Free Mistwood by Leah Cypess Page A

Six
     
    When the attack came, it was completely unexpected.
    Rokan had been thinking it would be a relief. He was thinking it at the moment it happened—sitting on the dais with a goblet of wine in his hand, watching the dancers step delicately around one another at yet another of the endless banquets, frustrated because he couldn’t get caught up in the light-headed giddiness that was overtaking everyone else.
    The room was crowded and well-lit by late afternoon sunlight, the scent of wine so thick it weighed on the air, laughter floating through the music. Everyone was flushed, everyone was laughing and eating, everyone but him. The danger pressed on him, weighing him down. Parties like these made him remember how effortless it had once been to forget his cares, and how impossible it was now.
    Not everyone was dancing. The Shifter stood near the wall, as still as a statue, her gaze flitting around the room. He watched her eyes move from a group of ambassadors in furious discussion…to a pair of dancers who had announced their betrothal that morning…to a serving boy who had just dropped a platter of roast fowl…to a cluster of richly dressed northern dukes murmuring too quietly for others to hear. Back in his father’s day not one of them would have dared even murmur—except for Duke Owain, too high-minded to learn stealth, but Owain wasn’t here. He had excused himself from tonight’s banquet due to a mild illness, leaving his niece unchaperoned. For all the good that did Rokan.
    Still, the thought of Daria lifted his spirits a little. He started to look for her, and at that exact moment he heard her scream.
    The dancing and the music took a few seconds to stop, and by that time the screaming had stopped, too. Rokan surged to his feet, trying to see through the crowd. A woman started shrieking and was joined by another. They were backing away from a spot on the floor.
    Rokan’s heart stopped. Without remembering how he had gotten there, he pushed through the crowd, rudely shoving a duchess aside, barely able to think about how Daria’s scream had been sliced off in the middle. He stepped between the two shrieking noblewomen—they went abruptly silent when they saw him—and stared at the place near the wall where Daria must have been standing.
    Some glass shards lay on the thin gray rug, surrounded by rose-colored wine. Otherwise, nothing.
    He turned to call the Shifter and saw that she was right behind him, her face calm but her eyes darting to the glass and the wine, then to the people all around. With her was the sorcerer’s apprentice, but not the sorcerer.
    “What happened?” Rokan demanded.
    One of the noblewomen answered him. “She was standing there, talking to me, and then she screamed, and then—then she was gone. Like magic!”
    Like magic, indeed. The lady was a minor noblewoman from a seaside duchy, someone Daria couldn’t stand and would never have spoken to for more than a second. The jostling for position never stopped, even at a time like this. “Where’s Albin?” Rokan heard his voice rise and forced it into a semblance of rationality. “Where did they go?”
    Isabel lifted her eyebrows slightly and glanced at the apprentice. “Ven? What can you do?”
    The young man darted forward, knelt, and dipped his finger in the fast-disappearing wine. “I can track her. It will take a few minutes—”
    “Then start now!” Rokan shouted.
    Someone touched his wrist. Clarisse was standing at his side, two castle guards behind her. “Rokan, you have to calm down.”
    He shook her off, suddenly aware of the reason for her warning—the mob of faces surrounding them, watching him, judging how he reacted to a crisis. He did not want to be aware of them. For a moment he hated his sister. “I don’t know what happened to her! I don’t know where she is or—”
    “She’s in the castle,” the sorcerer’s apprentice said. He stood, his brow creased. “I can take you to