"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - The Fey 02 - The Rival" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

Someone was in the garden.

Slowly she tilted her head and looked down.

Sunlight dappled across the flowers. The roses spotted the green with color
red, pink, white, and yellow. Pansies littered the ground with purple. The
oaks, maples, and pines were still; there was no wind. The garden, her
father's pride and joy, the place she had spent most of her childhood,
appeared empty.

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Then she caught a flash of movement near the birdbath. She squinted. The
bath was clear, the water smooth. The shade of the nearby oak trees covered
the marble inlay, making it look gray. No birds were in the trees, none were
overhead, and clearly none had been in the water moments before.

She leaned back and scrubbed her hand with the sleeve of her dressing gown,
keeping her gaze on the garden below. Then a tree branch rustled, but she
forced herself not to turn her head. Instead she watched, as seemingly
preoccupied with cleaning as she could be when she was in her cat form.
After a moment, her patience was rewarded.

A man stepped out of the small copse of trees near the birdbath. Not a man,
exactly, more a boy.

A teenage boy.

Her brother, Sebastian.

This time, she did turn her head. Sebastian was supposed to be in his rooms,
dressing for his Coming-of-Age, ceremony. It took him longer to dress than
it took anyone else because he insisted on doing it himself.

She placed her palms on the window seat cushions and leaned out.

"Sebastian!" she yelled.

"You're supposed to be inside!"

He looked up, and her breath caught in her throat. For the first' time in
his life, Sebastian's eyes were filled with a quick intelligence. They were
blue pools of flashing light. That was odd.

Sebastian's eyes had never looked blue before. They were a stone gray.

His dark hair was mussed, as it always was, hiding his faintly pointed ears.
The exotic features of his face his dark skin, his swooping eyebrows, his