The Rival Read Online Free

—  were studying the man in return. 
    Then someone in a hooded cloak slipped through the door.  The Fey guards stepped aside, and the old man didn't see the intruder.  A gloved hand holding a long knife, appeared from inside the cloak, and with two quick steps, the intruder had crossed the room, and shoved the knife into the body's back.
    Gift was screaming, but he couldn't get inside the body.  The old man was yelling, the door was open, and the intruder was gone.
    The body lay on the floor, eyes wide, blood trailing from the corner of the mouth.  It coughed once, then its breath wheezed through its throat.  The wheeze ended in a sigh, and all the life disappeared from the face.
    Gift's face.
    And then the Vision ended.
    Two versions of his own death.  One from inside his body  —  where he felt the final death-blow  —  and one from out. The Visions had started almost a month before.  Finally  —  yesterday  —  he went to the Shaman as she had taught him to do with difficult Visions long ago.  She had looked at him with compassion.
    Did you know that each Visionary sees his own death? she had asked.
    He nodded.  He also knew that the death Vision could be changed.  He had seen his own death as a boy  —  when his real mother died, he should have died with her  —  but his friend Coulter had changed the path of that Vision. 
    So this is mine? he asked.
    She shook her head.  Two Visions, two paths.  In the second, you do not die.  Someone else does.
    Sebastian did.  Sebastian, good innocent and childlike.  Sebastian, the golem who should not live and did.  Sebastian, whom Gift loved like a brother.  Sebastian, who had so much of Gift inside of him that Gift wasn't certain if one could survive without the other.
    How do I stop it? Gift asked.
    You must change the path.
    But how?
    The Shaman shrugged.  I have not seen this path.  We cannot compare.  The future is too murky.  Everything is changing now.  By next week, our lives will have a different meaning.
    Try as he might, he could not get her to explain that last.  The job of a Shaman was to safeguard her people. And sometimes, safeguarding her people meant keeping their leaders in darkness.
    Overhead, the robin sighed.  Gift resisted the urge to look up.  His arms were cramping, and his neck ached.  She had to leave sometime soon.  She had some sort of ceremony to go to, something Sebastian had tried to explain during the last Link.  But Gift's understanding of Islander rituals was poor at best, and he hadn't understood this one at all.
    "By the Powers, Sebastian," Arianna said.  "You'll get us both in trouble."
    And then she took off, stubby wings outstretched.  She had a grace, even in flight, that marked her as Fey.  Fey were so different from other races.  The Islanders, Gift knew, regarded the half-breeds as something less, as not quite worthy.  But the Fey, the Fey knew that half-breeds were stronger, that the magick flowed pure in undiluted blood.  The Shaman had once told him she thought it a cultural imperative for the Fey to continue conquering.  They had to move on, to find the purity that gave their power its ferocious strength.
    But she spoke as if she disliked the Fey desire to conquer.  She spoke as if she had used the idea as a way to understand the warrior culture.
    Gift was a half-breed.  He had Visions younger than any Fey, and he had built a Shadowlands without practice, by simply holding his grandfather's creation together.  His Links were fine and strong, and he could travel along them with no effort at all. 
    Arianna Shifted into more than one form, unheard of among the Fey.  He didn't know what her other talents were.  He wasn't sure he wanted to find out.
    But they were the only two half-breeds on the Island.  The Fey still hadn't co-mingled with the Islanders.  Most of the Fey still lived in Shadowlands, hiding in their protective Fey-made fort for nearly two decades now, sorry in