Shadows and Light

leaving the family home with his little sister.
    “Come on, boy,” Liam said. “Let’s find out what’s on the other side of that bridge.”
    After crossing the bridge, they trotted down the road, such as it was, for several minutes before the house came into sight.
    He wasn’t sure what he expected. A tumbled-down cottage. Or a neat cottage. Maybe even a small stone house.
    This was an old manor house that rivaled any gentry home in the neighborhood, with the exception of his family home. To the right was a stone arch, large enough for a wagon to pass through, that connected the main house to another building.
    Dismounting, Liam led Oakdancer toward the arch. No servant came out to take charge of the horse.
    Peering up at the house’s windows, he didn’t see anyone peering back. Had they gone somewhere? Did they even have any servants? Until now, he’d never wondered about them. Not really. They’d been one of the forbidden things of childhood, but, as he grew older, it always seemed easier just not to think of them. Now he was standing in front of the witches’ house. He was standing in the Old Place. And he had no idea if he should knock on the door, as he would have done with another neighbor, or ride away.
    “At least I can tell Mother that I tried,” he muttered, turning toward Oakdancer.
    As he gathered the reins and prepared to mount, a woman yelled, “Idjit! Drop that, you mongreled excuse of a flea-infested dog!”
    The reins slipped from his hands before he realized he’d responded to that angry command. His heart jumped into his throat. Would they curse him for daring to step onto their land? If that were the case, he wouldn’t show them his back while they were doing it.
    “Idjit!”
    Liam turned and took a step forward at the same moment a small black dog, its tail happily curled over its back, ran through the arch toward him. A piece of white linen was clamped firmly in its jaws, its length flapping and dragging on the ground.
    Grinning with relief that something else could qualify for a mongreled excuse of a dog, Liam dropped to one knee and held out a hand. The dog, with what Liam would have sworn was laughter in its eyes, loped toward him, tossing its head to show off its prize. When the dog got close enough to tease and invite him to play, Liam grabbed one end of the linen with one hand at the same time he grabbed the dog by the scruff with the other. Ignoring the hand that held it, the dog opened its jaws to get a better grip on its prize. Liam whipped the linen behind his back and stood up.
    The dog watched him, its mouth open in a grin as it danced back and forth in front of him.
    “Game’s over,” Liam said, glancing up to see a dark-haired woman run through the archway, then skid to a halt.
    The dog raced around him, forcing him to turn to keep the linen away from it.
    “Idjit!” the woman said sternly, placing her fists on her hips. “Sit!”
    The dog stopped racing around Liam, stood on its hind legs, and turned in a circle.
    “Sit!”
    The dog lay down, then rolled over twice.
    “Did someone drop him on his head when he was a puppy?” Liam asked.
    “It’s possible,” the woman replied, her lips twitching with the effort not to grin. “He’s either very dumb or very smart. We just can’t tell which it is.” Then she really looked at him, and humor gave way to uncertainty. “You seem familiar, but...”
    Taking a good look at her, Liam felt his heart jump into his throat for the second time in the past few minutes. The young woman standing before him looked more like his sister than Brooke did. She had dark brown hair like his, the same woodland eyes. Her face was a feminine variation of his own. He’d hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted to be able to dismiss what Elinore had said—or at least think of this woman with the same emotional distance he managed with his father’s other bastards. But he couldn’
    t dismiss what had been said, couldn’t maintain a distance. With her, the word sister hummed through him. A like mind. A like heart. Someone who saw the same world that he did and yet saw it differently.
    He felt as if one of them had been gone on a long journey and had finally come home, and they just had to get reacquainted all over again.
    Except he’d never seen her before, had never spoken to her, had no idea if she really was of like mind where anything was concerned. And he didn’t want to feel anything toward her. He hadn’t come here