The Savage Blood (Savage Series, Book 2)

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  The Savage Blood

  Book Two of the Savage Series

  by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  The Savage Blood

  by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  Copyright © 2011 Tamara Rose Blodgett

  http://tamararoseblodgett.blogspot.com

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to a legitimate retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Acknowledgments:

  God

  You, my reader! Without You, none of this would be possible! I love my readers from the bottom of my heart!

  I'd like to thank the following people (it's the short-list, guys):

  The Beta-Editing Queen

  Danny

  Jeff Harris

  Tiffany King

  Elizabeth Reyes

  Kimberly Spencer

  For The Girls:

  Aaron, Becky, Evie, Memrie and Shana Benedict

  CHAPTER 1

  East

  Clara discreetly wiped the beads of sweat that had formed on her brow. The sun hung overhead, its merciless heat beating down on the group. A trickle of sweat crawled down the back of her neck and she was all at once through with the entire day.

  Bracus approached with the flask of water and Clara gave a tired smile, accepting it from his large hand gratefully.

  “Queen Clara,” he looked down at her upturned face, “take respite.” Bracus shielded his eyes from the sun's brightness, gauging the days time. “We have traveled without rest for six hours. It is one hour until dusk. Let us break for camp.”

  Clara looked around at her weary contingent. They had been traveling for days now and still they seemed to cover no distance. They had only one map, an amateurish affair that gave iconic points as an afterthought. No one, save Anna, had traveled this route.

  How had she thought this an idyllic journey of adventure? What it was was a bug infested, heat laden, tiresome affair. Normally in good spirits, she found herself frazzled and not coping well.

  She nodded to Bracus, correcting absently, “Just Clara, Bracus.”

  He nodded, giving her a tender smile she did not deserve and began to bark orders to the rest of the Band.

  Matthew's eyes met hers intensely and she turned away, undone by the simple look. In all fairness, she had allowed a courtship to ensue that was like a noose about her neck, slowly tightening until breath was a luxury.

  The forest lay to their left (North, she corrected) and her Royal Guard, Charles, Clarence and the men of the Band hauled their travel accompaniments the entirety of the steep incline. Dragging it behind horses, their belongings bundled atop leather skins tethered to wooden poles, they made their way.

  Charles found her and helped her pull up the rear, two of the Guard flanking her.

  She was queen, after all. A moniker she was still not comfortable with. It had been nearly a year since the disastrous events involving Queen Ada, the battle with the fragment and her position of alliance with the Clan of Ohio.

  She had discovered she was part of a tiny human female group called the select. Apparently the perfect match for males of the Band. But what does one do when you are the best match for two of the Band?

  That, Clara had determined, was something she was yet to answer.

  As the time drew near for her to choose, she was alarmingly undecided and the two Band members were becoming increasingly hostile toward each other. For the sake of harmony between her sphere and the clan she must choose.

  Soon.

  “Clara,” Charles said her name, so deep in her musings she had forgotten he was there and had inadvertently slowed her pace to a crawl. Increasing her stride she moved as fast as he.

  “I do apologize. I was one hundred spheres away,” she answered, exasperated.

  Charles looked down at Clara and thought there was too much on her young shoulders. He had thought this many times over the past year. Her courtship with the two of the Band, Matthew and Bracus, should have cooled his feelings for her. On the contrary. It had increased his desire to rule by her side. She did not feel as he. Instead, she had been consumed by this worthless quest to find her kin.

  Her supposed kin.

  They reached the crest of the hill and he took her elbow. Clara looked up at him. “Do not begin to preach about this, Charles.” She snatched her arm away.

  His eyes narrowed on her. She did not safeguard herself. It was Charles' burden to insist on her protection for she would not protect herself. He opened his mouth to speak and she held up her hand.

  “Let us agree to disagree Charles,” she said, her eyes pleading to let the subject rest. They had argued endlessly this winter. She would not see reason. She wished to find this elusive mother. This woman that had gills as the Band. Charles thought it folly.

  He took both her arms again and drug her close to him, his eyes roving the vicinity for witnesses. They had entirely too little privacy and he loathed it.

  “Stop it,” she wiggled in his grasp and his hands tightened on her just shy of painful.

  “You do not need to do this Clara. Let us turn back. You have a kingdom to rule,” he shook her slightly and her eyes widened. “Do you forget your duty?”

  “I have never forgotten, Charles,” she hissed back at him, tears burning the back of her eyelids. What had happened to their friendship?

  Matthew appeared out of nowhere, his eyes lighting on the hands which held Clara.

  “Take your hands off of her before I break them at the wrists, sphere-dweller,” Matthew said with quiet menace.

  Charles' eyes flicked to Matthew's and Clara said, “We were having an exchange.”

  “He may speak with you and need not use his hands,” Matthew said as Charles' hands fell away from Clara's forearms.

  She fought not to rub her hands over where they had been.

