Wind Over Bone: The Estralony Cycle #2 (Young Adult Fantasy Romance) Read Online Free

you even less. Do you know what people will say ?”
    “ I’m not stupid.”
    “ You would discount, supersede, her lifelong preparation, training in statesmanship––”
    “ Training is irrelevant. It never could’ve changed her gentle character into something more crass. She never wanted this. It’s filthy work.”
    “ That’s what you’ve been saying to her?” the man burst out. He was big and had a face like a bulldog. “Gods damn her father, the council. Given it away as if it were nothing.”
    “ Selya is a mere puppet,” said the woman. “You know it, you’ve been scheming all your life––”
    “ You have a prodigious imagination.”
    Sarid looked for the fig. It wasn’t on the plate.
    “I won’t stand for it.” The woman’s voice was shaking. “I won’t. You’ll be questioned. I won’t stand for it.”
    “ Sit for it then and hear me out.” Sarid saw now that he had the fig in his hand. He squeezed it. The flesh broke through, a burst of cottony seeds. He splayed his fingers and the mess of fruit hit the stone.
    A hound crept cautiously forward, tail tucked in. It sniffed the fig, took it in its mouth, and spat it out.
    Sarid stood still, anger washing her face hot. The anger gathered into a bead in the back of her mouth.
    The boy looked up and found her in the doorway, his eyes like two holes.
     

 
    Two
     
     
    Sarid named the puppy Gryka. Northern Lorilan for lout.
    Fed on scraps from the kitchens, Gryka grew past Sarid’s knees and kept growing. The year shrank into dark old age and the hound reached her gigantic, adult size. She was harmless: spare and bird-boned, more silly than her dour cousins in the kennels. And she was friendly to strangers. Almost embarrassingly so for Sarid, who had none of Gryka’s natural charm. Rischa Eliav occasionally crawled through the fireplace, curious to see how the two were getting along; and terrible shadow aside, Sarid grew fond of him, though she never let herself think it.
    The days grew short and furious, and Charevost Hall countered them with gaiety. The dancing halls belched smoke and echoed with sloppy laughter, and Sarid became more and more miserable. Because Rischa soaked up the carousing, and then detailed the vile fetes and balls the next day with such enthusiasm that Sarid wished, almost wished, she had been a part of them. But she never let on, just sighed, and spent her time alone with Gryka. But even Gryka disappeared for hours at a time, showing up later with a smug look and kissel jelly clinging to her chops. All this began to be a matter of pique.
    On the sixth night before Yule––the night of the second biggest ball of the season––Sarid was sitting by the window, patching the elbow of her jacket. She stamped her foot whenever she broke the thread, and Gryka groaned at intervals, flopping into increasingly apathetic positions. Finally the dog got up from her rug. She cocked her head in the direction of the fireplace, as though she could hear the ladies putting on their finery. She gave Sarid a sharp “Hah!” and padded through the fireplace.
    She might as well have called Sarid a bore. “Oh fine ,” she said to the fireplace. “Fine. I’ll go and see why he’s so excited over a bunch of nobs twirling in circles.” And she donned an overcoat, tatty by default, and crept through the fireplace after her dog.
    She was beginning to feel hungry, so she went down to the kitchens and unwound a string of sausage from the rafters. She rolled it up in her skirts, tied the ends loosely, and made her way toward the green ballroom. She climbed a number of sweeping staircases and wandered a maze of corridors, and stepped suddenly into the smell: oranges, evergreens, sweat and powder.  She heard a hundred voices and heels and viols. She turned a corner.  The entrance was half hidden by a curtain of ivy and fern, so that it looked like the mouth of a cave.
    She looked through the ivy into a huge oval space full of soaring