A Glimpse of Music Read online

  SUNLIGHT AND SHADOWS BOOK 3

  SYDNEY WINWARD

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  A Glimpse of Music

  COPYRIGHT © 2022 Sydney Winward

  Cover Design by: Sydney Winward

  Published by: Silver Forge Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-7374854-6-9

  Digital ISBN 978-1-7374854-5-2

  www.sydneywinward.com

  To all those who think you aren’t enough. You are!

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  THANK YOU

  STAY CONNECTED

  BOOKS BY SYDNEY WINWARD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter 1

  Nyana Everdon could not escape soon enough.

  A brisk wind tugged on her dress like insistent brambles. The chill breeze clawed at her hair and stung her face. Panic squeezed the air from her lungs as the priest spoke the final word of the ceremony. Avonia and Typheal Svera met each other in a loving kiss as they were remarried as husband and wife, once again united after the previous king had wrongfully annulled their marriage.

  The audience clapped.

  But Nyana’s chest heaved with discomfort. She wanted to leave. There were too many people. Too many familiar people. And she needed to escape.

  Typheal’s face broke into a smile. While black, shameful tattoos used to drip down his face because he had defied her late husband, the previous king of Heulwen, and branded as a traitor, golden tattoos now took their place. They shimmered beneath the late autumn afternoon sunlight, gracing him with pride and renown in King Calle’s court. Avonia’s golden-white wings fluttered with happiness as she faced the audience, hand in hand with the man she loved.

  The ceremony was beautiful.

  She hated it.

  One more minute, Nyana told herself.

  But then Calle glanced up and met her gaze over the outdoor pews. His own face broke into a warm smile, the skin around his amber eyes crinkling with mirth. Her panic broke free of its prison, and she hastily pulled the shawl off her shoulders and draped it over her oldest of two daughters, Maisy. The shawl covered the girl’s shoulder-length red-brown hair and her long Sun Fae ears, shading her blue eyes.

  “I don’t want to wear this,” Maisy complained.

  “Hush,” Nyana murmured. “It will only be for a few minutes.”

  As the audience stood after the ceremony and talked amongst themselves, Nyana took each of her daughters by the elbows and steered them away, back in the direction of home.

  “Nyana, wait!” Calle called after her.

  She ignored him and increased her pace, grinding her teeth against the pain in her leg she desperately tried to hide.

  “Mama, can’t we play with Uncle Calle?” Maisy asked. Although Eva said nothing, her large green eyes pleaded the same. Her long blonde hair had escaped from its braid, its strands now buffeted by the wind.

  “Later,” she responded, hardly mindful of the rocks jutting out from the dirt path as she tried in vain to escape the man she had loved for a long time. The man who she had thought dead for six years. The man who had chosen to marry another, whose wedding was only two months away.

  She didn’t know how to feel about it. She mourned for the life she could have had with him. Yet, she was relieved that they no longer had to walk that path together, especially after everything that had happened.

  Calle caught up to them, stepping onto their path and placing his hands on her shoulders to stop her flight. They were warm. Familiar. And they created an ache within her heart. An ache she stomped on and spat upon.

  An ache for what could have been, but what was not meant to be.

  “You must not have heard me call after you.” He smiled again. Yet, a caution lived within his eyes. It had lived there ever since they’d reunited in unfortunate circumstances.

  Her leg ached at the reminder of the event. When her life had fallen apart. But also when she had been freed from her husband’s cruelty. From...from...Liam.

  His name in her mind churned acid within her gut.

  “I need to get home, Your Highness.” She glanced around him at the path ahead.

  “I told you not to call me that. We have too much history together.”

  Instead of acknowledging his statement, she nervously glanced behind her to find his fiancée, Skaja Svera, watching their exchange with a wary expression, her golden-white harpy wings hunched close to her body. And rightfully so. Nyana could only assume Skaja felt threatened by her, especially with their wedding date looming closer and closer.

  Calle dropped his hands from her shoulders. “Let me escort you home in the carriage. It’s cold outside. I don’t want you or my nieces to freeze.”

  Maisy gasped. “Please, Mama? I want to ride with Uncle Calle.”

  Nyana gently pushed Maisy behind her back to hide her from Calle’s hopeful gaze. His offers were led by guilt, nothing more. Guilt for what his brother had put her through in their marriage. Guilt for not being there. Guilt for leaving her for another.

  Head held high, she reiterated the words she had spoken time and again. “I told you. We don’t need your charity.”

  His jaw clenched, and his eyes hardened into crystals. “We are family. This is not charity.”

  “Liam is dead. We are not family.”

  She moved past him, trying not to wince nor limp when pain shot up her leg. The leg Liam had smashed with a dueling cane to keep her from running. The leg a renowned elderly healer named Cian had healed as much as possible. The leg that always ached when the weather took a chilly turn.

  Her children sulked after her.

