Legend 4 - Free Falling Read Online Free PDF Page B

was done with fickle human females. Who would have thought, after all the happy trail of Fae females I had left behind me in all my thousands of years, who would have thought a mere human woman would have flipped me off for a human male!
    Absurd . Unthinkable, but there you were, and there was no time for such meandering now.
    I was Prince Danté, eldest son of the Royal House of Lugh and the best-looking in my family as well, although my younger brothers heartily disagreed with me on that.
    I was a Tuatha Dé—Seelie Fae, powerful beyond measure—and we were at war with the monsters of the Dark Realm.
    Gais led them against us—Gais who was once one of our own.
    It was a fact that shamed us all. We had come close, very close at different times, to stopping him because of the help of our Druids, and others. We needed to catch him and forever put an end to his existence. We have had him to the brink of capture, and yet still he managed to escape us and survive.
    He always seemed to be one step ahead of us. Breslyn and I had finally convinced our queen that there was another traitor on our High Council. In fact, it was what Breslyn had always believed.
    Early on I found myself in agreement with him, and now at last, our queen accepted the fact that Gais was getting help from another one of our own. Despicable.
    And what must be my mission? Guarding a wayward, unruly child. I could see now after watching her from another dimension where she could not detect my presence that she would be in grave danger simply because she wanted to capture and kill Gaiscioch all on her own.
    Impossible—yet, she was a Daoine … Perhaps that gave her a small advantage, but not enough to take on Gais alone.
    By Danu, I dreaded this assignment. I knew already that I didn’t like this whirlwind child. However, Radzia MacDaun was my assignment. I could do nothing to avoid going forward with it, but this time I didn’t mean to allow the object of my assignment to mean anything to me.
    I will keep her at a distance. I will keep her out of my head. I will not want her in my arms or my bed. This time … I won’t let a female human take my essence and throw it to the winds … I won’t let another do that to me …
    So there I stood outside MacDaun Castle, just a few feet from the stone steps that led to the arched double oak doors. I could shift inside … but this time, I was going to go out of my way to keep things formal. I knew my boundaries. I knew my perimeters, and I meant to keep within them.
    She was Daoine Fae, and she was a Druid high priestess—my job, nothing more. Aye then—I reached over and took up the huge black wrought-iron knocker and let it roar. I could have rung the more modern doorbell, but the knocker suited my mood.
    * * *
    I couldn’t help but stare at my image in the mirror. Who was I? I was still a twenty-year-old girl. I had changed my hair to midnight black, and it was not long anymore. I’d had it cropped around my heart-shaped face. My eyes stared back at me, silvery and cold, and my heart beat in a way that pulled up my nose in a perpetual sneer. So I had to ask myself, Just who am I? Am I still Radzia MacDaun?
    When Sally (housekeeper–friend–long-time confidant in teen crimes) made me sit at the kitchen counter and shoved coffee and buns at me, who did she see? Did she see the girl I had been, or the thing I was becoming?
    I didn’t know when I’d last really eaten. It seemed all I did was practice gymnastics. They would think if they peeked in on me in our ‘training room’ that I was just letting off steam.
    That wasn’t what I was doing.
    I had already spent three hours working my muscles until they threatened mutiny.
    I saw Sally glance my way as she passed by. She returned with something in her hand, walked straight up to me, cooing sweetly, and shoved a banana in my mouth. I was hungry. Wow! I don’t think I had really tasted anything until just then. I looked at the tray she had set for