Excerpt: THREE DROPS OF BLOOD

From UncialPress

Book 3 of the Zygradon Chronicles

Excerpt:

Meghianna didn't know she had a sister until her sixth summer, when she went to visit her father, Efrin Warhawk.

The adventure of racing through her suite of rooms in the Warhawk's fortress, looking for the surprises her father left for her, ended abruptly when the door from the hallway banged open. Thinking her father had left his council meeting to greet her, she turned around to race from her study room to the front room to throw herself into his arms. Instead, she froze, stunned to see her near-mirror image standing in the doorway, staring at her in return. The wide-eyed surprise on the other girl's face crumpled into tears, and she went to her knees there on the threshold.

"Nalla!" Meghianna hurried across the room. She reached out to lift the other girl back to her feet when a gasp and a muffled curse from her nursemaid startled and stopped her.

"So it's true," the silver-haired Rey'kil healer muttered.

"What's true?" Meghianna asked.

Warned by the frown on the woman's ordinarily cheerful, round face, she took a step back. The Threads chimed around her, responding to the tightening in her belly. She reached with her mind to calm them. So far, only Lord Mrillis could hear when she disturbed the Threads, but she knew that was only because she was so young and weak. He had promised to keep her secret--and also made her promise in return to tell him whenever she learned to do something new, no matter how small or odd. Disturbing the Threads too much would alert others to her magical talents. Now was not the time to let the world know she had already found her imbrose. Not with this mirror image of herself crying silently on the threshold of her suite, trembling and looking at her and Nalla as if she expected to be tossed out like so much trash.

"Well, you'll find out sooner or later. And pick it from our minds, no doubt, if we try to keep it from you." Nalla knelt and caught up the little girl under her arms, just like she picked up Meghianna even now, when she was frightened or upset, with no regard for her dignity as the daughter of the Warhawk and future Queen of Snows. The stranger with Meghianna's pointed chin and red-gold hair and silvery-green eyes certainly seemed to need the coddling.