  But before she got far, Calle clamped his hand around her wrist and spun her to face him. She inhaled sharply. Not from surprise. But from fear. Instead of Calle’s red-brown hair, she saw Liam’s. Instead of Calle’s amber eyes, she saw green. Instinctively, she flinched away as if a hand might strike her.

  It didn’t.

  Calle released her, his tortured expression gazing back at her. “Nyana, I’m sorry.”

  Embarrassment heated her cheeks, and she lowered her gaze in shame. Calle would never hit her. Ever. He was not his brother. Logically, she knew that.

  “Come on, girls,” she murmured as she guided them ahead of her down the dirt road covered in brown, crunchy leaves. “Time to go home.”

  “Bye, Uncle Calle,” Maisy said despondently, trudging after her. Although Nyana refused to turn, her daughter’s disappointment broke her heart in two. “Maybe we can come play this week.”

  “Maybe,” Calle replied despondently.

  She felt his stare on her back until they reached the bend in the road. Only when out of sight did she allow herself to crumble quietly. Her hands shook
as she spotted the cane she had hidden within a tangle of vines. She tugged it free of the red and withered brown foliage, using it to support her bad leg on the journey home.

  Long journey home.

  A sob stuck fast to her throat.

  She swallowed it down.

  Never again would she cry. Never.

  A chill raked across her arms when an upcoming storm announced its presence in a gust of wind. Instead of grabbing her shawl from Maisy’s shoulders, she tucked it around the little girl to protect her from the cold. Eva dragged her feet on the long walk down the dirt path, her small frame shivering with each step she took.

  Nyana picked her up and placed her on her hip, where she proceeded to snuggle into her shoulder. Her youngest daughter weighed very little. Much less than she should. The stress of hoping Eva would be born a boy had gotten to Nyana during the pregnancy. She’d lost a lot of weight. Too much. Eva was born at only five pounds. And she’d been born a girl, leaving Liam without an heir.

  It had been one of the worst nights she’d ever endured.

  Another chill tingled down her spine. This time from fear rather than the cold.

  Liam is gone, she reminded herself, increasing her pace as she awkwardly continued down the road holding Eva in one arm and her cane in her other hand. He can never hurt us again.

  The breeze whispered through the few leaves remaining glued to the trees as winter approached on autumn’s wing.

  Her blistered hands ached at the reminder. Chopping wood proved to be too difficult for her small frame. But she had to try again. She had no choice if she wanted to keep her daughters warm during the winter.

  By the time they reached the path leading to the house on the outskirts of the small village they now lived in, her entire body ached from the protesting muscles in her arm to the screaming pain of her leg.

  And then she stopped short when she spotted the house.

  Dread tightened in her stomach as her gaze rested on the red paint plastered on one side of the wall, dripping down gray stone like streams of blood.

  Murderer.

  Fear slammed into her heart as she stared at the house for a long minute, waiting for someone to rush out of the trees with weapons drawn.

  The property remained quiet. Eerily quiet.

  “What does that say, Mama?” Maisy asked inquisitively. She began spelling it out. “M-U-R—”

  “Nothing!” She quickly turned her daughter away and grabbed her hand, cautiously approaching the house. They passed through the wooden gate connected to the property’s waist-high stone wall. They walked across crisp grass and wilted wildflowers and finally stopped before the arched wooden door of the small, two-story structure. Her fingers shook as she wrapped them around the door handle and turned.

  It was locked.

  Relief escaped on her sigh as she unlocked it with the key and ushered her girls inside. To Maisy, she said, “Get your little sister supper, will you? I’ll be inside in a minute.”

  Or a few...

  Her gaze despondently turned to the dripping red paint. Last week, her cow had been stolen. And this week, it was defacement.

  Ignoring her protesting leg, she gathered a scrub brush, soap, and water before kneeling on the cold ground. She began to clean.

  Red bled into red, quickly tainting the bowl of water. The scrub brush oozed paint like a bloody wound. Her leg throbbed against the cold, brittle ground. An unforgiving chill shivered down her spine.

  But she did not cry.

  And she did not curse.

  She deserved this. But her daughters did not.

  Crack!

  Nyana inhaled sharply as her heart shot to her throat. She spun around where she knelt. Only to find a familiar face standing over the chopping block, an ax in his hands. Joel Harrington’s chin-length golden brown fell over his bright green eyes as he brought the ax down again, chopping a piece of wood clean in half. His facial hair was trimmed short, enhancing the gentle mirth of his lips and the determined set of his thin brows. She had known Joel longer than she had known Calle. In fact, he had been the one to introduce them.

  After her awful husband had sentenced Joel’s entire family to death, they had fled Heulwen four years ago. Only recently, he returned to aid Calle in taking the throne from Liam.

  Her eyes burned as she turned her attention back to scrubbing, putting more weight into it than before. She refused to cry. “You shouldn’t do that.”

  Split!

  “Why not?”

  Crack!

  “We don’t need your charity.”

  Joel snorted, and she glanced over her shoulder to find him smirking at her, ax in hand, one foot resting on the tree stump while his horse wandered the yard searching for something to graze on. “Nyana, we have known each other for years. We’re friends, and I’m happy to do it. It’s all right to accept help once in a while.”

