A Sparrow Stole My Place as Heir novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Dawn in My Hands

The nine sisters hold the Dawn gate shut; Daelan lifts the sun himself and takes the hour from Thessaly in front of the lesser gods, and the sisters summon him to the Court of Hours.

The guards at my door were gone.

I found out why when I opened it and saw them standing at the end of the corridor, looking east.

Every window in the High Hall showed the same grey sky.

"Is it true?" one of them asked me. "Does the sun wait on you?"

"It waits on my sisters," I said. "I'm going to ask them why."

I walked down the long stair to the Dawn gate with the Crown burning on my brow.

I had not decided to wear it.

It had simply never gone out.

The gate stood at the eastern edge of the Sky, a tall arch of white stone with a bar of gold across it.

Behind the bar, I could feel the sun asleep, warm and enormous.

Eight of my sisters stood in a ring around the arch, each with both hands on the bar.

Thessaly stood at its centre.

Behind them, a crowd of lesser gods had gathered in the grey, hour-servants and lamplighters and the cooks who baked the morning bread, all of them staring at the dark.

Below the cloud floor, the Mortal World was waking in the dark, and I could hear it faintly, dogs barking and a bell somewhere ringing for help.

"There you are," Thessaly said.

She did not take her hands off the bar.

"The sun rises when you kneel to Perrin and to me," she said. "Not before. You've shamed him, and you've shamed this family, and the Three Realms can wait while you learn what that costs."

"The Mortal World can't wait," I said. "Listen to it."

"Then you had better be quick."

She said it calmly.

She had held my arm in the Vault corridor once, in another life, and said almost the same thing in the same tone.

"You'd leave a whole world dark," I said, "to make me bow?"

"I would leave it dark to make you human."

Wynne was standing alone at the back of the crowd, not at the bar, her small face white in the grey.

When she saw me looking, she shook her head very slightly, and she did not step forward.

I turned to Thessaly.

"Dawn is your hour," I said. "The Atlas says so."

I opened the book against my forearm, and the second page lit up.

A gold clock sat next to her name, stopped at the moment before sunrise.

"The Atlas also says," I said, "that the heir may take any Hour from any keeper who withholds it."

"You wouldn't."

"I'm done with what I wouldn't do."

I laid two fingers on her name.

Her hands slipped off the bar before she had decided to let go.

She stumbled back with her eyes wide.

I had drawn the Hour out of her, and she could feel the place where it had been.

My own name rose on the page in the space beside the clock.

The gate groaned.

I walked to the arch, put the Atlas under my arm, and took the gold bar in both hands.

It was hot enough to blister a god.

The Crown flared against it, and the bar slid out of the stone and rolled away across the floor of the Sky.

The sun came through.

It rose over the white arch in one long climb, gold and red, and the light ran across the cloud floor and down through the clouds to the Mortal World.

A cheer went up from below, thin and far off, and in the grey crowd behind me the cooks started to weep.

None of the lesser gods could look straight at me.

They were kneeling.

"Get up," I said. "Go and bake the bread."

They scattered, laughing, shielding their faces.

My sisters stood in a ring with empty hands.

"That Hour was mine," Thessaly said, and her voice shook for the first time. "It was mine for nineteen years."

"And you shut it for one morning to teach me a lesson. Now you know how it feels to have something taken."

Someone began to clap, slowly.

I turned, and Perrin was standing at the top of the stair in his grey coat with his hands wrapped in white linen.

He came down three steps and stopped, and his brown eyes were wet and kind.

"Daelan," he said. "I forgive you."

I waited, because I had not expected that one.

"I forgive you for the Atlas, and the horses, and the Hour, and what you said to Maelis," he said. "I know you're hurting. If you ask your sisters, they'll forgive you too."

Behind him, seven of my sisters sighed together, softly.

I heard it too, a low familiar hum at the back of my skull.

Then it was gone.

I looked at his face and said, "I haven't asked anyone for anything."

His smile stayed exactly where it was.

A herald came running along the gallery above us, in the High King's silver and white, with a scroll in his fist.

"By command of the High King," he called, in a shaking voice. "Daelan Sunward, you are summoned to the Court of Hours at noon, to answer the charge of theft of the dawn."

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