Blood Kin Read Online Free PDF

babble, mingling with the smells of horses and hay and stables. Soothing in a strange way. I blinked as my eyelids drooped, and snapped to a straighter pose. Which made my shoulders ache more.
    Nothing I could do about that right now. Nothing I could do about being tired either. There was much to do before I could sleep. I needed to check on the status of the wounded and report to Father Cho.
    The City’s mood was ugly, restless as a nest of vengeful hornets as the Night World shifted and scrapped and attempted to regain some sort of balance in the wake of Lucius’ death. Personally, I’d be happy for the lot of them to kill each other and drag themselves down to hell. Problem was, they’d take a lot of innocent bystanders with them in the process. And protecting those innocent bystanders was my job.
    Hell’s balls, I even protected the not quite innocent.
    Like my brother, Simon, and his fiancée, Lily. The ones who killed Lucius in the first place. That was knowledge that needed to be kept to as few people as possible for as long as possible.
    Killing Lucius was a damned good idea, but if the truth that it had been an assassination ever came to light, it had the potential to cause a rain of shit such as the City hadn’t seen in a good long while.
    Everyone was keyed up, on edge. Quick to flare into violence. And of course, you had the criminal elements—if anyone in the Night World could be considered noncriminal elements—taking advantage of the power vacuum to attempt to gain something for themselves.
    And I needed to speak to Simon and Lily again about returning to the Brother House.
    I finished brushing Gray, filled his feed bin, and left him to rest.
    He was the lucky one. No one was filling my feed bin and sending me off to sleep.
    The patrol room buzzed with low conversation when I walked through the door. Too low. Everyone was tired. Pushed too hard. And there wasn’t necessarily an end in sight. We were just going to have to bull it out.
    I scanned the room, assessing the damage for the night. Apart from the wounded we’d sent to St. Giles, Isaac had a nasty-looking bruise blooming across his left cheek and Sun-Lee’s left hand was roughly wrapped with a bloodstained bandage, but everyone was relatively intact. I counted off twenty-four from the other two patrols. No fatalities tonight, then. Relief lightened my mood slightly as I dropped into the nearest chair.
    The move jarred my back and I bit down a curse. Beneath the ache, stiffness was setting in. Add a hot bath to the things I needed before I could sleep.
    Because of her.
    That girl—woman—whoever the hell she was.
    And whatever the hell she’d been up to.
    Her face floated in front of my eyes for a moment, sharp lines set off with unexpected curves. Big eyes—maybe green, maybe brown—looking up at me, shocked at first, then wary under her charade of politeness. Her eyes tilted slightly, suggested she had some sort of exotic heritage, whether it be an ancestor from the Silk Provinces or even a Fae. She hadn’t been heavy, though she’d curved nicely into my arms—
    I shook my head. There was a thought almost as crazy as feeling nostalgic for Lucius. She was from the border boroughs, if she wasn’t a Night Worlder in truth. She’d been up to something. And I had no time for anything resembling a woman even if she’d been a virtuous flower from one of the finest human families. The ones my mother gave me regular damned updates on.
    Simon’s pairing off should’ve assuaged her maternal urge to see us all married—except Hannah, who was still too young—but it hadn’t.
    But she’d have to stay disappointed. My path didn’t include a wife and children. Not while I could still swing a sword.
    “Attention,” Isaac bellowed, and we all swung to our feet as Father Cho entered the room.
    He, as always, waved us to our seats. Not the sort of general who would put the respect due his rank ahead of the needs of tired men.
    As we sat, he