Free Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK by B. V. Larson

until now, not since the fire. She had depended on it for a long time to keep back any unwanted advances by Piskin and his kind.
    Piskin laughed at her. She frowned back at him. He hopped closer, then closer still. She reached up and fingered the ash leaf around her neck, trusting to its power. None of the creatures from the Twilight Lands could harm you, as long as you kept a ward handy. She had lived by that rule in their presence for months now.
    Piskin leered, then reached up and snatched the ward from her chest, tearing the dry, crumbled leaf to shreds in the process. He cackled, holding up a corner of it.
    “Tsk,” said Piskin. “Such a shame! It’s burnt. See this blackened, curled point? You must have all five points of the leaf, you know.”
    Mari was horrified. Her best defense was useless. Now she realized that he had just touched her belly. He should not have been able to touch her at all, if the ward had been working.
    Piskin held out his tiny, long-fingered hand, again urging her out of the boat. Mari looked at his hand, which waggled at her with impatience. Should she refuse? Should she demand he leave her here in the boat until another came by, perhaps some kindly shepherd taking his flock up to Riverton?
    She craned her neck, but saw no one else on the river. She hadn’t seen another boat in the last hour. They were far south now, down in the frontier section of the Haven. Few farms were to be found down in this region, it was mostly wilderness.
    She looked back at Piskin. He still had his hand extended toward her. In his black stone eyes there was no pity. He said nothing, letting her decide how things would be.
    She thought of the razor-sharp knife on his belt. If she broke the fiction between them now, if she screeched and fought and didn’t get out of the boat, what might he do? Had he not murdered once, and possibly twice, during their short acquaintance?
    She climbed out of the boat at last, giving up. She wanted to escape him, not fight with him. She had no choice but to continue their private charade.
    As she touched his thin-fingered, leathery hand, she wondered how things might end between the two of them. She thought of terrible things, such as snatching up his dagger and chopping his second hand from him. That would make it hard for him to harm her.
    She gave a tiny shudder of revulsion, but covered by grabbing at her belly.
    “Here, here, don’t trip, girl,” said Piskin. His small hand had surprising strength in it, she found. It was as if his pencil-thin fingers were made of iron.
    The two of them stepped into the gloom of the Deepwood then, and soon were lost from sight.

Chapter Seven
    Treating with Old Hob

    Oberon had never really liked Old Hob. He had tolerated the overgrown, cowardly creature’s company for years untold, but he’d never enjoyed—not for a second—the experience.
    Old Hob had retreated after the first disastrous clash with Brand and the humans in the Dead Kingdoms. He had taken his ill-gotten gain, the Lavender Jewel Osang, and scuttled off with it to his stronghold upon the island of Eire. Cowardly, treacherous, disgusting. In Oberon’s mind, all these words described—nay they defined Old Hob.
    But Oberon had need of allies. As was so often the case in the past, he was forced to call upon the lowest of folk that were considered Fae—distant relatives though the Goblin Folk might be.
    Compared to even the Wee Folk, the goblins were a people apart from the Shining Folk. Where one did step with grace and speak with soft beauty, the other did thump upon the ground and snarl with yellow teeth revealed. Oberon could barely credit the concept that his people were related to such oafish buffoons, but there it was, in the history of ancients wiser even than he. The goblins had come from the Twilight Lands originally, as did the elves and the Wee Folk. They possessed the power to travel from world-to-world. And in the moonlight, even Oberon had to admit, their