Magic Unchained Read Online Free PDF

girl she’d been.
    He saw her at ten, galloping bareback on her fat spotted pony, with her hair streaming out behind her like a white-striped black banner.
    He saw her at fifteen, returning to the ranch battered and bloody, cradling a broken wrist and defending the chestnut filly who had tossed her, seeming unaware that his heart had stopped at the sight of her injuries.
    He saw her at seventeen, propositioning him in the back barn with the sweetly inexpert kiss he’d never forgotten, saw her eyes fill when he turned her down and rode away, not knowing it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.
    He saw her at twenty-one, when she tracked himdown in a crappy one-room apartment to drag him to Skywatch, overriding his protests with three words: “You owe me.” And he sure as shit
had
owed her. He’d broken her heart that day in the barn, and he hadn’t done it gently, because he’d been feeling none too gentle himself.
    He saw her a few months later, when he told her to leave Skywatch, claiming that she didn’t fit in and he didn’t need her, trying to make the break a clean one for both their sakes, because those not-so-gentle feelings had come back like gangbusters, only to come up against roles, rituals, and the end of the damned world.
    He saw her at twenty-three, when she had come back to Skywatch to lead the rebel
winikin,
looking confident, capable, dead sexy, and nothing like the girl she had been, yet somehow exactly like that girl.
    He saw her just now, facing down a hellhound with no armor, no shield, and no backup. And because unlike Mac he could imagine the future, he also saw what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten there when he did. It wasn’t tough to picture—gods knew he’d seen plenty of bodies over the past six months. And he’d be damned if he added hers to the list.
    Her eyes narrowed. “Back off, Nightkeeper. I was just doing my job.”
    “It’s not your job to get yourself killed,” he grated, then leaned in closer to make his point, putting them nose-to-nose. He could feel the soft warmth coming off her skin, smell the faintest hint of flowers and spice turned sharp by the scents of battle. And he was all too aware of the magic riding high in his bloodstream, making him want to do things he had long ago filed under Bad Idea. Gritting his teeth and willing the images away, he ground out, “The
winikin
can’t afford to lose their leader.”
    She scowled. “I know what I’m doing.”
    “Bullshit. If Mac and I hadn’t just rolled in when your mayday came through—”
    “One of the others would’ve saved my ass,” she interrupted. “And there’s no way I was going to hide behind the shield and watch Zane and Lora die.”
    “Zane. Right.” If he’d had fur it would’ve bristled. “Any reason he didn’t send you and Lora ahead and cover you?”
    “Because I ordered him to get his ass moving, and it wasn’t like we had time to stand around and rock-paper-scissors it.”
    “Sven!” Dez called. “Get over here.”
    Growling under his breath, Sven looked to where the other Nightkeepers were gathered beside the charred, smoking pyre, no doubt in the first stages of a “what the hell were those things, and how the fuck did they get inside Skywatch?” conversation. “We need five minutes,” he called.
    “No, we don’t.” Cara took a big step back, creating a gap between them that felt far greater than a few feet of space.
    “We’re not finished.”
    “Oh, yes, we are.” She held up a hand. “Look, we had a deal. You do your thing and I do mine, and we leave the past in the past. Remember?”
    Yeah, he remembered, all right. It had sounded good at the time, back when she’d first returned to Skywatch and they had been trying to find a way to coexist without things getting personal. Now, though, he wanted to get personal, to a degree. He needed to make things right—or at least own up to what he’d done wrong. The past six months had changed him, he