  When her eyes began to burn again, she turned back to her task and scrubbed vigorously, erasing the foul word from her home. She’d stolen money little by little from Liam each time he’d come to her drunk, pockets jingling with coins. He’d never noticed her taking a few here and a couple there. Rightfully, the money she’d used to purchase the cottage should have been Calle’s. But it was all that she’d had.

  Now, she had little left other than what she made from selling the clothing she crafted by hand.

  “They’re wrong, you know.” Joel’s voice startled her out of her reverie.

  “Who?”

  “Whoever defaced your home. You are no murderer.”

  She stood and wiped her wet hands over her skirt when the last of the red paint disappeared beneath her administration. “And why not? After all, the wife of a monster must also be a monster.”

  Arms piled with firewood, he approached but stopped short of the porch, not venturing any closer. Ever since Liam’s death, he’d never touched her, never strayed too close. And she was grateful for it.

  He eyed her with bright, intelligent eyes that never missed a detail. “Is that what you tell yourself? That you’re a monster?”

  Not able to bear the weight of his scrutiny, she glanced away.

  He shifted the wood from one arm to the other. “Do those sweet girls think it of you? You sure bet they don’t. They think the world of you, Nyana.”

  A reply didn’t grace her tongue fast enough before the door flew open. Both Maisy and Eva stumbled out, giggling excitedly.

  “Joel!” Maisy shouted, and he barely had time to drop the wood before they both launched themselves into his arms and held on tight.

  Joel’s rich, timber laugh rose above a chilly breeze, happiness and amusement filling his eyes as he held each of her girls in each arm. “You both act as if I haven’t seen you in ages. I saw you only two days ago and then briefly at the wedding today.”

  “But we’ve been so lonely!” Maisy whined. “Mama won’t let us see Uncle Calle and Skaja.”

  “Mais,” Nyana warned, but they ignored her.

  Grinning, Joel smoothed Eva’s errant blonde locks out of her eyes. Nyana’s heart pricked with surprise at his tender, kind touch. But the surprise quickly transitioned into grief at how her children had been so mistreated by Liam, and she forced herself to look away. All she had wanted for her girls was to know what it was like to have a kind father. Now they would never know.

  “You want to play with Calle more than me?” Joel teased. “But I thought you liked my music.”

  “I do! I do! Play a song. About the horses.”

  Joel glanced up at the skies before his smile fell into a frown. “Another day. I don’t want you to freeze out here.”

  Maisy jumped down and landed with an ungraceful thump on the porch before she grabbed his hand. “Come inside and play. It’s warmer in there.”

  Nyana tensed, her entire body turning rigid at the suggestion. The reaction was involuntary. The thought of being in closed quarters with any man, even Joel, created a pit of discomfort in her stomach.

/>   However, Joel simply shook his head and set Eva down. “I can’t play indoors. The horses need somewhere to run.” He winked at them and then smiled at Nyana. Gratitude surged through her that he understood her reservations without needing to be told. “Nana sent me a new pie recipe in the post. If I made a botched attempt, may I come by and share it on the porch tomorrow?”

  The girls jumped excitedly while Maisy chanted, “Pie, pie, pie!”

  “It will likely snow tomorrow,” she reminded him.

  “And?” He began gathering the wood he had dropped minutes earlier. “I can’t eat a whole pie by myself.”

  She gave him a pointed look, remembering when Nana had baked three dozen pies for the summer solstice festival eight years ago. He’d eaten three of them within an hour, much to Nana’s berating. “Yes, you can.”

  “Not anymore.” He flashed her a charming grin, but she crossed her arms, immune to it. However, she couldn’t deny he’d perfected the smile in the past six years. Just one flash of those white teeth, and he could probably make almost any woman’s knees go weak.

  Her own leg ached at the reminder, and she grabbed her cane from where it rested against the house, allowing it to support her weight. Joel’s jaw clenched when he laid eyes on the cane, but he quickly smiled again as if it hadn’t happened.

  “Tomorrow then?”

  For several moments, she paused to consider his request. It was harmless. Enough. Besides, the girls enjoyed his company.

  At last, she nodded. “Tomorrow.”

  Without another word, she ushered her daughters inside, locked the door, and slid two other bolts into place. After she lit a lantern, she began the arduous process of putting her children to bed. She used to sing to them.

  She rubbed the physical ache settled just over her heart as she finished tucking them into bed. She used to do a lot of things. Until her only choice was to survive.

  Nyana lifted the drapes with one hand to peer out the window. The black silhouette of the surrounding trees lay against a blue and yellow backdrop of twilight. Leaves shivered from the branches and drifted toward the ground on the faint breeze. And beside the chopping block...

  Joel continued chopping wood with smooth swings of the ax. His hair now lay at the base of his neck, pulled back with a tie. An immense look of concentration rested on his brows as if plenty occupied his mind.