His brother and bride were nauseatingly happy, and he was not fit company for happy people. It had nothing to do with the fact that his brother had wed Owen’s childhood sweetheart. The discovery of Jamie and Paget happily wed might have surprised him if he allowed himself to consider events . . . but it had not overly concerned him. Not as it would have four years ago when he was besotted with Paget. When he possessed a heart. When he was more than the shell of a man that he was now.
He felt only relief to know that Paget had moved on—that she wasn’t waiting for him. There was no disappointing her. Because what he was, who had become . . . there was no coming back from that.
The Owen whom Jamie and Paget once knew was dead. Lost halfway around the world.
His mount quickened its pace, and he knew he was approaching the river. Reaching its banks, he dismounted and led the horse to water, holding the reins loosely in his hand as it drank.
He scanned his surroundings, his gaze missing nothing on land or water. He might be in the land of his birth, a mere day’s ride from London, but a part of him would always be back in India scouting for rebels. Ready to kill. A talent he had perfected these past few years. It turned out he was extraordinarily good at killing.
His gaze stopped, arresting on something several yards downriver. Everything inside him tightened with familiar alertness, his time as a soldier rushing to the surface.
Ever wary, he moved closer. At first, he thought it nothing more than a mound of fabric, discarded and washed ashore. Even soiled, the material was startling white alongside the muddy bank. But then he detected the shape of a body beneath the sopping wet fabric.
A female body.
She lay face down, a limp arm stretched above her head. One leg stretched out, its pale foot and calf disappearing into the ink of water. He took a slow look around, well aware that a trap could wait anywhere. She could be the bait some nefarious brigands left to lure unsuspecting travelers to a foul end.
The still and silent woods met his sweeping stare, the gentle slap of water the only sound. He pushed the ghosts from his head, burying the cries of dead men deep as he turned his attention back to the woman. He cautiously approached. Crouching, he carefully touched her shoulder and rolled her onto her back.
She was young. Her face ashen. Eyes closed, her lashes fanned out against her cheeks in dark crescents that looked almost obscene against her waxy, colorless skin.
He pressed his fingertips to her throat. Icy cold to the touch, her pulse hiccupped there, the smallest, barely there flutter. Soft as a moth’s wings. Not good.
He leaned closer, listening for her breath. The air escaped her bloodless lips in tiny, hard-fought rasps. He compressed his lips.
His gaze skimmed her, assessing. Scratches, cuts, and bruises marred her pale skin. The hem of her gown was streaked in faint pink tinges of blood. He tugged the gown up, checking for injuries, wincing at the sight of her right leg. From the odd shape, it was clearly broken. A deep gash on her foot probably needed stitching as well. Owen glanced to the river and back at her, marveling that she was alive. Given her injuries, he couldn’t quite fathom how she had not drowned.
Staring at her for a long moment, he brushed some of the brown hair from her forehead. “How’d you get in that river, hmm?”
His mind quickly worked, plotting the best way to find her help. He spent the last five years attacking sepoys, assassinating them at the behest of his commanders. He was about taking lives, not saving.
They were a day’s ride from his family home—not that he wanted to return there again. The next village was a half day ride south. He’d planned on spending the night there before continuing on to London.
Sighing, he glanced around them again, suddenly wishing someone else would happen upon them. Someone better equipped to care for a female who didn’t look as though she would live out the day.
“Come, little one,” he murmured, slipping his arms beneath her, one under her legs and the other at her back, taking care not to jostle her wounded leg more than necessary.
Contrary to his words, she was no fragile bit of crystal. She was generously curved in his arms, and yet his six-foot-plus frame ate up the distance toward his horse as if she weighed nothing at all. After grueling conditions in India, she was a slight burden. Not when he had lived so long with pain and discomfort.
Remounting with her in his arms was a tricky task, but he managed it, laying her carefully across his lap. With her legs dangled off to one side, he grasped the reins and prodded his mount to move. Her head lolled against his chest, her face settling against his well-worn jacket. Almost trustingly, it seemed. Absurd, of course. She was unconscious.
