Free Dark Warrior by Rebecca York

use the altar in here,” Sophia answered, gesturing toward the table that sat in front of the window. Since she might bring a lover to her room, it looked like an ordinary piece of furniture. Opening the drawer in front, she took out a length of fine lace, a solid gold plate, and a fat candle.
    After spreading the lace along the width of the table, she set the candle on the plate and lit it.
    The sisters each knelt on the small rug in front of the table, joining hands and closing their eyes the way they’d done as girls.
    Sometimes they’d felt a flicker of future knowledge, but nothing that had ever helped them or made them feel more secure.
    She felt Tessa tense and knew she was groping for images of events that hadn’t happened yet.
    Although she wanted to know her own future, it stretched in front of her like a great void. But maybe she could help Tessa.
    She couldn’t exactly read Tessa’s thoughts, but she felt a mental joining.
    “Focus on what will be,” Tessa murmured. “On our lives as they unfold.”
    Sophia tried to do as her sister asked, but she could pick up nothing concrete, only Tessa’s desperate desire to discover what was ahead.
    She felt the strain—her own and Tessa’s. She wanted to give up a struggle that was obviously useless.
    Then she picked up something from her sister’s mind. “Who is Linda?” she whispered.
    “You caught that from my thoughts?”
    “Yes.”
    “She’s someone we don’t know.”
    Sophia was going to ask another question when an image leaped into her mind. She saw a large building looming in front of her. A church, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure. Smoke billowed around it.
    “What?”
    Tessa gasped, and pulled her hands away.

CHAPTER TEN
     
    SOPHIA’S EYES SNAPPED open. “What did you see?”
    “Nothing.”
    “A church. Burning.”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Then why did you break the connection like that?”
    Tessa turned her head to the side. “I . . . don’t know.”
    When she scrambled up, Sophia also stood, then leaned down to put out the candle.
    “Tell me what frightened you.”
    “Nothing specific. Just a vague . . . dread.”
    That was a lie, Sophia knew. There had been something specific. Something that had alarmed them both.
    “About Linda?”
    “I don’t know.” Tessa was already out the door, leaving Sophia shaken.
    She’d been in bad enough shape. She didn’t need to take on Tessa’s burdens as well.
    Sophia couldn’t go back to sleep. Finally, she got up and went to her office, where she struggled to focus on work.
    Did her future merge with Jason Tyron’s?
    Impossible. Her future was with her sisters.
    Yet she was guarding her thoughts from them, lest one of her sisters discover what had happened in the hayloft. She had no shame about enjoying sex with a man and walking away from him.
    It was the other part that worried her, the sense of connection with him that she never should have felt.
    Worse, she still didn’t know who Jason Tyron was. Not really.
    If he was a Minot, he could even be the one who had attacked her in the desert.
    As soon as that idea surfaced, she thrust it roughly away. She might be looking for excuses to mistrust him, but she didn’t have to go that far. She’d have known if it was him. When the attacker had touched her intimately, she hadn’t liked it. But she had liked Jason Tyron’s touch—very much.
    She’d thought again about hooking up with the hunky gym instructor, Tex Somerville, who’d been hired for his sex appeal as well as his knowledge of weight machines, aerobics, and fat-burning routines.
    But she couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for him, not when she compared him to Jason.
    Speaking of which . . .
    She looked out the window and saw his blue truck shining in the morning sunlight.
    She should be making surprise visits to the stables to see how he was getting on with the horses. In fact, Ophelia was doing that from time to time.
    If anyone noticed that Sophia was staying away,