Free By Vengeance Guided (The Lost Shrines Book 1) by Amberlyn Holland

well-traveled one. For fifteen minutes she moved with purpose and grace ahead of him. And he followed with all the stealth and skill his training and his heritage bestowed on him.
    Eventually, they came to a group of oaks, so close and massive, they looked like a wall across the middle of the forest.
    She slid past the first behemoth and he counted off several seconds before he moved toward it. Something stopped him, though, when he got it. Instead of moving forward to follow, he could only peek around the massive tree.
    Lia continued to wind smoothly around large piles of rocks until she reached the center of the circle of oaks. Another pile of rocks, smaller in mass than the outer ring of debris, took up a good chunk of the middle of the clearing. At its center, the largest of the stones rose several inches above the others, long and flat and gleaming white.
    Lia reached out and touched the flat stone, almost reverent in the way she traced her fingers lightly over the patterns etched in the hard surface.
    Caer realized they weren't merely piles of jumbled rocks. They were the ruins of some bygone era. The center stone was a long forgotten altar.
    He stopped breathing for a moment, every muscle tense while he waited to see what was next. If she was a sorceress, how dark was the ritual she prepared to perform? Would Keneally or Nel be bringing an animal to sacrifice? Or would he have to step in, reveal himself to protect a human from that fate?
    His heightened hearing, though, told him no one approached. No one was even near. From her basket, Lia brought forth only flowers and herbs, bread and wine.
    The power humming along the ground seeped into his consciousness. It tinged the air with a soft scent of energy. Nothing like what he'd learned to associate with sorcery in the years since he'd first met Irana.
    It felt…feminine. And clean.
    It didn't matter that it felt different, though. Humans had no access to magic of their own or to that of the elements of the earth. They had to take the power from something else. Witches used herbs and plants and stones and occasionally their own blood. The lure of power was usually irresistible, though, and they graduated to the blood of animals and humans, soon needing pain and fear and death to power their spells.
    Caer swallowed the bitter taste of disappointment. He'd been hoping any witchery going on could be attributed to Nel. Still, it was only plants and bread on the altar. Nothing irrevocable.
    Lia's cloak came off, dropped gracefully over the basket while he watched from beyond the invisible barrier. Her gorgeous chestnut hair was down and glittering in the moonlight. Rather than the stuffy, stiff petticoats and skirts she wore around the manor, her dress flowed in a soft white wave of fabric. It draped her body, floating around her. Both flaunting and hiding her femininity.
    Then she spread out the blanket, covered in symbols he had never seen, and began to chant in a language he had never heard. Light and sweet and nothing like the harsh demands of sorcery he'd encountered before. Nor like the wheedling entreaties of the witches he'd dealt with.
    The lilting language welcomed, beckoned. Before he knew it, Caerwyn moved past the first of the trees. The imaginary barrier gone like the soft silk of a spider web.
    He couldn't move away now if his life depended on it. The sight of her, like a pool of moonlight in the center of the Circle, drew him as nothing ever had.
    Lia stood in front of the altar, her gifts laid out in offering, and raised her hands to the heavens. He still didn't understand the words but knew it was not witchery. This ritual was not a sacrifice of the energy within the items on the table.
    If he had to hazard a guess, it would be that it was a request for a blessing on them. When a ball of glowing silver light appeared above the altar, bathing everything with a sweet glow, he was sure he was right.
    A small part of him wondered if it was a trick. A trap to