Disconcerted, he blinked down at her. It was impossible to recall the last time a woman had fallen asleep in his arms. There’d been women in his life, in his bed, but no one that he actually slept with. No one he had held in his arms once he satisfied his body’s need for them.
Looking up again, he urged his mount into a faster clip, eager to reach the next town and rid himself of this newfound burden. So that he could be on his way. Just him and the demons of his past.
The female in his arms stiffened with a sharp gasp.
Startled, he looked down to find himself staring into a pair of brown eyes. Framed in lush lashes, the eyes were no ordinary brown. They were velvety . . . chocolate rimmed in the darkest black. They shined, luminous, as if lit from within. She stared directly at him, the fear there unmistakable.
His hand reached down to cup her face, trying to offer some comfort. “Don’t be frightened. I mean you no harm.”
Nothing in her wild, searching gaze indicated she understood or even heard him. Those eyes looked right through him, as though she were somewhere else entirely, caught up in a living nightmare. Her breath fell faster in sharp little pains.
“Easy,” he soothed, not really knowing what sort of words he should say. He wasn’t accustomed to doling out comfort or reassurances. He pressed a hand awkwardly over her forehead and made a hushing sound. The kind his old nanny used to make whenever he’d hurt himself.
Perhaps it worked. Or perhaps she was just out of her head with pain.
Her eyelids drifted shut. After a long moment, he looked back up at the road and urged his mount faster, suddenly determined that she would live out the day.
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An Excerpt from
FIRELIGHT
Gazing out at the quiet lake, I know the risk is worth it.
The water is still and smooth. Polished glass. Not a ripple of wind disturbs the dark surface. Low-rising mist drifts off liquid mountains floating against a purple-bruised sky. An eager breath shudders past my lips. Soon the sun will break.
Azure arrives, winded. She doesn’t bother with the kickstand. Her bike clatters next to mine on the ground. “Didn’t you hear me calling? You know I can’t pedal as fast as you.”
“I didn’t want to miss this.”
Finally, the sun peeks over the mountains in a thin line of red-gold that edges the dark lake.
Azure sighs beside me, and I know she’s doing the same thing I am—imagining how the early morning light will taste on her skin.
“Jacinda,” she says, “we shouldn’t do this.” But her voice lacks conviction.
I dig my hands into my pockets and rock on the balls of my feet. “You want to be here as badly as I do. Look at that sun.”
Before Azure can mutter another complaint, I’m shucking off my clothes. Stashing them behind a bush, I stand at the water’s edge, trembling, but not from the cold bite of early morning. Excitement shivers through me.
Azure’s clothes hit the ground. “Cassian’s not going to like this,” she says.
I scowl. As if I care what he thinks. He’s not my boyfriend. Even if he did
surprise attack me in Evasive Flight Maneuvers yesterday and try to hold my hand. “Don’t ruin this. I don’t want to think about him right now.”
This little rebellion is partly about getting away from him. Cassian. Always hovering. Always there. Watching me with his dark eyes. Waiting. Tamra can have him. I spend a lot of my time wishing he wanted her—that the pride would choose her instead of me. Anyone but me. A sigh shudders from my lips. I just hate that they’re not giving me a choice.
But it’s a long way off before anything has to be settled. I won’t think about it now.
“Let’s go.” I relax my thoughts and absorb everything humming around me. The branches with their gray-green leaves. The birds stirring against the dawn. Clammy mist hugs my calves. I flex my toes on the coarse rasp of ground, mentally counting the number of pebbles beneath the bottoms of my feet. And the familiar pull begins in my chest. My human exterior melts away, fades, replaced with my thicker draki skin.
My face tightens, cheeks sharpening, subtly shifting, stretching. My breath changes as my nose shifts, ridges pushing out from the bridge. My limbs loosen and lengthen. The drag of my bones feels good. I lift my face to the sky. The clouds become more than smudges of gray. I see them as though I’m already gliding through them. Feel cool condensation kiss my body.