  Matthew saw her expression and reading it correctly his gills expanded, the pink innards like ribbons against his throat as he came forward, his hands balling into fists.

  Charles moved forward to meet him.

  Clara scurried between them, placing a hand on Matthew chest, covered by a lightweight tunic. The bronze skin of his throat a testimony to their month of travel Outside.

  “Stop it, both of you,” she commanded in a low voice.

  “What is happening here?” Thomas asked, his hand hovering over the dirk he wore at his hip, the deep violet vest he wore lifting in the breeze.

  Matthew did not turn but kept his eyes on Charles'. “Your queen's adviser,” Matthew spit the word out like errant phlegm, “has seen fit to lay hands upon her.”

  Thomas released his dirk, the sound of it escaping the leather a harsh memory to Clara's ears. She reacted quickly so things would not escalate. “It is fine, Thomas. Charles and I...we have a difference of goals.”

  Thomas looked from one to the other. Finally, his eyes rested on Charles. “You do understand, Sir, that you may never touch our monarch without express consent?” His hand held the dirk naked in his grasp.

  “Of course, Thomas. It is not I that need
s supervision,” Charles said with clear accusation dripping from every syllable.

  Matthew drew Clara into his body and Charles' eyes narrowed.

  “Somehow it is acceptable that the brute of the Clan touch her?” he threw his hand out at the two of them bound so tightly together.

  Clara had but a moment's peace in the arms of Matthew, a place she did not allow herself to dwell, then stepped away. With the cocoon of his warmth now gone, a melancholy began to steal its way inside of her.

  Sarah approached from the bosom of the forest.

  “For Guardian's sake, what say you?” she huffed, her hands on her hips.

  Clara gave a weak smile in her direction. Sarah would thrash her logic about and the men would be left gasping as fish without water.

  “Charles and I were discussing...” Clara began.

  “Arguing, more like,” Sarah corrected with a narrow look at Charles and Clara sighed.

  Charles glared at Sarah and she saw his look. “You are behaving like a jack ass!” she stated, affronted.

  Thomas sucked in his breath and Matthew hid his mirth badly, a smile forming around his full lips, his blue eyes blazing out of a sun-kissed face.

  “Stay away from this Sarah,” Charles warned.

  “I will not,” Sarah stomped her foot in the dry prairie grass and it rustled in protest. “It does no good to volunteer to agree to journey with us then protest said journey at every opportunity. Must it always be your way, Charles? Does our queen not deserve a peace? Does she not deserve to find a true relation?”

  Sarah placed her hands on her hips, her blond hair blending with the wheat-colored grass that surrounded the group, moving about her as the wind picked up.

  “You cannot be for this. She takes her suitors on this journey, leaves the kingdom to my father and we travel to Guardian knows where to find a mysterious relation. It is by far the worst thing. Oh! and let me expound: the fragment and rival clans lay scattered about and could kill us all before we reach the fabled Cape Cod,” Charles challenged.

  “I should not have brought you,” Clara said with sadness. “I knew that things had changed in our...understanding, but I wished for it to be as it had been before.” Clara looked at Charles with such sadness, a longing for the easy friendship they had shared.

  Charles beheld her expression and could not understand why she didn't see reason? He was the choice for her. The Band? The Band be damned! It did not matter a fig that she was some select? What of it? He fumed.

  Matthew said, “We have not seen fragment these thirty days,” he shrugged a bare shoulder.

  Charles turned on him and Clara saw Thomas tense. “What say you? You are so busy chasing her skirt that you let your duties for her protection wane to your voluptuous appetite.”

  Clara turned in one fluid motion and slapped Charles face, his head rocked back and she instantly regretted it.

  Her wrist felt broken, for one.

  A red imprint of her small hand lay upon his face. His nostrils flared and he turned without a word and stalked off into the woods.

  Matthew took the hand that she cradled against her chest and turning it, he laid a feathers kiss on the inside of the wrist. He looked deeply into her eyes and she cast hers to the ground, her soft walking moccasins buried in the pale flesh of the grass.

  Other shoes appeared beside hers and she looked into Sarah's cornflower blue eyes. “He has lost all sense. Can you not see? He does not 'advise' any longer; he rants,” Sarah said as she put a piece of copper hair behind Clara's ear.

  Clara knew this. She could no longer shake the memory of what they had been together. Her best friend, her most loyal cohort in all things. The one that sought her relentlessly through the Outside to save her from an uncertain fate.

  But he was no longer that person.

  Charles could not accept a friendship that did not also include romance.

  Matthew stood quietly beside her, as was his way. His hair dancing along the tops of his shoulders, his eyes intent on her.

  She sighed again. “My Lady,” Thomas began, the one guard in the royal contingent that had been left behind when her mother made her devastating journey Outside. “What would you have of me?”

  Clara was mortified. She had lost her temper in a most repugnant fashion in front of her first officer of the Royal Guard. She was remiss. “Thomas, I am truly sorry you had to witness...” Clara floundered.

