All Just Glass Read Online Free PDF Page B

her.
    “Hunters at SingleEarth?” she echoed. “They’re powerlessthere.” Might Adia have been looking for her? One reason Sarah had gone to SingleEarth was that it was owned by the Smoke witches, and they had treaties so even the Vida line was not obligated to hunt vampires within its walls. She hadn’t expected her family to want to see her, but she had wanted to give them an option that would free them from being bound by law to kill her.
    Kristopher shook his head, his gaze now as dark as his brother’s. “They tried to take Nissa. They threatened to kill her if she didn’t cooperate.”
    Sarah shook her head, horrified and amazed. What was going
on
?
    All four of them tensed when another figure appeared in the room. Christine recoiled, her face going pale, and as Sarah moved to comfort her, Nikolas and Kristopher stepped protectively between the newcomer and Sarah and Christine. Did they think she needed to be protected, defended, coddled, as if she were helpless? Or was the position accidental, a result of her moving closer to Christine?
    That didn’t matter right then. What mattered was that Kaleo Sonyar, the vampire who had just appeared among them, looked
pissed
. The oldest living direct fledgling of Kendra, Kaleo was an apt representation of his line: beautiful, an artist, absolutely mad and capable of undeniable cruelty. He had features like a Roman sculpture—quite literally, since rumors claimed he had modeled for some of those works—and golden blond hair that gave him an angelic cast. The looks were misleading, however. By killing Nissa’s father and threatening Nikolas, Kaleo had convinced Nissa to let him change her.More recently, he had bloodbonded Christine and tortured her for months, mainly to spite Nikolas.
    Seeing the anger stark on his aristocratic features now gave Sarah the chills.
    “What is going on?” Kaleo demanded.
    “I think that’s our question for you,” Kristopher said. “What are you doing in our home?”
    Kaleo spun to face Sarah, which made both boys take a protective step forward. “Your ‘family’ was in SingleEarth.”
    “I know. They—”
    He shook his head, silencing her explanation. “They took Heather. I demand you three get her back.”
    “You
demand
?” Nikolas repeated incredulously. “Why would we possibly help you rescue one of
your
bonds? What exactly were you doing while she was fighting hunters, anyway?”
    Though Sarah was also surprised that he would
expect
their help, she didn’t share Nikolas’s shock at the request. She knew what the hunters might do to Heather if Heather refused to give them information.
    “She is surrounded by witches waiting for some fool to step in to pick her up,” Kaleo said. “I’m not about to be the only fool there. As for why you should help, if Heather hadn’t distracted the hunters, they would have taken Nissa instead. And finally, I was in the same place you were:
not
in SingleEarth, where I am very much not welcome, and
not
policing my people in a place where they are supposed to be safe from exactly this kind of assault. Since when has that rule changed?”
    Both brothers answered the question by looking to Sarah for explanation. “Sarah?” Kristopher asked.
    “SingleEarth’s autonomy is a high law among all witch-kin—”
    “Which is why I was a little surprised they seem to be
ignoring
it,” Kaleo interjected.
    Sarah stepped back. It didn’t make any
sense
 … but Caryn had acted like it did.
My mother says if I cross them, it could endanger everyone at SingleEarth
. “Oh, goddess,” Sarah whispered as the answer struck her like lightning. Her stomach plummeted. Her chest constricted.
    “Sarah?”
    She wasn’t sure who had spoken. She felt blind. But she remembered the ancient words she had spent many hours studying as a child. A Vida was only given a true blade, crafted by the witches of old and imbued with generations of power, after she had recited and then sworn to all the laws of