Free ARC: Sunstone by Freya Robertson

the Incendi have found a way to transport themselves from the moment they spot the man over to the moment they would reach his side instantaneously. It is then up to them whether they intervene and save him, or watch him die.”
    Procella touched her hand to her forehead. “This is too much for the likes of us. We do not have the brains of scholars. Chonrad may have enjoyed debating philosophy but I do not. How are we to make sense of all this? Why tell us at all?”
    “Because you have had the dreams,” Julen said. “The Arbor has tried to contact you, and Horada. Maybe it needs you. And in that case, the Incendi will know, and maybe they will come after you.”
    “Let them try,” Procella snarled.
    Julen banged on the table. “And how, pray, do you propose to defeat these nefarious elementals when we have no idea what form they take or how they appear?”
    Procella looked startled. Orsin had never heard his brother speak in that way to their mother. He must really be worried, Orsin thought; that very fact concerning him more than the news of the Incendi did.
    “What do you propose?” Procella said, her voice quiet.
    Julen took a deep breath and then blew it out slowly. “The Peacekeeper instructed me to fetch you both to Heartwood. I understand your reservations about this, but he feels we must answer the Arbor’s call.”
    “I think if Horada…” Procella’s words petered off as she looked along the table to where her daughter had been sitting. The seat was vacant. “Where did she go?”
    Orsin shook his head. He hadn’t seen his sister leave. “I do not know.”
    His mother pushed herself impatiently to her feet. “I will go and get her, and we shall talk about it.” She marched off toward the stairs to the bedchambers.
    Orsin met Julen’s dark gaze, and the two brothers smiled wryly.
    “I thought she would resist me more,” Julen said, leaning back and stroking his short beard.
    “I think she is scared,” Orsin said. “I would not have thought it of her, but then I suppose one is always scared for one’s children.”
    He looked into the flames that writhed atop the log like figures tortured and made to dance with hot pokers. Would he ever have children, know hearth and home like his father had done? Twice. Orsin’s half-brother and sister had lived with them for ten years or so until Rosamunda had married and moved away and Varin had answered the Peacekeeper’s call for a small personal army to accompany him on his travels across Anguis. Julen still caught up with him regularly, but Orsin had not seen him for a long time.
    Time moves on, he thought, like the stars wheeling in the heavens. How could time be changed? Surely it was as irreversible as the way the fire was currently consuming the log, turning the wood to ash. The ash couldn’t be turned back into wood – it just wasn’t possible. And he had thought the passage of time was the same.
    The log subsided in the grate, and a piece of kindling rolled towards the edge of the brick hearth. Orsin leaned forward and picked it up, watching the flame lick its way up the length of the twig towards his hand. So sensual; fluid, like a viscous liquid. He could just imagine what it would feel like to have it slide over him, stroking, caressing, and teasing him with its white-hot heat…
    “Orsin!”
    Startled, he dropped the branch into the grate. “What?”
    Julen grabbed his hand and turned it over, examining his skin. “The fire covered your hand!”
    “No, it did not.”
    Julen frowned. His eyes met his brother’s, and a cold sliver of fear embedded itself in Orsin’s stomach.
    The moment was broken, however, by the rapid scuff of boots on stone, and then their mother appeared, running along the hall, clearly agitated.
    “She has gone!”
    The brothers stood, Rua circling them nervously. “Gone where?” Julen demanded.
    “I do not know.” Procella yelled the words. “One of the servants saw her leave only a short time ago with her