Target Of The Orders (Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

get lost in the depths of those eyes.
    She was attractive in a way beyond physical, a way that dug under his skin. But as he looked up at the darkening sky, and as he felt the featherlike tickle of his hunger stir inside him, he was suddenly afraid for her, afraid for what he could do to her and for what, in turn, that would once again do to him.
    “It’s not a good idea, Suni.”
    “We can’t win if we don’t have you on our side,” Sunathri said.
    Garrick did not reply.
    After several moments, she sighed and, like Darien before her, walked back to camp, her boots whipping through the grass.

    It rained the next morning.
    The camp woke up wet, and went about their well-practiced ritual of loading supplies and preparing their animals. The dampness around them muted all sound.
    Garrick sat beside the creek and ate stale bread.
    Sunathri came to him. She said nothing, merely sat silently beside him until he finished eating.
    “It’s no use,” he finally said. “I’m going on my own.”
    “We’ll leave you a horse,” she replied.
    “I don’t want one.”
    “You’ll need to move quickly.”
    “I intend to go back to Caledena and gather back the one I left behind.”
    Sunathri’s silence grew awkward once again.
    “Don’t you have to go?” he asked.
    “I’m not leaving until you do.”
    Garrick gave a soft chuckle. “You’ll make me be the one to walk away, will you?”
    “Does that threaten you?”
    “No,” Garrick said. But inside he felt pressure. A band of fifty people would not move until he left them behind. Action and consequence.
    “The Torean House needs to be together if it is to survive,” Sunathri said in a soft tone. “And together it needs to stand for something. What we stand for, Garrick, is the freedom of each person to find who they are for themselves. You may not believe this, but look around us. Nothing holds these people here but that thought. You can leave us, Garrick. But we will never leave you, nor will we fight you unless you take an active side against us.”
    “I understand.”
    Garrick stood and helped her up.
    “Where will you go?” he asked.
    “The less you know of us, the less danger we can put you in.”
    “And the less danger I can put you in,” he replied.
    “That, too,” she said.
    He nodded. “Good luck.”
    “Luck to you, also.”
    Sunathri’s eyes blazed with fierce pride.
    In the distance, Darien stood with the Torean wizards, his arms crossed, and his father’s sword sheathed along one leg.
    Garrick turned away and walked into the forest heading northward, walking alone and back toward the city where he had a promise to keep.

Chapter 7

    When Darien asked if Garrick was going to become a vigilante, the question had irked him.
    Vigilante—the word itself seemed sharp and ugly. It held a sense of danger, a hazy aura of radicalism that didn’t appeal to him. The concept of vigilantism felt unyielding and rash. Vigilantes were angry people. Unpredictable. Not swayed by fact. Vigilantes, by definition, were not rational.
    But by the time he returned to Caledena, Garrick had decided Elman would die.
    What unnerved the most was how at peace he was with the idea.
    He had never made such a cold-blooded decision before, but Elman had killed Alistair, and he would have killed Garrick and Darien if it weren’t for the Freeborn rescuers. Call it justice, call it self-defense, or call it a natural consequence of action, it didn’t matter to Garrick.
    The orders weren’t going to let him simply fade into the woods to live the solitary life he wanted to live, and since he didn’t plan to be tied to a group, he couldn’t see a different way out. So he would become a vigilante for as long as he needed to be one—which he assumed would be until the orders stopped chasing Toreans.
    And Elman would be his first target.
    Yes, Elman had to die.

    So Garrick walked through patches of thicket, dense woods, and little worn trails with nothing but the calls of