Rebel: The Blades of the Rose Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Zoe Archer
scrub, animals returned to their burrows after their nighttime forays for food. Thrushes sang to each other. And nowhere could be heard the sounds of human habitation.
Being out in the expanse helped. In this wild place, every day she fought to survive. No room or time to huddle into herself. Self-pity opened the door to disaster. She pushed herself ahead and had done so for four years. She would continue to do so until she stopped appearing at the trading post, and some curious trapper or dutiful Mountie made the trip out to her cabin to find what remained of her. But her loss wouldnât matter, because she had been careful, very careful, to form no attachments.
Something shifted in her peripheral vision. Astrid swiftly took up the rifle slung over her shoulder, then lowered the gun when she saw it was only a fox trotting home from a nocturnal hunt. A beautiful creature, sleek and red, all economy and motion. The animal barely sent her a glanceâit had too little exposure to man to see her as a threatâbefore darting into the brush to seek its den.
âA wise choice.â Astrid chuckled to herself. Thoughts of her own secluded homestead, as comfortable as a place could be well away from civilization, had her urging her horse on. Sheâd spent the night sleeping on pine needles with her rifle cradled in her arms. Her bed at home offered better rest.
Her solitary bed.
Against her will, her thoughts turned back to the man sheâd met at the trading post yesterday. Nathan Lesperance. Just thinking his name sent a shiver of heat and awareness through her. There were men in these mountains who were bigger and brawnier, but the raw masculinity of Lesperanceâs lean and muscular body, even underneath his heavy traveling clothes, hit her at once with the strength of a hot avalanche. A striking man, with high cheekbones, aquiline nose, and full mouth, his skin the color of cinnamon, sculptural in his virile beauty. Hair and eyes as black as mystery. Her own body, so long used to its seclusion, thrummed into wakefulness, stirred by the male splendor of him. Even the sound of his deep, smoky voice enthralled.
An attorney from genteel Victoria. She never would have believed it. Not because he was Native, but because she sensed it at once, the elemental wildness in him, barely contained, glittering in the jet of his eyes.
There had been something else, too, a kinship. She felt instantly that he knew her, knew her innermost selfâthe hurt, the anger, and, yes, even the fire that burned in her deepest recesses, the fire for life itself. That fire had brought her to the Blades, made her love her work with them. To seize the world with both hands and never let go. Sheâd tamped it down after Michaelâs death. But it never truly extinguished. Lesperance, somehow, had seen it. Heâd done the impossible, piercing the fortifications she had raised. No one, not even her closest friends or her family, had been able to do that in all this time. She could not fully understand how Lesperance managed it, only that he had.
He had looked into her. Not merely seen her hunger for living, but felt it, too. She saw that at once. He recognized it in her. Two creatures, meeting by chance, staring at each other warily. And with reluctant longing.
Yet it wasnât only that immediate connection she had felt when meeting Lesperance. There was magic surrounding him.
Astrid wondered whether Lesperance even knew how magic hovered over him, how it surrounded him like a lover, leaving patterns of nearly visible energy in his wake. She didnât think he was conscious of it. Nothing in his manner suggested anything of the sort. Nathan Lesperance, incredibly, was utterly unaware that he was a magical being. Not metaphorical magic, but true magic.
She knew, however. Astrid had spent more than ten years surrounded by magic of almost every form. Some of it benevolent, such as the Healing Mists of Ho Hsien-Ku, some of
Being out in the expanse helped. In this wild place, every day she fought to survive. No room or time to huddle into herself. Self-pity opened the door to disaster. She pushed herself ahead and had done so for four years. She would continue to do so until she stopped appearing at the trading post, and some curious trapper or dutiful Mountie made the trip out to her cabin to find what remained of her. But her loss wouldnât matter, because she had been careful, very careful, to form no attachments.
Something shifted in her peripheral vision. Astrid swiftly took up the rifle slung over her shoulder, then lowered the gun when she saw it was only a fox trotting home from a nocturnal hunt. A beautiful creature, sleek and red, all economy and motion. The animal barely sent her a glanceâit had too little exposure to man to see her as a threatâbefore darting into the brush to seek its den.
âA wise choice.â Astrid chuckled to herself. Thoughts of her own secluded homestead, as comfortable as a place could be well away from civilization, had her urging her horse on. Sheâd spent the night sleeping on pine needles with her rifle cradled in her arms. Her bed at home offered better rest.
Her solitary bed.
Against her will, her thoughts turned back to the man sheâd met at the trading post yesterday. Nathan Lesperance. Just thinking his name sent a shiver of heat and awareness through her. There were men in these mountains who were bigger and brawnier, but the raw masculinity of Lesperanceâs lean and muscular body, even underneath his heavy traveling clothes, hit her at once with the strength of a hot avalanche. A striking man, with high cheekbones, aquiline nose, and full mouth, his skin the color of cinnamon, sculptural in his virile beauty. Hair and eyes as black as mystery. Her own body, so long used to its seclusion, thrummed into wakefulness, stirred by the male splendor of him. Even the sound of his deep, smoky voice enthralled.
An attorney from genteel Victoria. She never would have believed it. Not because he was Native, but because she sensed it at once, the elemental wildness in him, barely contained, glittering in the jet of his eyes.
There had been something else, too, a kinship. She felt instantly that he knew her, knew her innermost selfâthe hurt, the anger, and, yes, even the fire that burned in her deepest recesses, the fire for life itself. That fire had brought her to the Blades, made her love her work with them. To seize the world with both hands and never let go. Sheâd tamped it down after Michaelâs death. But it never truly extinguished. Lesperance, somehow, had seen it. Heâd done the impossible, piercing the fortifications she had raised. No one, not even her closest friends or her family, had been able to do that in all this time. She could not fully understand how Lesperance managed it, only that he had.
He had looked into her. Not merely seen her hunger for living, but felt it, too. She saw that at once. He recognized it in her. Two creatures, meeting by chance, staring at each other warily. And with reluctant longing.
Yet it wasnât only that immediate connection she had felt when meeting Lesperance. There was magic surrounding him.
Astrid wondered whether Lesperance even knew how magic hovered over him, how it surrounded him like a lover, leaving patterns of nearly visible energy in his wake. She didnât think he was conscious of it. Nothing in his manner suggested anything of the sort. Nathan Lesperance, incredibly, was utterly unaware that he was a magical being. Not metaphorical magic, but true magic.
She knew, however. Astrid had spent more than ten years surrounded by magic of almost every form. Some of it benevolent, such as the Healing Mists of Ho Hsien-Ku, some of