Desert Fire (Legend and Lore Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

like the rounded shape of his own. No one shared the colour of his eyes either, because none were shifters.  
    In that, he was all alone and no one knew, because he did not really want it spread. Unless the Commander was prone to gossip—which he highly doubted—it would not be known unless he himself chose to share it.  
    Khatlah had come to his room earlier in the evening, bearing a new set of clothes that he was to wear to the banquet being held. They had eaten, and people were milling about and talking. Brand, who was feeling anything but comfortable, was hiding away in a corner with Khatlah, who had followed him willingly.  
    “You really should mingle,” Khatlah told him. “Get acquainted.”  
    “I see no point in it,” Brand murmured. “It is not like I am going to stay here for very much longer...” He did not know what was to happen with him after he helped locate the rest of the dragon killers, but he highly doubted that he would be let back into the palace. He was a lowly wolf-shifter and firewitch from across the mountains, so far out of his element he could drown in it. Not that there was anything to drown in—there were only wide stretches of dry, oftentimes cracked, ground or dunes of sand.  
    Khatlah’s small smile faded, his eyes boring into Brand’s. “You are leaving?”  
    Brand shrugged helplessly. “I do not know. My life is a mess and I do not know anything. All I know is that I am here now, but come tomorrow...” He let the sentence hang, knowing Khatlah would understand what he had trouble finding the words to say.  
    Khatlah turned away, but Brand caught the flash of disappointment in his eyes. “Will you follow me back to my room?” Brand asked tiredly. “I am not sure I will find it on my own.”  
    Khatlah nodded, then led the way out of the banquet hall. He did not speak, and Brand found that he did not like the silence stretching on between them.  
    “I do not understand how you can be disappointed in me,” he spoke up. “I do not belong here, and I have only been here for a few days. There is nothing about me that fits in here. Even amongst my own kind I am peculiar.”  
    Khatlah’s tension seemed to ease slightly, and he slowed down so that he and Brand could walk side by side. “I am disappointed because I thought I had gained a friend, only to find out that that friend is not planning to stay.”  
    Brand swallowed the big lump suddenly getting stuck in his throat at the words. “You should not want to be my friend. I am only trouble, a peculiar creature that not even Lorcan can put a label on. And if Lorcan cannot—“ He stopped abruptly, not wanting to go down that bitter road. Another reason he had left Fort Vortigern.  
    “What do you mean? Why are you so peculiar? You look just like any normal foreigner to me, except those strange eyes and those powers.”  
    “Exactly!” Brand exclaimed. “I am a warg, a wolf-shifter, and that is all I am supposed to be. Yet I am also a firewitch. It does not make sense! Shifters only have the magic to shift, but they bond to witches to balance out their powers, though gaining nothing of their own except that bond. And here I am, both shifter and witch, and I know not what to make of myself, what to do with myself.”  
    “Maybe you are just gifted,” Khatlah replied. “Like no one has been before you. Gifted with both sets of magic, incapable of being bound to anyone in particular. Maybe you are supposed to make your own fate, instead of getting bound to some witch’s.” Khatlah stopped in front of Brand’s door, turning to face him. “And who is Lorcan?”  
    Brand caught the slightest hint of anger and suspicion in that voice, and before he could stop to think he took a step forward, pinning Khatlah to the door, and kissed him. Khatlah gasped in surprise, but quickly subsided, his hands coming up to grip Brand’s shoulders. Brand had never kissed anyone before, but instinct drove him as he tilted