Highland Moon Sifter (a Highland Sorcery novel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

intent upon my death? What have ye been promised?” He paused, his dark brows bunching into a scowl worthy of the demon soul he sported. “My brother. Did my brother send you? He has grown that desperate?”
    Bekah pulled out of his grasp and fortunately he let her. She needed the small distance. She couldn’t even think within his proximity. “Why do you assume Col sent me?”
    He went utterly, completely still. Predator-watching-through-grass still. Goose pimples raised along her skin for altogether different reasons this time.
    She flipped the hair from her eyes and gasped.
    How had she ever thought those gray eyes void of emotion? They were drenched in it now, raw worry, fear and pain and so much love for his brother it was like looking into the deepest primal of heartaches, emotions crashing against each other, waves shearing upon rocks. She shied away, instinctively knowing she was not meant to see any of that.
    Yet she had and she could never unsee it, even as she intended to plunge his own blade into his heart.
    She turned away.
    “I spoke of Toren.” Shaw’s voice broke raggedly behind her, a mournful discordant note. “I thought…I thought he must have opened a rift, brought you here. I know ye’re from a different time.” He took her elbow and turned her back to face him, his features studying her, and handed her a pile of clothes.
    She pressed the fabric to her chest even though she felt far less exposed than the wretched hope opening the shutters on his face.
    “I had not considered…Col, he is alive?”
    The quiet plea spoke to her soul. She could at least give him this. She owed him news of his brother before…
    “Yes. He’s well.”
    He took another step toward her and nearly stumbled. If she hadn’t been watching so closely she might have missed the little totter. She looked closer still, noting the deep brackets of pain around his mouth, the small trickle of sweat along his hairline. Ill?
    “I thought…” He breathed out. “All this time…where? Where is he?”
    “He’s…” She stopped herself. Moon Sifter. They didn’t know much about what they could do. No one did, they were far too rare. There hadn’t been another born for five centuries before Shaw and none since. Shaw probably didn’t know the extent of his abilities himself, with no one to teach him. Yet Alexander reasoned out that a Moon Sifter’s magic closely resembled that of a High Sorcerer’s and in fact, had often been mistaken as one, until the darkness of their powers overtook the light and they either destroyed themselves or wreaked catastrophe upon their generation.
    Shaw had not only unbalanced all magic, allowing the dark to overtake his century, but the darkness had reached far into the future, nearly a millennia into the future, the creatures of his making—the Sifts—had all but annihilated the human race.
    That knowledge brought to the fore of her memories shoved away any sympathy she felt for the devastation transparent in his features or his little stumble. She couldn’t tell him where his brother was because with his power, he’d be able to open a time rift and go snatch Col up.
    Then she’d have two Highland warriors to contend with because no way would Col allow her to kill his brother.
    Well, she’d had brothers too. Brothers in arms and spirit, if not by blood and she’d lost them brutally and bloody.
    “Tell me where he is.” The Moon Sifter demanded, a dark impatient scowl covering the deep worry.
    She took another step backward, the back of her knees running into the little cot of braided tree limbs. “No.”
    “No?” His glare was hot enough to light tinder.
    Technically she was at his mercy, outsized and outweaponed. Definitely outmagiced. He probably thought he could do whatever he wanted to get his information, but she wasn’t as easy to crack as that. Let him get close enough and she’d show him a trick or two about martial arts. The bigger they are, the harder—
    “Very