Read Taliesin Ascendant (The Children and the Blood) for Free Online

gaze flicked over her face and clothes, as though in a single heartbeat, he could take in everything about her, both inside and out. Barely breathing, she drove down the urge to let the magic around her become stronger as a defense.
    He seemed to see the impulse anyway.
    “You have nothing to fear from us,” he said softly. “My name is Darius Greyson. It is an honor to finally meet you.” He paused. “Queen Ashe.”
    Her breathing stopped.
    A hint of sympathy touched the imperial cast of his face. “Come have a seat,” he offered, stepping back and motioning to a chair at the end of the table.
    Feeling paralyzed, she hesitated, but the only other option was to stand stupidly in front of a bunch of wizards who had yet to stop staring. Fighting to keep her face impassive, and barely succeeding, she crossed to the aging desk chair and lowered herself onto it carefully.
    Circling the long table, Darius returned to his seat, with Cornelius taking the chair to his left. A sudden sense of isolation welled up in her, and she struggled to ignore it as she locked her eyes on the old man at the other end of the wooden expanse.
    “I understand if you have questions,” Darius said. “We do as well. But let me begin by apologizing for taking so long to find you. I cannot imagine what you must have endured this past month until now.”
    Cornelius’ gaze dropped to the table, though no other reaction touched his face. Resisting the urge to shift in her chair, Ashe kept her eyes on Darius, uncertain what to say.
    “You do not know us,” Darius continued. “And, to a large degree, we do not know you. But each person in this room worked alongside the king for many years, trying to end the war.”
    He paused. “Did your father have the opportunity to tell you anything before he died? About Merlin or Taliesin, or the war in which we are currently engaged?”
    She swallowed. “No,” she said, her voice choked. “But the cripples did.”
    His brow twitched fractionally downward, while at his side, the suit-clad man with black hair gave her a look that nearly amounted to surprise.
    “And did they tell you about your role in this?” Darius asked.
    The sight of Carter dying returned, and ruthlessly, she shoved the memory away. “A bit,” she managed.
    He studied her face for a moment. “You are a direct descendant of Merlin,” he said. “And with your father’s death, you and your sister have become the last of the Merlin’s Children, the sole survivors of a family that has ruled our people for five hundred years.”
    Ashe stared at him, and from deep inside, gibbering words rose like bees buzzing in her mind. Carter. He’d said… Carter’d known… he…
    “As beneficiaries of this heritage,” Darius continued. “You hold the key to ending the war. Unlike anyone short of the Taliesin king, you can take magic from your fellow wizards and use it, or bind it away from their use, as you choose. And thus, you possess the ability to reestablish the spell that bound all of Taliesin and kept our people safe for half a millennium.
    “And this was why King Patrick was killed.”
    Barely breathing, she crushed down the shivers rippling from her core.
    “By removing your father, and nearly removing you and your sister, Taliesin came close to securing sole possession of this ability, a situation which would have left our people in dire jeopardy. So far, the paradoxical saving grace of this war has been the fact that, while your father was unsuccessful in recreating the spell, the Taliesin king has been as well. But had Taliesin succeeded in killing you and your sister as they did your father, their king would have had time to rediscover the spell at his leisure, with no chance we could ever do the same. And the moment he finally did so, every man, woman and child of our people would have been stripped of the magical ability that protects them and makes us who we are.
    “The council has spent the past month contending with this