Morrigan Read Online Free PDF Page A

like
gemstones.
    All in all, he was hardly the kind of prince
charming most young girls spent their nights dreaming of. There was
no suit of armor or white horse. But for Morrigan, he was the man
of her dreams—literally. She had spent the better part of her life
dreaming of this exact man riding to her rescue. He was the dark
knight from her sketches and from the tarot reading. The man who
had come to save her from the world that shunned her. All her
mother’s warnings and her own firm stance to trust no one went
completely out the window with that very first glance. She could
only hope his intentions were honorable. Because she knew she would
follow him to the ends of the earth without question.
    Morrigan kept her gaze glued to him until the
last possible second. She couldn’t help herself. If he knew she was
watching, he gave no indication. He sat quietly, with his face
raised to the sky, obviously enjoying the warmth against his skin.
When the bell finally rang, announcing her lunch hour had arrived,
Morrigan jumped up from her desk and headed for the cafeteria. She
skipped the lunch line altogether and bolted straight for the door.
But when she flung it open and examined the picnic tables, she
found that no one was there. The man seemed to have vanished.
    She didn’t believe for a minute that he had
been nothing but her imagination. She knew her mystery man had been
out there. A sense deeper than any vision told her he still was
there—somewhere.
    “Come out,” she called. She was proud of the
fact her voice revealed none of her wildly whirling emotions. “I
know you’re here. I can feel you.”
    She heard a soft chuckle, and then he stepped
out from behind the shelter of a nearby tree. She was relieved to
see he wasn’t glowing anymore. It must have been a trick of the
light after all. Even in normal lighting, she still found him
strangely breathtaking.
    “I should have known it would be impossible
to take a witch by surprise.” He took a few steps in her direction
and bowed deeply. “Greetings, Mistress Morrigan.”
    His voice added a whole new dimension to his
rustic, earthy charm. His accent was somehow a cross between Irish
and English, yet it was neither one at all. It had a flow and an
inflection all its own. Each word was like a note of music. It was
unlike anything she had ever heard, and it made Morrigan feel
lightheaded. No man had ever had that kind of effect on her before.
She didn’t like it, and she did the best she could to hide it from
him.
    She was even more concerned when she heard
the door creak open behind them. She peeked over her shoulder just
in time to see a few other students come out to enjoy the beautiful
weather on their lunch break. When they saw Morrigan and the
strangely dressed newcomer, they couldn’t help but snicker.
Luckily, they were far enough away that no one could overhear them
talking. But just in case, Morrigan gestured for him to follow her
behind a patch of bushes which blocked them from the view of her
nosy classmates.
    “Who are you?” Morrigan demanded.
    Her voice had lost most of its former
strength with the arrival of their audience—something that didn’t
go unnoticed by her dark knight, who was completely unaffected by
the laughter at his expense. He gave her a cocky smirk before
replying in his melodic accent.
    “I am Filtiarn, your most humble and obliging
servant,” he told her with another exaggerated bow. “But, you,
fairest of maidens, may call me Tiarn. Your mother has sent me to
bring you back to your home in Tír na NÓg, where she awaits your
services most urgently.”
    Morrigan narrowed her eyes. The speech seemed
a little too rehearsed, a little too phony. Yet, she knew she had
no other options. Even if she could get to where she needed to go
without him, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She wasn’t sure she
ever wanted to be apart from him again, even for a second. The
warnings about deceit and betrayal were front and foremost in