Free Raven's Strike by Patricia Briggs

took a relieved breath. “Hennea, keep that troll dry so it burns to ash.”
    â€œDone.”
    â€œPapa,” said Rinnie, dazedly staring at Tier. “Is it dead?”
    Tier sheathed his sword and swung down from Skew’s back, grunting as he hit the ground. But his knees didn’t stop him from picking Rinnie up and pulling her tight.
    â€œShh,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
    But he spoke too soon.
    The troll rolled across the wards and kept coming.
    Tier, with his back to the burning troll, his eyes on Rinnie, had no warning. The dying monster struck him a glancing blow that knocked him off his feet. Tier rolled over until Rinnie was below him, protecting her with his body.
    But the troll knew where they were now and brought forward a three-fingered hand and wrapped it around Tier’s legs.
    The troll still lay across Seraph’s wards, and she spoke, using for the first time in her life one of the Words that had been passed down from the Colossae wizards to their Traveler children.
    â€œSila-evra-kilin-faurath!”
    The wards shifted and became something else, called into being by her will and the ancient syllables.
    For two decades Seraph had gone out each season to walk a path around the farm while her family slept. She’d set her blood and hair into the soil and called a spell to protect her family from harm. With the Word she called that power into a single act that was the culmination of the purpose of all those nights, all that magic.
    Lehr’s fire died completely, leaving the troll burnt and blackened, but alive. It roared triumphantly and tightened its grip on Tier.
    Someone made a dismayed sound.
    â€œDie,” said Seraph, in a voice so hoarse and deep it sounded unfamiliar, as if something else used her throat. There was no room left in her for anger or fear, no room for anything except power as she touched the troll.
    Blackened flesh turned grey and cracked around grass-green bones. Grey turned to white ash that slid to the ground under the gentle hand of the rain and the iron-shod hooves of Skew as the battle-trained horse protected his rider as he had been trained.
    Seraph took in deep breaths and tried to contain herself, but there was too much power.
    â€œDon’t touch her, Lehr,” Hennea said. “Look to Tier and the child. Seraph. Seraph.”
    Slowly, Seraph turned her head to look at the other Raven, who averted her gaze under Seraph’s hot attention.
    â€œWhat are you going to do with the magic, Seraph?” Despite dropping her gaze, Hennea sounded serene.
    Seraph found herself clinging to that serenity for a moment. “Too much,” she said. “Unwise to kill something that old with a Word.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do with it?”
    The force of the power the Words had siphoned into her burned and felt wondrous at the same time. The troll had been old, too old. The power of his death rippled through her along with the magic she herself had drained from her wards. Too much power to be safe.
    â€œThe wardings,” she said, her voice thick and still oddly deep. “I need to protect . . .”
    â€œPapa?”
    Lehr’s voice broke Hennea’s hold on her, reminding her why she’d killed the troll in the first place. She might have been too late. “Tier? Rinnie?”
    Seraph turned to look at Tier, where Lehr and a couple of the bolder villagers were pulling the remains—bones—of the troll off them.
    â€œThey are alive.” Hennea’s voice was calm. “And they’ll remain so if you can contain the magic you hold. Control yourself, Raven.”
    â€œTake care of them,” Seraph said harshly, resenting the part of her that understood that Hennea was correct. She had to rid herself of this magic. “I’ll walk the wards.”

C HAPTER 3
    Not letting herself look back, Seraph walked briskly through the storm-tattered camp that covered