Bloodtraitor Read Online Free PDF

Misha’s that little bits of his mind sometimes came to me when I reached for her.
    We traveled most of the night, and reached Misha’s camp while the dawn birds were still shouting as if to wake the distant sun.
    The first person we saw wasn’t the would-be queen, but a slender man whose soft features and unassuming grace made him appear younger than he was: Torquil. He took one look at Aika and a grin lit up his face. They flung themselves into each other’s arms, the display of affection certainly more sincere than anything I was intending to say to Misha.
    Vance and Kadee hung back, seeking each other’s hands as they followed me. While Aika and her mate reunited, I found my sister, who watched me approach with a cool gaze and a dagger in her hand.
    “How do you come, Malachi?” she asked me.
    “In peace,” I answered. I drew a deep breath, setting the stage mentally in a way that was more than self-preparation. I visualized the words around me, giving them power. Before now, I had only used my magic on Misha to calm her trembling when night terrors had savaged her sleep and woken her screaming and pale, but I knew she could not defend against it despite her own white-viper blood.
    “You and I started this together.” I thought of leaving that cell as a child, with my hand not in my mother’s but in Farrell’s. “I do not like the plan you made with Aaron, but if you force me to choose you or one of the damn royals, I’ll choose you. You’re my sister, and you’re Obsidian.”
    Except that you want to be queen, even though the Obsidian guild has no king or queen.
I tried to keep my doubts far away from the rope of magic I was weaving around Misha. Instead, I thought things like,
Trust me. I am your brother. I am your blood. Remember, I sold a woman of royal blood in order to rescue you. Forget that I have hated myself for it ever since.
    Kadee, Vance, Aika, and Torquil all watched and waited as Misha evaluated my words. The rest of our guild numbered less than a half dozen, and I was sure they would follow Misha when she decided, as they had this far.
    If Misha rejected us, we would need to run again. I did not want to know if she would or could stir the others to deadly violence against us. The fear that she might try was sufficient.
    At last she stood, and with what might have become a smile in better times she reached out her empty hand to clasp mine. She pulled me close, and I hugged her, daydreaming for a moment that she was still the powerful, proud woman I had been so certain she would be forever.
    For you,
I thought.
    I would betray this woman if I had to, but I would do it for the woman she had been, the woman that Midnight had shattered and put together in a new and vicious form.
    “You are the one who brought us this far, Malachi,” she whispered to me. “You and Farrell. I thought that losing both of you so quickly might kill me, but you of all people know we need to do this. It was your vision first, after all.
    “Hara deserves what she will get,” she added, stepping back from the embrace but never dropping her gaze from mine. “She preaches peace while selling her unwanted dissenters into slavery. She cannot remain, not if we want the serpiente as a people to remember who they are, what they are. We are supposed to be a people who worship freedom as our highest divinity.
    “Isn’t that right, Vance?” she asked, looking up at the quetzal. “You were not born a serpent, but you were born a breed that
cannot
physically live in a cage. You know what it is like to be willing to batter yourself against the bars until you bleed and break, rather than die a prisoner. Serpents have lost that.
    “And you, Kadee. You have told me that the people of your birth, the humans, fought a war so they could be the masters of their own fate. They risked their lives. Many of them lost their lives. You told me about your mother, who walked among the sick and wounded as a nurse, and your