Free Mistweavers 01 - Enchanted No More by Robin D. Owens Page B

time, usually noisy with their talk and shouts.
    She found wetness on her cheeks. Not tears, rain. She shivered. The day was cold and wet and she wasn’t used to the humidity of a relatively near ocean. Now she lived in the middle of a huge continent. The air wasn’t as thin as a mile high, either. Clamminess coated her skin, tightened her hair until she thought she could hear a twang as individual strands curled.
    The breath she dragged in was thick and the damp seeped into her skin until she shivered again. So different than Denver, this humid cold, this dense air. How had her half-djinn mother and her half-elf father and all her brothers and sisters managed?
    Because it had been home, and was in a land steeped in magic, richer and more ancient than that of Denver, a mixture of Lightfolk races who had lived there for centuries and worked magic.
    Aric’s fingers touched the small of her back as she shivered again. “I’m here with you. Let’s go in.” She thought she heard him gulp, but disregarded that notion because the smooth, in-control guy that he’d become wouldn’t do something so nervous.
    She was glad of his touch, the touch of a pure magical being, of a man who hadn’t been raised here, wouldn’t cherish this place more than Denver.
    This wasn’t home anymore.
    Her particular fire and air—and human—nature preferred where she lived now, a bustling city with towering mountains in the distance instead of huddled against a hill in a bit of forest with the ocean an hour and a half away.
    Aric’s hand flattened against the small of her back and she realized she hadn’t moved, so now she did, to get away from that warmth sending sensual tendrils unfurling through her. He kept pace with her, his fingertips still in contact with her, and she wondered at it.
    She stepped up to the house. Would Rothly’s silver-and-salt spell that disowned her keep her from opening the door? Or would the house spells still recognize her as family?
    The door was blue-gray with a tarnished brass knocker. The tint had faded from glossy to flat. It hadn’t been repainted in a long time.
    Jenni braced herself before she put her hand on the ornate brass knob that was covered in fire runes…from her mother.
    More hurt, deeper hurt, welled through her.
    “We need to find your brother,” Aric said.
    The knob was warm under her hand and it turned easily. Jenni stepped inside her old home.
    Anger slammed against her, pushing her back into a solid Aric.
    Rothly’s anger, both directed at her that she dared to come into his space, and a long-term ire that pervaded the place.
    Jenni panted through the constriction of her chest, striving to pull a trickle of air into her lungs. An air-and-fire spell directed at them! The spell tightened over them like a net, choking, heating, burning.
    Aric shuddered behind her and she turned. He was against the closed door and she was against him. His skin had darkened, taken on a coarser texture more like bark. He was half elf, half-dryad Treefolk, he didn’t need as much air as she.
    Faint steam radiated from him, the ends of his hair crisping. She hadn’t felt the fire as much as the air.
    Aric was turning browner. His hair became greener, and he’d lost a sizzling inch that sent a fragrance like burning redwood needles into the air.
    Rothly had tailored a spell to both of them, to his sister and his friend. Disowning all friendship, all bonds. She and Aric could die!
    Jenni widened her stance, struggled to inhale. Any spell Rothly had crafted, she should be able to unravel.
    Time was too short to step into the gray mist. She wasn’t prepared. She couldn’t push through Rothly’s spell to reach the older ones that the rest of her family, and she herself, had crafted.
    She only had a few seconds.
    So she visualized her new home—high, dry Denver, with the thin air of altitude—stripped the humidity from the air of Rothly’s spell and pulled enough in to survive. She leaned against Aric’s