4: Witches' Blood Read Online Free PDF Page A

Slowly, he opened his eyes and offered John one of his dazzling, rare smiles.
    John loved that smile—the joy in it, the honesty of it, and most of all the fact that it was meant just for him. Suddenly, John desperately wanted Ravishan. The wind, snow and stone surrounding them didn’t matter. All he wanted was to kneel with Ravishan beneath the shelter of this outcropping and make love to him. It took all of his will to stop himself from pulling Ravishan back into his arms.
    “I told you, I didn’t know what I was talking about,” John answered.
    John forced himself to let go of Ravishan and step back. Ravishan released him hesitantly.
    John’s entire body ached with an almost overpowering longing. It had been years since he’d touched another man and felt his arousal returned so fervently. And Ravishan wasn’t just any other man. He was strong, smart, beautiful, and so very eager—everything John could have wanted.
    But neither of them could afford to embark on this affair. Only this morning Hann’yu had warned him that at least one man had lost his life for such a thing. Homosexuality wouldn’t be tolerated even in jest here.
    John had to look away out over the frigid mountains for several moments before he could regain his composure.
    “It’s so cold,” he said just to fill the silence. “You wouldn’t even know it was spring.”
    “It always feels like winter up here,” Ravishan replied.
    John didn’t trust himself to look at Ravishan, so he occupied himself by digging through his coat pockets for the pair of heavy gloves that he had brought.
    “Here.” John handed over the gloves. “Your hands looked cold.”
    “You could see them, behind your back?” Ravishan asked.
    “Not just now. Earlier.” John glanced to him and watched as Ravishan pulled the gloves on and flexed his fingers against the stiff leather.
    “Thank you.”
    “It’s the least I could do.” John fell silent, unable to find anything safe to say. His mouth still burned from Ravishan’s kiss. His body ached.
    “So…” Ravishan said, but then didn’t add anything else.
    At last, John said, “I suppose we should get back to Rathal’pesha. Dayyid has the ushiri’im looking for you.”
    Ravishan sighed. As he gazed down at the monastery, that distant, hopeless expression returned to his face. From so far above, the stone walls and dark green trees seemed so small. John could blot the entire monastery out with one raised hand.
    “I don’t want to go back,” Ravishan murmured. The words were so soft that John wasn’t sure that he had been meant to hear them. “I hate it there.”
    John opened his mouth to tell Ravishan that he was sorry, that it was unavoidable, but then stopped himself.
    When he had climbed up here he had only been thinking of Ravishan’s safety. Obliquely he’d imagined shepherding Ravishan back down to Rathal’pesha, as if he would be bringing Ravishan home. But now it struck him that the monastery offered Ravishan none of the security or protection of a home.
    John knew that Ravishan’s right arm, hidden beneath his coat sleeve, was swathed in bandages. John realized that at some point he had stopped thinking of the perpetual injuries those bandages masked. He had begun to accept the countless small scars and fresh cuts tracing Ravishan’s body as if they were natural. Scars on the skin of an ushiri seemed as harmless as freckles. But they weren’t natural, and they weren’t harmless. They were years of pain carved into flesh.
      Those injuries were all that Rathal’pesha offered Ravishan. Of course he hated the place. Of course he wanted to run away. Who wouldn’t? He didn’t cry like Fikiri, but John knew that Ravishan had endured far worse for much longer.
    John frowned down at the monastery. In his own way, he needed Ravishan to be an ushiri and become Kahlil as much as the Payshmura priests did. The Kahlil offered him a chance to get back home. But if that meant that Ravishan had to