Free The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) by Melissa McPhail

frowned at the river. His storm-grey eyes were both slightly accusing and deeply searching, as if expecting the murky waters to hold explanation if not remorse. Gendaia was still lame, and Trell inexplicably blamed the river—or more specifically, the River Goddess Naiadithine .
    Though he had no proof of her complicity in his horse’s condition, instinct told him there was more to this confluence of events than mere chance. That Gendaia went lame during a shallow river fording—while neither impossible nor unheard of—was yet suspicious beyond measure where he and the Water Goddess were both involved. What chance then that Gendaia’s injury prevented him from leaving only days before a mysterious girl rode the river’s swollen waves to be deposited at his feet?
    Okay, not exactly deposited. He’d put himself in harm’s way to save her life, but that only strengthened his feeling of providence surrounding the matter.
    Not that he didn’t owe Naiadithine a great deal—more than he could ever repay even if it meant the offering of his life, for the goddess had saved him several times over, and Gendaia too. So he knew he owed her his trust—providing she did have a hand in maiming Gendaia, for which there was no proof but Trell’s instinct—but he still couldn’t bring himself to forgive her.
    Take from me what you will, my goddess, he thought, leveling a heated look at the chill waters, but leave my horse out of it.
    Trell pushed fingers through his unruly black hair and then shoved hands into pockets as he turned to wander upriver. The dervish of his thoughts whirled endlessly, each leaf upon the twisting wind representative of a different mystery. Naiadithine’s latest intervention in his life was just one among several strange events.
    First, what to make of Yara’s response?
    As Trell had staggered into the farmhouse on that morning several days ago, drenched and muddied and with the cold weight of the unconscious lass in his arms, the old woman had turned from the fire, rocked back on her heels and remarked in astonishment, “It’s her! ”
    Trell had been too preoccupied to register this pronouncement at the time—being so focused on getting the girl inside—and in the rush that followed there’d been little opportunity for questions. But since then he’d had plenty of time to consider it.
    Stranger still, Yara had refused to let him help get the lass cleaned up, though it was quite a chore for the old woman to manage on her own. She’d mumbled some absurdity about it not being proper for Trell to see the girl disrobed—never mind that he’d practically stripped her down already to bandage her head and arm—but Yara was having none of his protests. Trell boiled six kettles of water and refilled the tub twice before Yara deemed the lass clean enough for mending and called him in to help her.
    He remembered that moment with vivid clarity.
    Walking into the bedroom to see the girl lying upon his bed with her long flaxen hair spread damply across the pillow…Yara was tending her broken arm as he came around to look down upon her face. Even maimed and bruised and with one eye swollen shut, even with that great ugly gash in her head, there was something…familiar about her.
    It struck a memory.
    The flash of an image—a young girl stood upon the seashore bundled in a violet cloak as much as in silence, the wind whipping her flaxen hair as Trell watched from the stern of a skiff rowing laboriously out to sea… There were others on the shore, many others, but Trell saw only the young girl’s face among the haze of others, round-eyed and full of sorrow.
    That briefest snatch of memory, yet he felt tied to her still, the nameless girl on a wintry beach. It was a tenuous link forged by a rope so frayed it was by miracle alone that it still held true. Nor could he say why he felt tied to her, only that he did.
    Looking down upon the girl in his bed, Trell realized there was a chance this might be the