grown-up books never bore pretty illustrations like these.

He turned the pages slowly. Senga, the farmer’s daughter, treated by the villagers as a bad omen because she was born with pink hair, discovering the dwarf caught in her father’s bear trap. Senga prying the iron jaws open with trembling hands and nursing the dwarf back to good health in the barn. The dwarf—Prince Thrond of the Deep Halls—showing her a hidden door beneath the roots of an old birch tree, taking her through it into a vast underground kingdom.

Richard mouthed his favourite lines. “The dwarven kingdom is shut with stone against the stranger and the foe.” He traced a finger under the words. “Yet to those whose hearts are steadfast in goodwill, some sign shall ever be given. For friendship is a lamp no darkness of the deeps can utterly quench. Come, Senga, guest of dwarves. Come and see our grand halls.”

Richard’s lips twitched into a smile.

He read on about Senga and Thrond on their quest to stop a dark fog creeping through the dwarven kingdom. The Hush, it was called, stealing the voices of dwarves it touched and leaving them wandering their tunnels in silence.

And the voices in Richard’s own head—“He must have thanked the trolls”—dulled, muffled beneath the songs of Senga and Thrond as they descended into the Hall of Echoes hand in hand. The tight band around Richard’s chest—“What would you know of love?”—loosened its grip, pried open by Thrond’s declaration of eternal friendship to Senga as they parted in the end, having defeated the Hush once and for all.

A floorboard creaked.

Richard’s head jerked up. Through the gaps in the opposite bookshelf stood a broad-shouldered figure. “You should have left by now.”

Kaelen peered around the bookcase with a sheepish grin. “An hour remains until midnight, my king.”