Bloodwitch Read Online Free PDF Page B

since I had eaten more than a few bites of bread. It had been easy to ignore while I wandered lost and frightened, but I wasn’t going to turn down food.
    “Thank you,” I said, trying to recall all of Taro’s lessons on proper manners. “I appreciate the help.”
    He snickered at my attempt to be polite and turned to lead the way. One step later he paused to look back and say, “No, leave the stick. We don’t want to encourage anyone else to find us.”
    I gripped my stick more tightly despite my cold fingers. “But I
want
to be found!” I argued.
    “In this forest all sorts of things could come looking for you. I’m not going to force you to follow me,” he said, “but I’m not going to let you leave a path to my camp, either. Make up your mind.”
    He turned and started to walk away without giving me a chance to decide. What if Malachi Obsidian was one of those people Taro had talked about who could be a danger to me? I had no way of knowing. What I did know for certain was that starving and freezing were bad, which meant I didn’t have a choice. I dropped the stick and followed my new guide through the trees.
    Rustling nearby caused him to halt, his hand moving slowly toward his bow.
    I came up beside him and saw what had made the noise: a sleek-coated stag, standing like a statue, staring at ourlight with its black-tipped tail raised in alarm. He could have stepped directly out of Lady Brina’s painting of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. She had worked on that series, which she called Proud Ladies, as long as she had worked on
Tamoanchan
.
    My guts twisted at the reminder. The painting. Calysta. The guards.
    A small sound escaped my throat, and the stag bolted.
    “We couldn’t hunt it anyway,” my guide said with a sigh. He continued walking, speaking without looking at me. “Jeshickah has some very old-world laws regarding deer on her land.”
    I stumbled, so shocked by his words that I lost my footing and fell, letting out a yelp as my bare hands landed in the snow.
    Malachi paused and grasped my arm to help me up. “You all right?” he asked.
    Never,
never
in my life had I heard Mistress Jeshickah referred to without a title. If I had done so, or even spoken of Lady Brina that way, Taro would have slapped me. I would have deserved it. How
dare
he?
    I opened my mouth to challenge him—and then shut it fast, dropping my gaze. I was at his mercy for the moment. “I’m fine,” I answered. “I tripped on … on a rock.”
    He hadn’t apologized for the slip or questioned my lie about why I fell, which meant … he didn’t expect me tocare. My mind turned that thought over like a pebble, because it wasn’t quite right.
    Malachi knew where I came from. He had thought I was a slave, but now he knew that I was happy with Lady Brina. He should expect me to care.
    Was he testing me?
    “We’re here,” Malachi announced, interrupting my train of thought.
    “Where?” I asked. I saw nothing but more trees and brush, covered in the seemingly endless snow.
    “Here,”
he said, putting an arm across my shoulders to usher me forward.
    The camp, invisible just a moment before, was suddenly clear as daylight. A grove of birch trees ringed the small clearing, at the center of which a covered cooking pot sat on merrily glowing coals. Most of the snow within the grove had been packed down or brushed away, leaving a smooth-topped log near the fire for a seat. The tent emerged from the space beyond like something organic, half buried in the snow, with a small gap open to the warmth of the fire.
    Magic
, I thought. Was Malachi a witch? All I knew about them I had learned from overheard complaints from Lord Daryl and Lady Brina. Witches were greedy, mercenary creatures. They were needed for things like the spells on the greenhouse, but they couldn’t be trusted.
    “Did Brina send you away, or did you go on your own?” Malachi asked casually as he lifted the copper lid to check on his food.
    Lady
Brina,