Queen of the Sylphs Read Online Free PDF

sent off for their lessons. Everyone in the Valley was supposed to learn to read and write as well as to do math, but that was the job of someone else, and Gabralina went to clean the kitchen.
    She proceeded upstairs to tidy the great long rooms the children slept in; the Widow’s room in the attic she left alone. She was on her knees scouring the floor when a great black cloud drifted through the window, sparked with sparse, slow lightning. Gabralina looked up and smiled.
    Her battler re-formed himself into human shape and flopped down on one of the beds, twisting around to leer at her. “Hi,” he said, rolling over the sheets she’d just straightened, apparently not caring how much he wrinkled his uniform. “Are you done yet?”
    Gabralina giggled, happy to see him even if she knew his being there would get in the way of her work. Wat almost always showed up at some point during the day. She straightened and tossed her brush back into her bucket. “Aren’t you supposed to be guarding the market this morning?”
    “Maybe. I forget.” Wat crawled off the bed and toward her. He really was beautiful, and it made her breath catch in her throat. Battle sylphs could look like anything they wanted, and he was everything she’d ever found attractive in a man all at once.
    When Wat crawled into her arms, she forgot what she’d been supposed to be doing as well.
    “He’s back, isn’t he?” The Widow Lily Blackwell looked up at the ceiling as a faint giggle sounded, and then at her battler.
    Mace was looking at the ceiling as well, a stern line between his brows. He growled, and the baby he was diapering whimpered. Immediately, he returned his attention to the infant and cooed. Little Gila giggled and tried to put her foot in her mouth.
    It was a rhetorical question. Wat was incapable of leaving his master alone for even half a day. Granted, all battlers were like that, but Mace’s needs certainly didn’t get in the way of work. Not for either of them. Responsibilities always had to come first, and Mace’s strong recognition of that was one of the things Lily was fondest about. He was a good man, and theirs a good match. It was just too bad Gabralina didn’t have the same work ethic. She was a sweet girl, but she was flighty, and her battler was next to useless.
    The Widow helped Mace finish pinning the diaper around Gila and pulled a pink shirt on over the child’s head. They were in the playroom, the other toddlers who were too young to go to school playing around them. “Try not to break anything,” she said as she picked up the baby and rocked her.
    “Yes, Lily,” Mace promised, and leaned in to kiss her.
    She let him. He was a very good kisser, and she sighed against his mouth before lifting a hand to his cheek. It was smooth. Mace would never think to appear before her unshaven.
    “Dinner is an hour before dusk. We’re almost out of potatoes.”
    “I’ll bring you some,” he said, and he reached into her apron, taking out a few coins for the purchase. Transferring them to his pocket, he kissed her again.
    The Widow, who’d been called that for so long that only Mace knew her by her first name, let herself feel the deep, powerful, and extremely private love she had for him. Her partner relaxed into it, taking it into his being. Battle sylphs craved love; they even deserted their own world to find it. Silly young girls like Gabralina and her Wat upstairs thought the only way to show that was physical. Lily was hardly celibate, but moments like this were so much purer.
    “Lily,” Mace whispered, his lips brushing hers. Another giggle sounded from upstairs, and the big battler sighed. “Anything else?”
    “A good-sized goose if you can find one. I’d like to cube it for stew with the potatoes.” She stepped back and cuddled Gila. “Only if it’s fresh, mind you.”
    “Of course.”
    The battler shimmered and became smoke and lightning, flickering out of the playroom and down to the stairs in a