Free Embrace the Magic (The Blood Rose Series Book 2) by Caris Roane

you?”
    She smiled when she spoke, teasing him, but the imagery made him sit up again way too fast. His head swam and he barely kept from throwing up what she’d just given him. “Don’t talk like that about her.” Now he was defensive. Great.
    “I can see I’d better go.”
    “Thanks again, Angela.”
    “Anytime.”
    He waved a hand and heard her leave, the door snapping shut behind her.
    How the hell was he supposed to get through the night’s patrols in this condition? And what would he do if Ry chose to challenge him?
    *** *** ***
    At four-thirty in the afternoon, Samantha sat in Ethan’s conservatory and dined on some of the finest food she’d ever eaten, made savory by the herbs grown in the mastyr’s kitchen garden.
    Marta, the housekeeper and a lovely troll, had set up a table in the conservatory, then brought her a perfect spinach omelet and a shallow bowl full of succulent mixed berries.
    She enjoyed the black tea, in particular, sweetened as it was with raw sugar and cream.
    She felt really spoiled except for the fact that she was no longer in Shreveport and that her life had been turned upside down.
    Staring up at the crystal apex, the music had never been prettier. She’d awakened to it throughout her sleeping hours, aware that the sounds resonated with a part of her deep inside, the part that was fae.
    Just as she set her mug on the wrought iron table in front of her, she felt a strange vibration deep in her chest, not a warning exactly, more like an announcement or a revelation.
    She stood up, and hand between her breasts. Her heart still thudded around in her chest, of course. That was a given because of her proximity to Ethan.
    But this felt different.
    Again, this felt very fae.
    She pivoted toward the arched doorway and there, cast in a glow from the sun still lighting up the crystal roof, stood the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen, and she was fae.
    Vojalie.
    Samantha felt the woman’s identity in her bones, as if she’d always known her.
    She was tall, like Samantha, probably close to the same height, though Samantha might have been a little taller. She had fae features, a thin nose and a chin that came to a strong fae point, though not so severe as most. She wore a narrow headband to hold back her dark brown hair, which hung past her waist ending in a series of soft curls. Her dark eyes, which twinkled, matched her hair.
    “You must be Samantha even though I confess you don’t look a great deal like your mother.”
    “I was always told I resembled my daddy. I could see it in the mirror, as well. Now that I see you, I realize how fae she really was.” She began walking toward Vojalie as though pulled by an ancient connection. She almost thought ‘family’, which she supposed came from their shared heritage as fae.
    Vojalie, standing beneath a large ficus tree, held out both her hands and smiled. “I’m so glad to meet Andrea’s daughter.”
    When Samantha reached the powerful fae, she didn’t hesitate, not even for a second, to put her hands in Vojalie’s.
    She gasped as a sensation like a balloon flying into the air took hold of her. She felt light, buoyant, free, a strange, euphoric experience. “I feel like I’m coming home after a long absence, but how is that possible?”
    Vojalie’s warm brown eyes filled with tears. “I missed your mother so much. I took her death hard. We barely spoke after she moved to Shreveport so that I never even knew about you. She wanted a different life, you see, and nothing more to do with me or Bergisson or any of the Nine Realms. I had to respect her wishes so I hope you’ll understand that.”
    “Well, of course.” Samantha withdrew her hands from Vojalie’s soft grasp. “But you must have been really good friends at one time. I mean you speak like you were sisters or something.” Vojalie didn’t look older than Samantha, but the world of the Nine Realms was a long-lived world, something she had to keep remembering.
    A slight