Read The Fall of Neskaya for Free Online

one familiar item after another. Yes, there was the cloak, the festival shirt. His fingers touched hard metal—the dagger. The tip was as blunt as ever, a blade deemed safe enough to give to a boy for practice.
    Coryn pawed through the chest until he found the soapwood box. The bag of river-opals was there, as well as the stick toys, but no handkerchief.
    Coryn’s stomach plummeted like a stone. He started shaking, bone-deep shivers like those of a man caught in a killing cold.
    His hands moved of their own accord, pushing aside the remainder of the chest’s contents. He took out the cheek strap from the bridle of his first pony, wrapped in a scrap of the animal’s blanket, the vest of age-softened crimson leather which Eddard had passed down to him. And there, shoved into the far corner, a scrap of white. . . .
    He drew out the handkerchief with its tiny embroidered cherries, smoothed its wrinkles. The fabric, delicate to begin with, had worn almost through in places, giving it the weight and feel of gauze. What had possessed him to rumple it so carelessly?
    No matter, it was here. Everything was here. Last night’s nightmare had been just that, a fevered vision born of too much wine after the stress of so many days on the fire-lines. He’d also been suffering from threshold sickness, that’s what Dom Rumail had called it. No wonder he’d had bad dreams. Now, with the handkerchief safe in his hands, everything made sense.
    A tap sounded at his door, more mouse scratching than a real knock. He tucked the handkerchief inside the soapwood box and scrambled to his feet, heart beating unaccountably fast, just as the door swung open. Kristlin stuck her head in.
    “Wait till I say to come!” Coryn flushed, acutely aware that he was standing there in his nightshirt with his legs bare to the knees. Then he saw her face and broke off.
    Kristlin’s cheeks were pale as milk, except for two spots of vivid color and crimson ringing her puffy eyes. Today, as she had since the fire, she wore boys’ breeches, this pair fairly clean, patched over the knees and seat, and a shirt two sizes too big for her. She sobbed and threw herself into Coryn’s arms.
    He sat her down on the bed. “What’s the matter, chiya ? What’s happened?”
    “No! No! I don’t want to go!” Her words dissolved into sobs. She buried her face against his chest.
    “Nobody will make you do anything . . .” His words sounded hollow to his own ears.
    “Papa says I have to—have to—go away. To Ambervale,” She pulled away from him, her eyes snapping with her old spirit. “To marry that stinky old Belisar! I told Papa I never, ever want to get married! Not to anyone!”
    Coryn sat back, bewildered. Just when things started to make sense, the world turned itself upside down. Kristlin, his baby sister, to be wife to the heir of King Damian Deslucido? She must have misunderstood. Surely it must be Tessa, who was grown up enough to be married and certainly looked like a Queen, or even Margarida, who had complained so much about the rash from her starstone—surely that meant she had laran. But Kristlin?
    “There has to be some mistake. Just let me get dressed and I’ll talk to Father. We’ll sort it out, you’ll see—” He disentangled himself from her arms. When he rose, his knees threatened to buckle under him. He caught himself on one hand on the bedpost, blinking back sudden grayness.
    “I think you better have some breakfast first,” Kristlin said with one of her quixotic shifts in mood. She’d obviously decided that the matter was settled now that her favorite brother was taking her part. “You slept in all day yesterday, lazyhead.”
    “I did what?”
    “Well,” she counted on her fingers, “it was two days ago Dom Rumail tested you, and he said to put you to bed afterward, because you’d had a bad spell of threshold illness, and the next day you didn’t get up, so he gave you some kiri—, kirian , well, anyway, stuff to help you,