“Do not!” her father warned, taking hold of her arm and drawing her close. “Do not even think about speaking to him on such”—he glanced at the fires now banked low in his hearth—“such matters as these.”
The fear gazing back at her from his eyes should have been enough to steer her from such a path. The whispered warning should have been sufficient to caution anyone not a bairn or a fool. The need that grew ever deeper and stronger within her pushed her in that dangerous direction. The desire to know her origins and the extent of these strange powers that inhabited her never diminished.
Words drifted to her in that silent moment, and she shivered. The power in them tempted her and called to her deepest longings.
Mine. Come to me.
Daughter of my blood.
Brienne, who had belonged to no one, who could call none family or kin, longed to be part of something. And this whispered invitation called to that deep need within her. She tried to shake off the fear and the temptation, but it all settled within her, keeping her blood heated and that unspoken need stoked. Gavin’s sad expression called her back to this cottage and this moment.
“Nay, you are right, Father. ’Twould be foolish to speak to him,” Brienne assured him, nodding her head.
Gavin kissed her on the top of her head, just as he always had when reassuring her, and released her from his arms.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Terri Brisbin is the USA Today bestselling author of the Novels of the Stone Circles series, featuring Raging Sea and Rising Fire. A three-time RWA RITA® finalist, Terri has sold more than two million copies of her historical and paranormal romance novels, novellas, and short stories in more than twenty languages in twenty-five countries around the world since 1998. She lives in New Jersey with her husband. She has three sons and three daughters-in-law and is a dental hygienist.
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