It doesn’t take long. It’s perhaps one of my quickest manifests. With my thoughts unfettered and clear, with no one else around except Azure, it’s easier. No Cassian with his brooding looks. No Mom with fear in her eyes. None of the others, watching, judging, sizing me up.
Always sizing me up.
My wings grow, slightly longer than the length of my back. The gossamer width of them pushes free. They unfurl with a soft whisper on the air—a sigh. As if they, too, seek relief. Freedom.
A familiar vibration swells up through my chest. Almost like a purr. Turning, I look at Azure, and see she is ready, beautiful beside me. Iridescent blue. In the growing light, I note the hues of pink and purple buried in the deep blue of her draki skin. Such a small thing I never noticed before.
Only now I see it, in the break of dawn, when we are meant to soar. When the pride forbids it. At night you miss so much.
Looking down, I admire the red-gold luster of my sleek arms. Thoughts drift. I recall a chunk of amber in my family’s cache of precious stones and gems. My skin looks like that now. Baltic amber trapped in sunlight. It’s deceptive. My skin appears delicate, but it’s as tough as armor. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen myself this way. Too long since I’ve tasted sun on my skin.
Azure purrs softly beside me. We lock eyes—eyes with enlarged irises and dark vertical slits for pupils—and I know she’s over her complaints. She stares at me with irises of glowing blue, as happy as I am to be here. Even if we broke every rule in the pride to sneak off protected grounds. We’re here. We’re free.
On the balls of my feet, I spring into the air. My wings snap, wiry membranes stretching as they lift me up.
With a twirl, I soar.
Azure is there, laughing beside me, the sound low and guttural.
Wind rushes over us and sweet sunlight kisses our flesh. Once we’re high enough, she drops, descends through the air in a blurring tailspin, careening toward the lake.
My lip curls. “Show-off!” I call, the rumble of draki speech vibrating deep in my throat as she dives into the lake and remains underwater for several minutes.
As a water draki, whenever she enters water, gills appear on the side of her body, enabling her to survive submerged . . . well, forever, if she chooses. One of the many useful talents our dragon ancestors assumed in order to survive. Not all of us can do this, of course. I can’t.
I do other things.
Hovering over the lake, I wait for Azure to emerge. Finally, she breaks the surface in a glistening spray of water, her blue body radiant in the air, wings showering droplets.
“Nice,” I say.
“Let’s see you!”
I shake my head and set out again, diving through the tangle of mountains, ignoring Azure’s “c’mon, it’s so cool!”
My talent is not cool. I would give anything to change it. To be a water draki. Or a phaser. Or a visiocrypter. Or an onyx. Or . . . Really, the list goes on.
Instead, I am this.
I breathe fire. The only fire-breather in the pride in more than four hundred years. It’s made me more popular than I want to be. Ever since I manifested at age eleven, I’ve ceased to be Jacinda. Instead, I’m fire-breather. A fact that has the pride deciding my life as if it’s theirs to control. They’re worse than my mother.
Suddenly I hear something beyond the whistling wind and humming mists of the snow-capped mountains at every side. A faint, distant sound.
My ears perk. I stop, hovering in the dense air.
Azure cocks her head; her dragon eyes blink, staring hard. “What is it? A plane?”
The noise grows, coming fast, a steady beat now. “We should get low.”
Nodding, Azure dives. I follow, glancing behind us, seeing only the jagged cropping of mountains. But hearing more. Feeling more.
It keeps coming.
The sound chases us.
“Should we go back to the bikes?” Azure looks back at me, her blue-streaked black hair rippling like a flag in the wind.
I hesitate. I don’t want this to end. Who knows when we can sneak out again? The pride watches me so closely, Cassian is always—
“Jacinda!” Azure points one iridescent blue finger through the air.
I turn and look. My heart seizes.
