Free Blackbirds & Bourbon by Heather R. Blair Page A

react, still staring. Wondering if he’s in shock, I run my shaking hand over his shoulder, the leather streaked with ice along with the blood. The snow is turning to freezing rain, thick and punishing against my cheeks. “Jack?”
    I shake him hard. His hands come up instantly, gripping my shoulders tight enough to make me squeak.
    “The Dark Council means to kill you, princess. What the hell were you thinking?” Low and raw his voice plucks at my already-frayed nerves.
    “Oh for fuck’s sake, let’s not worry about me and my choices just now. You—”
    “I’ll be fine. I need to know where the hell your head is at, letting them take you in. Are you suicidal or what?”
    Wait. “Did Merry call you?”
    “Answer the question, Seph!” I thought I’d seen Jack angry before. Guess I was wrong. Stripped of his magic or not, he’s scary right now, those eyes flashing silver fire as he looms over me.
    “I…I wanted answers.” I let my hand drop from his shoulder, my fingers wet with his cooling blood. He looks wild, a man possessed, shaking me now, hard enough to rattle my already-pounding head.
    “Fucking answers. That’s what you think you need?” He makes a disgusted sound that has my stomach burning. “Bad enough to die for them?”
    “Why not?” All at once, I lose it, throwing my arms up to break his hold on me. Screaming the words at him over the wind, my throat on fire as all the fear, confusion and anger come boiling up from somewhere deep inside me. “How else do you think this goddamn story is going to end?”
    I can’t do this. I can’t see anyone else hurt for me.
    Not even Jack.
    He looks at me for a long beat, his jaw locked, ice clinging to his hair and eyelashes. Then Jack seizes my arm with his good hand, pulling me through the woods. The trees get thicker, the storm quieter and before I know it, Jack is pressing me to my knees, at a dark hole in the side of a rocky hill. I crawl in, almost on my belly. I cough as dirt trickles down from the ceiling, coating my hair and lungs with the dusty taste of earth. After a few feet, I’m able to straighten and stand. I conjure my orange flames and look around.
    This is nowhere near grand enough to qualify as a cave, more along the lines of a human-sized badger hole. Or at least a Seph-sized one. Jack, once he makes his way in behind me, is forced to sit at my feet, hunched over by the inward-curving walls. The top of the hole is not nearly high enough for him to stand. The bleeding from Ivo’s bite has slowed to a trickle. Jack looks pale and pissed, but otherwise okay. If it’s not easy to kill a fully realized witch, it’s damn near impossible to end an elemental.
    “We need to get you home.” He rummages awkwardly in his jacket, then holds out his phone. “No service here. You’ll have to cast to—”
    “No.” I wrap one arm around my waist, glaring down at him. “I am going to the Dark Council, dammit. And you can’t do shit to stop me. Sucks to be without your magic, doesn’t it?”
    His eyes narrow dangerously. Even wounded, stripped of his powers and sprawled on his ass in a glorified hole in the ground, Jack looks very much a king. One you don’t want to fuck with.
    But I don’t care.
    I spin to head back into the storm, prepared to blast this little shelter apart if necessary. Before I can take a step, Jack’s fingers wrap around my ankle. “Godamnit, princess, don’t . ”
    It’s not his hold, but the pleading tone of his voice that stops me. Tired, cold and wet, I sag against the crumbly dirt wall, my back to him. His fingers tighten on my leg, then fall away.
    Jack clears his throat. “I know you want answers, baby. But facing the Dark Council alone is not the way to get them.” He sounds so sincere, so concerned, I close my eyes. If only I could trust him…
    My eyes fly back open, my back straightening as I turn around slowly.
    “Maybe there is another way.” I pull the agate from my pocket. “Ivo said this