  But Thomas broke in before she could continue, “We of the guard understand the position you are in with Charles Pierce. We think he is an excellent man of worth.”

  The but stood in the air.

  Sarah said what only she could, “He will have to serve in another capacity, Clara. He is too near to you emotionally to offer sound advice, of anything,” she shrugged.

  Clara looked at Matthew and Thomas. “Please, gentlemen, leave Sarah and I to finish this conversation in private.”

  Matthew shook his head. “There must be someone standing watch at all times, Queen Clara.”

  “Clara,” she corrected him and he gave the barest incline of his head.

  “Fine,” she said, vexed. Clara began to pace back and forth and Sarah tracked her frenetic rhythm.

  “Matthew...Thomas, give us but a moment alone together so we may converse. She needs to be attended by a woman presently.” Sarah stared at Matthew.

  He relented reluctantly. “I will stand right there,” he pointed to a stand of evergreens that heralded a natural break of entry into the forest. “I will be observing, very closely.” He moved forward and pressed a kiss to Clara's forehead and met Sarah's eyes over the top of her head, his filled with clear warning.

  Clara felt the electric tingle that spiraled from the point of contact, his lips departing a thin thread that ran from the warmth of his mouth pressed against her skin to...other areas. She blushed, feeling the heat of her embarrassment acutely, visible for all to see on her fair skin.

  Matthew gave her a rare grin. He was very aware of what reaction a kiss would illicit from a select so closely affected by one of the Band.

  He gave another look at Sarah. Be careful, that look said. She nodded and he made his way toward the trees, his long stride eating up the distance. He arrived and turned, leaning against the tree and sharpening one of his many blades against a stone, the ghost of that smile still riding his lips.

  *

  “Tell me I am not mad like one of King Otto's relatives,” Clara said.

  It was well-known that people from that sphere were too closely related, causing minds that were soft or worse.

  Sarah grinned, pressing her forehead against Clara's. “Dear Heart, you are many things, but mad is not one of them.” She leaned against Clara and wrapped her in an embrace that was tight and fierce. Clara let herself relax against her friend.

  Finally, when she thought she could speak once more, “Is this a fool's errand, Sarah? Is Charles correct?”

  Sarah deliberated. She would tell Clara the truth, that is what friends did. True friends.

  Slowly, Sarah shook her head. “He has a seed of truth in his argument.”

  Clara's face crumpled and Sarah rushed on, “He does not understand what it would be to be a royal orphan. And it is somehow worse than that, Queen Ada was not your true blood.”

  Clara stared at Sarah and whispered, “I should not have struck him. I am ashamed. After the violence I suffered at the hand of the queen...Frederick. I should not have.”

  Sarah laid her hand within Clara's and squeezed the smallness of it once and Clara winced.

  “What?”

  “It hurts!” Clara laughed.

  Sarah grinned. “Ah...from the bludgeoning you laid on Charles?” she said coyly.

  Clara nodded. “Yes, that.” A small smile began to spread across her face, her somber self-recrimination floating away for the moment.

  Clarence approached and his eyes were for Sarah first but then fell on Clara. Her guilt over the interchange came surging back in a tide
of emotion.

  “Queen Clara,” he bowed and she executed a small curtsey. She had long-since given up coaxing him into calling her Clara. He was too formal by far to comply.

  Sarah looked up into Clarence's face. “Why hello, Clarence,” she murmured while batting her eyelashes. Sarah knew full-well her affect upon him. He blushed a maddening brick red and muttered a greeting.

  Sarah was antagonizing him. They had been friends, as Charles and she had, the four of them inseparable. But now there was a shift in awareness happening. The journey east had revealed many things.

  He turned to Clara, ignoring Sarah for the moment and managed to get out, “Charles is remiss, Queen Clara. Please, would it be too much to ask that you engage in a reconciliation?” Clarence's eyes pleaded with her to understand.

  Of course Clara understood. She wanted nothing more than for she and Charles to come to an understanding.

  Sarah interjected, “She is sovereign here. Charles needs to quit acting the fool and allow her to rule, Clarence. It is he that needs to defer to her.”

  Clarence turned with a glare on his face and she stepped uncomfortably close and his anger eased, his face softening before her closeness. “I know well your friendship. However,” her hand reached out and ran a gliding finger down the front of the royal purple vest that he and the rest of the small guard contingent wore, “you must be cognizant of how his feelings muddle his intent.”

  Clarence tracked her hand, utterly forgetting Clara's presence, she noted with amusement. Sarah was playing a very dangerous game. Clara was not sure of Sarah's true feelings for him. And as she thought it, Philip came charging up on his horse. His eyes taking in the scene of Sarah with her hand on another man. His brows shot down over his intense eyes, his steed's hooves dancing in nervousness underneath his massive body.

  Sarah snatched her hand away from Clarence and he woke as if from a dream, startling.

  “I was coming to fetch the queen and Sarah,” he said in way of explanation.