Free The Blood Curse by Emily Gee Page B

examine a fur cloak, watched her scan the crowd. She didn’t know Petrus had told him about the dreams; her awareness of him would be different, if she knew. Conflicting emotions fought in his chest. He missed her, curse it. Missed the dreams. Missed talking with her. Missed the contentment of holding her in his arms, and yes, missed the sex. But mixed with the longing was a resentment edging towards anger that she’d pretended to be Justen, that she’d lied to him for months, that she hadn’t told him the truth about the dreams. She told Rand and Petrus, but not me! And overriding those emotions, was an anxious protectiveness. Innis shouldn’t be here. It was too dangerous. She was too young. She should go back to the Allied Kingdoms, where mages weren’t reviled and killed. Where there was no curse.
    Something nipped his calf.
    “Ouch.” Harkeld bent and rubbed his leg. He frowned at the black dog.
    Serril wasn’t looking at him. His gaze was fixed on something on the other side of the market square. He growled, his hackles rising.
    The hairs on Harkeld’s scalp stood on end. He slowly straightened, his hand on his sword. He followed Serril’s gaze. A man stood beside a cartload of iron pots. Amid the clamor of the market his demeanor was calm and watchful, alert. He leaned against the cart, but his hand wasn’t far from his sword hilt. His physique was lean, his hair clipped short, his jaw clean-shaven.
    His gaze was on Innis.
    Harkeld tensed. “Fithian?”
    The dog gave a curt nod.
    Harkeld’s protectiveness surged into something close to panic. Innis didn’t look like the other women in the marketplace. It wasn’t her garb—the refugees wore a miscellany of clothes; some of them dressed in men’s trews, like Innis, and a few even had swords strapped at their waists. But none of those women carried their swords with ease, as if they knew how to use them. And none of them moved the way Innis did. She lacked the edgy desperation, the fear. She was like the Fithian: calm, watchful, alert. And the man had noticed.
    “Does she know?” He pushed through the crowd towards Innis.
    The dog nipped his calf again, almost drawing blood.
    “Stop that,” Harkeld said, and elbowed his way past a stocky farmer.
    The dog sank its teeth into his trews, halting him.
    “Serril!” Harkeld hissed, wrenching his leg free with a sharp tearing of fabric. “He’s seen her! We don’t have time for—”
    The dog moved to block his way, teeth bared, snarling.
    I’m important, not Innis. I’m the one Serril will save.
    The realization made his panic spike. Harkeld shoved past the dog. “Innis!” he shouted. “Get—”
    A hawk screamed warning overhead, drowning his words. A flash of steel sliced through the air. Throwing star.
    Harkeld grabbed his fire magic—scorching hot—and hurled it. The weapon flared alight with a white-hot burst of flame and sharp thunderclap of sound.
    For a moment there was utter silence—and then the marketplace erupted into chaos.
    Harkeld threw himself back against a stall and crouched, his sword clenched in his hand. Around him, people screamed and pushed to flee. Serril stood at his shoulder, hackles up, a low growl rumbling in his chest. Adel hunkered behind them. The crowd surged past. What did they fear most? The assassin’s weapon, or the magic that had destroyed it?
    Harkeld gripped his sword, straining for a glimpse of Innis, for a glimpse of the Fithian. He shoved aside his panic. Innis would have shifted. She’d be a bird now, a dog, a lizard. She’d be safe.
    “Serril, how many of them are there?”
    The black dog wrinkled its lips, pushed its lower jaw out, uttered a growl that sounded like...
    “Two?”
    The dog nodded.
    “Adel,” Harkeld said, his gaze fixed on where Innis had been. “Stay here.”
    The water mage uttered a squeak of dismay. Harkeld ignored it. He gripped his sword tightly and headed in the direction he’d last seen Innis.
    Serril gave a