Destiny's Rift (Broken Well Trilogy) by Sam Bowring Page A

was the blue-haired man. Surprisingly, she’d believed him. The closeness of their connection made it hard to doubt him, for she felt she would easily spot any lie, and the story he told was too wild not to be true. There had been the possibility, of course, that Bel believed what he was telling her simply because he was insane, but then he had taken her to Fahren, who had confirmed the tale. And if any doubt had lingered, visiting the mage Tomeo the previous morning had certainly erased it.
    Believing it, however, did not mean she wasn’t also dumbfounded by the news. What were the chances that she would end up sharing the bed of the blue-haired man? For Arkus’s sake, she hadn’t even known there was a blue-haired man in Kainordas. Well , she had thought, what are the chances of anything, really? What are the chances that a particular bird would be singing in a tree at a particular moment on a particular day? Yet if I saw a bird singing in a tree, I would not disbelieve it.
    ‘What are you smiling about?’ Bel sounded amused. She hadn’t noticed him approach, but now that he was by her side the rest of the court was staring at her – no doubt wondering who she was. She ignored the attention – it too was something she was going to have to get used to, she supposed.
    ‘Oh nothing, little bird,’ she replied. ‘Nothing that need concern you, anyway. What has torn you away from your sandal-licking new friends?’
    Bel grinned. ‘I am sent for by the Throne.’
    ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Well, you had better be on your way.’
    She realised he was giving her a funny look.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Are you coming?’
    ‘ Oh ,’ she said, suddenly very happy. ‘Yes, of course.’
    As they made their way down the many stairs to the bottom of the Open Castle, Jaya’s happiness at being included suddenly galled her.
    ‘So,’ she said, half to herself, ‘this is how it will be? I’ll follow you around dutifully?’
    ‘What?’ He turned, surprised.
    ‘Well, I seem to have become attached, somehow, to this great fate of yours. Not really the future I had planned out for myself.’
    ‘I didn’t think you had a future planned out for yourself.’
    ‘That was the plan,’ she muttered.
    Bel frowned. ‘What’s brought this up all of a sudden?’
    ‘Not sure.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe seeing you up there, in the court . . . it made it all very real.’
    ‘It is real, Jaya,’ he sighed. ‘Look, I don’t want you to feel trapped by this. By . . . me.’
    Jaya fell silent. She had always prided herself on the fact that she depended on nobody, that she could come and go as she pleased . . . but now that her soul had up and decided Bel was the one for her, there was nothing she could do about it. She could always leave him, she supposed – but how the blazes could she ever follow through with such a thing? The idea of being without him was maddeningly unthinkable.
    ‘Damn man,’ she said. ‘If you were anyone else, I’d lock you in a cupboard and tell you only to come out when I want you.’
    He smiled, but she could tell her words troubled him.
    ‘I’m only doing what I need to do,’ he said. ‘I was never given much choice in the matter.’
    ‘I know, I know. It’s just . . . well, in my wildest nightmares I never saw myself as the supportive woman behind a man.’
    ‘Supportive woman?’ chuckled Bel. ‘Is that what you are?’
    ‘A year ago such devotion would have made me retch.’
    ‘Well, if it does, I’ll be there to hold back your hair,’ said Bel. ‘Jaya . . . the support I need is hardly to have someone staying home baking bread and squeezing out my pups. We’re talking about taking on the world.’
    ‘Well,’ she said, ‘when you put it like that . . .’
    ‘Besides,’ said Bel, ‘I don’t think of you as the woman behind me. You’re at my side. And I’m at yours.’
    His words were somewhat comforting, although she bit her tongue on pointing out that, even if they were at