Free Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, Book 1) by Moira Katson

it. I could see
the houses I had trudged past in the storm. I looked up and saw
that the castle was the same in every detail: the placement of the
towers, the curve of the road.
    Only when I had looked at every other detail
did I look to where I knew the hovel should be. And there I saw
only an enclosure with a few hens. The shack was gone; so
completely that it might never have been. Almost frantic at the
sudden difference, I looked about me at the hill people.
    They were looking for Miriel and the Duke,
and while their eyes slid past me, I cast my gaze over them,
searching for eyes like mine, hair like mine. I remembered my
mother’s broad cheekbones and my father’s heavy brows. I saw
nothing; they all looked alike, those townsfolk, and what
differences there were, were obscured by years of grime. Still, I
looked and I wondered for the first time which of these men might
be my brothers, or my father, bowed now with age. I wondered if I
would see my mother, if she had lived beyond my birth; I wondered
if I would know her.
    I could not say. I did not see the faces
from my dream in the crowd of village folk. I do not know if I have
brothers or sisters still living in the cold of the mountains. I do
not even know my mother’s name, and I have never been certain if
she knew mine—or if she gave me away without even naming me
herself. If I am honest with myself, I know that sometimes I doubt
my parents ever existed. Sometimes, I think I was a child made of
that swirling snow, borne of parents who faded into the mountains
like ghosts after my birth, never to be seen again.
    The Duke would later name me a Shadow, and
after his naming, life itself wore me away to make his words true.
I have been a Shadow for years upon years now. And yet, I think
that if I were to trace back to the moment I started to fade away
from the world, it would not be when I began my training, or when I
first killed, or when I first spied upon my King. It would be the
moment that I looked around myself, in that cold mountain village,
and realized that I had no past, that I had come from nowhere. I
might never have been born and no one would ever have missed
me.
     
     

 
    Chapter 8
     
    Our first night on the road was desperately
cold. There were not enough travelers for any decent inns to remain
open on the mountain road, and so it would be two nights until we
reached the shelter of a warm hearth and real beds. Most of us,
even the Duke, were sleeping in tents, made of heavy canvas but
still drafty, but Miriel had been made a little room in the back of
one of the wagons, absurdly fashioned into a sort of house. It was
built well, with its own little door and steps up to it, and the
chamber was kept snug and warm with carpets and canvas draped
across the sides of it.
    The Duke called for me and bid me to see
that Miriel was settled, and so I went at a run until I was out of
his sight, and then continued to the wagon with dragging feet. I
would never have dreamed of defying the Duke, but I did not want to
be Miriel’s servant any more than she wanted my service. I rapped
on the door, only a formality with so many guards about, and
slipped inside.
    It was so warm in the wagon that I found
myself sweating at once, but Miriel looked chilled to her very
bones. She had always seemed at home in the palace, but outside its
strong walls, she was no longer a child of the mountains; her
father’s southern blood had a strong hold on her. She was pale as
death in her velvet-and-brocade dressing gown, very heavy and warm
looking, and she had a blanket draped around her shoulders as well,
but she looked desperately cold, and when she turned her head, I
saw eyes that were shadowed with fatigue.
    I felt, unexpectedly, a wave of pity for
her. At least I had Roine to travel with, the closest thing to a
mother I had ever had. Miriel was not close to her uncle, I could
see that readily enough, and she did not even seem very close to
her own mother. As we had left the