A chopper rounds a low mountain, so small in the distance, but growing larger as it approaches, cutting through the mist.
“Go!” I shout. “Drop!”
I dive, clawing wind, my wings folded flat against my body, legs poised arrow straight, perfectly angled for speed.
But not fast enough.
The chopper blades beat the air in a pounding frenzy. Hunters. Wind tears at my eyes as I fly faster than I’ve ever flown before.
Azure falls behind. I scream for her, glancing back, reading the dark desperation in her liquid gaze. “Az, keep up!”
Water draki aren’t built for speed. We both know that. Her voice twists into a sob and I hear just how well she knows it in the broken sound. “I’m trying! Don’t leave me! Jacinda! Don’t leave me!”
Behind us, the chopper still comes. Bitter fear coats my mouth as two more join it, killing any hope that it was a random helicopter out for aerial photos. It’s a squadron, and they are definitely hunting us.
Is this how it happened with Dad? Were his last moments like this? Tossing my head, I shove the thought away. I’m not going to die today—my body broken and sold off into bits and pieces.
I nod to the nearing treetops. “There!”
Draki never fly low to the ground, but we don’t have a choice.
Azure follows me, weaving in my wake. She pulls close to my side, narrowly missing the flashing trees in her wild fear. I stop and drift in place, chest heaving with savage breath. The choppers whir overhead, their pounding beat deafening, stirring the trees into a frothing green foam.
“We should demanifest,” Az says, panting.
As if we could. We’re too frightened. Draki can never hold human form in a state of fear. It’s a survival mechanism. At our core we’re draki; that’s where we derive our strength.
I peer up through the latticework of shaking branches shielding us, the scent of pine and forest ripe in my nostrils.
“I can get myself under control,” Az insists in our guttural tongue.
I shake my head. “Even if that’s true, it’s too risky. We have to wait them out. If they see two girls out here . . . after they just spotted two female draki, they might get suspicious.” A cold fist squeezes around my heart. I can’t let that happen. Not just for me, but for everyone. For draki everywhere. The secret of our ability to appear as humans is our greatest defense.
“If we’re not home
in the next hour, we’re busted!”
I bite my lip to stop from telling her we have more to worry about than the pride discovering we snuck out. I don’t want to scare her even more than she already is.
“We have to hide for a little—”
Another sound penetrates the beating blades of a chopper. A low drone on the air. The tiny hairs at my nape tingle. Something else is out there. Below. On the ground. Growing closer.
I look skyward, my long talonlike fingers flexing open and shut, wings vibrating in barely controlled movement. Instinct urges flight, but I know they’re up there. Waiting. Circling buzzards. I spy their dark shapes through the treetops. My chest tightens. They aren’t going away.
I motion Az to follow me into the thick branches of a towering pine. Folding our wings close to our bodies, we shove amid the itchy needles, fighting the scraping twigs. Holding our breath, we wait.
Then the land comes alive, swarming with an entourage of vehicles: trucks, SUVs, dirt bikes.
“No,” I rasp, eyeing the vehicles, the men, armed to the teeth. In a truck bed, two men crouch at the ready, a great net launcher before them. Seasoned hunters. They know what they’re doing. They know what they’re hunting.
Az trembles so badly the thick branch we’re crouched on starts to shake, leaves rustling. I clutch her hand. The dirt bikes lead the way, moving at a dizzying speed. A driver of one SUV motions out the window. “Look to the trees,” he shouts, his voice deep, terrifying.
Az fidgets. I clutch her hand harder. A bike is directly below us now. The driver wears a black T-shirt that hugs his young muscled body. My skin tightens almost painfully.
“I can’t stay here,” Az chokes out beside me. “I’ve got to go!”
“Az,” I growl, my low rumbling tones fervent, desperate. “That’s what they want. They’re trying to flush us out. Don’t panic.”
The Earl in My Bed: A Forgotten Princesses Valentine Novella Page 8
