Sorceress' Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

today, have you? Normally, you’d
eat breakfast but you decided to bring…” Benjamin paused
and looked very thoughtful; he studied Rebecca with squinted eyes and
then smiled. “Ashley. You’ve brought Ashley to me without
even having breakfast.” Surprise snatched away Rebecca's breath
as she opened her mouth to respond.
    “How did you know?” she asked.
    “Your mind is difficult to read; certain things in particular
are hidden well. You’re not impossible, though.”
    “What? How dare you go poking into my mind?” Rebecca was
furious. “You’ve got no right to do that!” What
made her even angrier was that she didn’t even know he was
doing it. She couldn’t tell if he was there reading her
thoughts, so, if she didn’t know when he was doing it, there
was nothing she could do to stop him.
    “That’s not important. What is important is that Ashley
needs to be tested now. We’ll begin just as we started
yesterday.”
    “What do you mean it’s not important?” Rebecca
demanded but Benjamin was ignoring her. She was defeated. She was as
powerless as ever in this world where nothing made sense. Rebecca
shut her mouth, folded her arms and watched Benjamin from the door,
begrudgingly. What happened to treating guests with respect? Who the
hell just goes poking into people's minds like that? Fine! She
guessed she owed them anyway.
    Benjamin took Ashley over to the table, just as he had the day
before, and placed the candle, fully formed, in front of her.
    “Do you know what I want you to do?”
    Ashley looked at Benjamin, who was kneeling down to her level. “No?”
    “It’s alright, Ashley,” Rebecca said soothingly.
Benjamin waited a moment and at last Ashley shook her head.
    “Well, that’s something. I want you to look at the string
at the top of the candle. That’s called the wick. I want you to
look at that and focus on it. I want you to keep looking at that
until it’s like there’s nothing else – just the
wick and the sound of my voice. Then I want you to tell it to light
up. Tell it, with your voice, to ‘light’ and want it to
light up. You have to want the wick to light up in a flame. You have
to need it like you’ll die without it happening. Then you have
to tell it what to do. I want you to put all that need and that order
for it to obey you into that one word. Now when you’re ready,
tell it what to do.”
    “This sounds very complicated for her.” Rebecca said.
Benjamin hushed her with a wave of his hand. Rebecca was sceptical
but she let him go on.
    “Light!” Ashley said with a soft voice, lacking in the
force she needed. “Light!” she said again. “Light!
Light!” Nothing was happening.
    “Take your time, Ashley.” Benjamin told her. “Don’t
say it unless you’re sure it’s there. You need to bring
it all out in that one word. Use your tone of voice and that word to
bring out those feelings I told you. You have to want that fire to
come more than anything you’ve ever wanted and then tell it,
order it like it's a puppy, to come alight.” Things were quiet
for a time and no one seemed to move. The only sounds came from the
wood fire that occasionally crackled. Ashley stared intently at the
candle and Benjamin stayed kneeling by her side. Rebecca leaned
against the wall, her hands in her pockets, watching them both.
Nobody moved. Coming into the room at that point would have been like
walking into a painting.
    No one knew how long had passed and how many times Ashley had tried
to get the candle to light. Rebecca had fallen asleep on the couch.
Benjamin tried different approaches to teaching her but there was
only so many ways he could reword the same idea for her. Eventually
he took a seat and began reading while Ashley kept trying.
Eventually, Rebecca lost all sense of time. There was only that room
and the lesson. It wasn't until her stomach started growling
painfully that Rebecca realised how long they'd been there. She could
see Ashley was also getting