Free The Staff and the Blade: Irin Chronicles Book Four by Elizabeth Hunter

the council fifty years to find him in Scotland, but they had.
    Then the letters had started. The enticements that felt to him more like veiled threats. Henry was right. He was no Rafaene scribe needing peace and meditation. He would be called back into service. Perhaps to Vienna or Rome. Perhaps to Damascus or Salamanca.
    Then his hands would drip with blood again, just as they had for one hundred years.
    My eyes have seen too much to ever look on that which is lovely again.
    If he were less selfish, he would leave her alone. Leave her safe in the northern lands where Grigori were scarce and the twisted politics of Irin and Irina power trickled to rumors that little affected the daily life of their kind.
    But he wasn’t a saint. He hadn’t been innocent for centuries. If Damien was going to be forced back into the Irin power structure, he wanted Sari at his side. Mated to him. Loyal to him. He would always know truth because Sari would never tell him sweet or gentle lies. He wanted to be everything to her. He wanted her to desire him desperately, because the heat in his dreams tormented him.
    He was so lost in his thoughts he almost didn’t see the girl. In fact, he didn’t see her at first, he heard her. A whimper like a pup. A catching breath and a hiss of pain.
    Damien caught sight of her as she crested the hill.
    “Kirsten?”
    The young healer stumbled when she heard her name. “Brother Damien…” Her voice caught in a soft sob before she could say more.
    Damien ran to her, catching her before her legs gave out. “Sister, what has happened?”
    She’d been attacked, but by what, Damien could not understand. Her clothes were torn and her face clawed, but he could see no bites on her legs when he lifted her skirts. Her ankle was bruised and swollen, but no other mark was on her. There were no predators on the island to speak of. Even a wild dog didn’t seem likely.
    “Kirsten, what did this?”
    She started crying and her tears mixed with the claw marks on her face, causing her to wince.
    “Not what,” she said. “Who.”
    “Who?”
    Still crying, she forced out the words between hiccuping breaths. “Ann. Ann and her sisters. In the human village. I was… I was checking the baby. She only gave birth two weeks ago, but everything was normal. I was just there to check the baby. I’ve been to the house with Mother before.”
    Damien lifted her and whistled for the dogs. They trotted over, their tongues hanging out, and followed him as he walked swiftly to the village. The sheep would have to wait. “Was the babe healthy, Kirsten?”
    “She was fine. Fine! But then Ann, she… I don’t know what happened. Her sisters blocked the door and Ann said cruel things. She called me unnatural. That her milk was dry and it was my fault. That I wanted her babe to die so I could seduce her husband. It was madness.”
    No, it was a poison that he’d hoped the islands would escape. He’d heard the humans whisper in Aberdeen, but on Orkney they called his sisters spae-wives and wisewomen. The Irina still practiced their healing arts among the humans when singers in other parts of Europe had drawn back from their calling years before for fear of human ignorance and superstition.
    “Damien, Ann and her sisters called me…”
    “A witch?”
    She nodded.
    He forced himself not to curse. Cursing wouldn’t solve anything, but something needed to be done and he doubted Einar was up to playing politics. No, this would be a job for Henry.
    “They clawed at my face,” she said, touching her cheek as if she still couldn’t wrap her mind around the violence that had touched her. “I think they wanted to blind me. Why would they do that, Damien?”
    “Because they’re ignorant and afraid.”
    “Ann was sweet to me before. She thanked me for coming to help deliver the babe. It was her first.” Kirsten winced when he shifted her.
    “Almost home, sister.”
    “Why would she do this?”
    His heart broke. Kirsten was such