Free Shadows Book 1 in the World of Shadows by Cheree Alsop Page A

at the clothes in my hands.
The white shirt was made of a soft fabric I had never felt before.
It was silky but breathed well, a shirt perfect for the hot desert
sun. The pants were of animal skin, but worked so soft that my
fingers made little whorls on the hide. I held them to my nose and
could detect a very faint rawhide smell, but it was hidden under
the soaps and creams used to tan the hide and probably undetectable
to the less sensitive Luminos nose.
    I ignored the shoes entirely. I had never
worn shoes and didn't know how Axon and his men could bear to wear
such uncomfortable looking things everywhere they went.
    I found some underclothes in a drawer on the
right of the dresser, and was grateful Jatha had refrained from
mentioning them to let me save some pride. I piled my old clothes
in a corner of the room, dismayed at how dirty they were compared
to the beautiful white rug and cream upholstery around me. I went
to the bowl by the mirror and used the rag to wash myself.
    When I smelled thoroughly of the unknown
flowers in the bowl and nothing of the hot desert sand and baking
sun, I slipped into the soft underclothes, relishing the way they
felt against my damaged skin. I stepped into the pants and fastened
them using the braided belt of the same hide that they came with,
then pulled on the white shirt. The fabric rested softly on my
shoulders as though I wore a breeze that soothed my skin instead of
scratching against it like my shirt from the Caves. I sighed and
turned to the mirror.
    The features of the Duskie girl that stared
back at me had softened somewhat as though a night without fearing
for her life had taken away a few rough years. I touched my face to
convince myself she was really me. I had never been so clean, nor
worn such fine clothing. I didn't feel like myself.
    A knock sounded at the door and I turned.
When the door didn’t open and the knock sounded again, I hurried to
open it.
    Axon stood dressed in a regal gold doublet
edged in black, with matching black pants and a gold cape that hung
from his shoulders. His shoulder-length light hair was washed and
combed back, and he smelled of the outdoors in a way that said the
scent was bottled instead of obtained by true wandering. He looked
me up and down as though he couldn’t help himself and his eyes
widened. “Hello, Nexa?”
    I smiled at the question in his voice and
couldn’t help the color that rose to my cheeks. “Good morning,
Axon. How did you sleep?” I applauded myself for regurgitating the
niceties I had heard the upper class at the Caves speak, though it
always seemed strange to me that the quality of someone’s sleep was
a topic of conversation.
    A soft smile touched Axon's lips. “Very
well; I didn’t have to worry about waking up to an attack.”
    I laughed. “That’s how I felt.”
    His shoulders relaxed and he nodded at the
room. “Feeling a little more comfortable here?”
    I looked behind me at the waded up blanket
on the rug and the untidy pile of clothes in the corner and felt
suddenly guilty. “I should clean it up. I’m sorry, I-“
    Axon caught my arm before I could turn away.
“I’m glad that you’re comfortable,” he said pointedly. “You’re a
guest here and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want
to.”
    I shrugged out of his grasp. “It’s not even
my room. I shouldn’t be so cavalier about it. It’s just that Jatha
and Staden came early to check on how I was healing and Jatha
picked out some clothes for me to wear.” I stopped at the look on
Axon’s face. Red touched my cheeks again and I couldn’t explain why
I had blushed more in the last hundred heartbeats than I had my
entire life. “What?”
    A smile started at his eyes and echoed on
his lips. “I’m just trying to picture Jatha picking out
clothes.”
    A laugh escaped me. “He wanted me to wear a
dress.”
    “ That I really would have
liked to see.” He lowered his eyes before I could tell if he was
joking or not, and the