Foretold (Daughters of Saraqael Book Three) Read Online Free PDF Page A

training exercise and got a heavy boot to the hip for her inattention. Gasping at the painful contact, she followed the momentum of her body into a back shoulder roll, returning instantly to her feet. Catching Gabriel’s puzzled and slightly apologetic look, as he had been the one to hit her, she hurried to explain.
    “Sorry! Liv is here. And James, of course,” she explained a little breathlessly, rubbing her hip to ease the sting. “I got distracted. Can we go and see them?”
    “Are you okay?” Gabriel asked.
    Knowing that his concern was genuine, she smiled. He was every inch the human equivalent to a southern gentleman for all his centuries as the Gloresti elder. “I’m fine. Just a little bruise.”
    She saw Amber’s questioning look and waved her sister off. She’d be fine without healing.
    “They’ll go to Aurora first,” Skye said pointedly, already moving in that direction.
    “All right, all right,” Gabriel relented, returning her smile. “Let’s go. We won’t get anything accomplished now, anyway.”
    “Yay!”
    Turning, she hurried to the edge of the courtyard. The observers gathered there didn’t move aside as she thought they would. Indeed, she would have run right into them if Caleb hadn’t grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back.
    After muttering something indistinguishable under his breath, he snapped, “Move,” to the handful of males blocking the exit.
    They moved. Giving Caleb a grateful look, she continued out of the courtyard and then extended her wings to fly to Aurora’s paddock.
    She absolutely loved flying. Bringing forth her wings after assuming her Estilorian form had come very naturally to her, unlike for her sisters. The ability to control her flight, however, had been much more difficult. Now that she had been practicing for so many weeks, she was doing much better with it.
    It was kind of a shame, really. She had come to enjoy getting “rescued” by Caleb from her past failed attempts.
    Glancing beside her, she caught his gaze. His Gloresti dark blue wings were close enough to touch her nearly translucent light blue ones. While this would have been a problem for any other Estilorian, her wings had the ability to fade whenever something came into contact with them. Thus, his wings didn’t impact her flight at all. Still, she realized that he was focused intently on her in case she accidentally veered and he had to chase after her. It was almost humorous.
    Fortunately, they reached the paddock without incident. She spotted James first. He stood with his hands on his narrow hips, his muscular arms looking even more bronzed than they had before the honeymoon. He wore khaki pants and a dark green tank, revealing the light green and dark blue mark on his right bicep that identified him as Olivia’s avowed. His dark blond hair, worn in a choppy, artful cut around his handsome face, glinted in the sunlight.
    If judging from her human perspective, she might have pegged him as no more than about twenty human years in age, though he was closer to a full century like Caleb was. Much like her and her sisters, who looked their human age of eighteen, most Estilorians were quite youthful in appearance. The fact that Estilorians didn’t age contributed to this, as did the fact that transitioning beings tended to assume Estilorian forms that represented the age in their human lifetime that they considered the most vital. Thus, generally speaking, the older an Estilorian was, the younger they might actually appear, since life expectancy was so much lower millennia ago. Gabriel, for example, looked about the same age as James and Caleb, at most just entering his twenties, yet he was thousands of years old.
    Crazy maybe. But she could admit that not aging physically would surely have its benefits as the centuries passed.
    She landed a few feet from James and returned the smile he flashed at her. Olivia’s husband had become very like a brother to her over the past few months.