Free Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) by Christian A. Brown Page A

she had enough self-possession to face her master, she went into the study. Master Thule was not reading today, but staring off at menacing shadows drawn by the red hand of dusk on the wall.
    It will be night soon
, she thought, and her heart began its pitter-patter. What instincts she had about Caenith told her that night was his hourglass.
    She removed Thule’s mostly untouched brunch, and he did not look at her directly, though after Caenith’s attentions, she was quite familiar with the sense of eyes crawling over her flesh and knew that he was furtively watching. She slipped away and down several winding flights of stairs, noticing the little blue spheres of sorcerous gas that lit the walls as she went and thinking of the sapphire kingdom she had visited last night. Shortly, she arrived at a dreary kitchen that was lit by a lonely slat of light like a prison window. She deposited the old food and made up some soothing white-thistle tea and one of Thule’s favorite fish sandwiches, hoping that would appease him. When she returned to the study, Thule was sitting up and alert in his chair.
    “Put the tray down and have a seat,” he said.
    How lucky I’ve been to avoid a scolding so far. Looks like my luck has run out
, thought Morigan, sighing.
    The study was messier than usual, and there were piles of books in many places, as if she had not cleaned yesterday or for many days before. She chose the least teetering, lowest pile and placed the platter there, and then found another stack for herself to sit on.
    “This is about my lateness. I do apologize,” she said.
    “I am worried about you,” confessed Thule.
    “Worried? About me? Why?”
    “You are not yourself today.”
    Morigan contested this with a frown and silence.
    “You are acting strangely. What is going on with you?” asked Thule.
    Inside Morigan that effervescence persisted, like bees buzzing in her head, though not in a distracting way, for their song was a harmony she felt she could listen to, music that enlivened her. While her body was exhausted, her mind felt as if it would not sleep for weeks. She wasn’t certain if this was just a symptom of her fixation upon Caenith. She could not shake impressions of him from her mind any more than she could slow her brain’s endless whirring. She felt as if her thoughts were cast into a thousand seas at once. To the streetlamps that winked on as she went to see Caenith last eve, or how many books were on the floor about her toes—four, she noted, as well as their names. To crystal caverns and chores. To the sound of a child crying outside. Into the hot vision of a red kissable mouth, then another of Mifanwae’s grave glowing in the moonlight. Into memories of the past or fantasies of the future. Now that she had stopped working for the moment, this velocity of thought had not eased, but continued relentlessly. Still, she had no difficulty in sorting through each and every bit of it. Within her skull was a new presence: a churning machine, a pervasive awareness, and it showed no sign of slowing. As she sat, in that moment of quiet assessment, she was struck by the revelation that there was something going on in her head that she didn’t understand.
    From an outsider’s perspective, Thule had observed this change as well, progressively worsening through the hourglasses. Already, he had been worried about her associations with this smith, this Caenith. His night’s researchdid nothing to allay his fears and only uncovered vague myths of brutal, bloodlusting barbarians who shared the same rare name—though hopefully not the same heritage or inclinations as Morigan’s gentleman. But when she had arrived today in the state she had—disheveled, demanding money, wild, and speeding about the tower—he was suspicious that she might be involved with dangerous recreations, be that sex, narcotics, or some mixture of the two. She was definitely not herself. Nor had she even answered him. Instead, she continued