The Brush of Black Wings Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t lose it. I gave it up. Willingly. I’d do it
again if you asked. But I did mourn its absence, useless as it is
to me.”
    He tugged her back into his hold. “Not
useless. Dangerous. You know my thoughts about your Gift, Martise.
Left solely to me, I’d bleed it out of you a second time and make
sure I took all of it. Its power is coveted. You’ve known slavery;
you’ve never known the kind of slavery such a Gift would
induce.”
    She laid her head on his chest. His heart beat
a comforting rhythm in her ear. “I know, I know. The reasonable
part of me agrees with everything you said. I don’t want to lure
demons or be used by power-crazed mages like poor Zafira was, but
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t reluctant to destroy my
Gift.”
    He tipped her chin up so she’d meet his gaze.
“Then you and I shall bargain. You keep your Gift until you say
otherwise. But we take up where we left off those years ago. I’ll
teach you to bury it—as deep as it lay buried after Corruption’s
defeat. If Cael can’t sense it, neither will any mage or cursed
Conclave priest. You’ll stay away from any of the temple ruins in
the wood, and you’re never to seer-bond with anyone but me.
Agreed?”
    Martise rubbed her chin against his finger.
“Agreed.” A very reasonable bargain, and she had no intention of
going anywhere near one of the woodland temples ever again—not even
for Gurn’s mushrooms.
    They spent the next several moments exchanging
slow, languid kisses until Martise put some much needed distance
between herself and Silhara. The chamber was as frigid as when she
left the bed’s warmth, but she fanned herself with her hand to cool
off. Silhara’s knowing smirk earned him a roll of her
eyes.
    She left him to retrieve a shawl from the
chest at the end of their bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“Don’t you want to try out a spell yourself? Break a window? Open
the shutters from across the room?”
    He snorted. “No. Your power runs through me
like hot Dragon Piss. If I try to open a shutter, I’ll likely blow
out the wall. I’ll never hear the end of it from Gurn.”
    Martise groaned. “Gurn. He won’t forgive us.
Breakfast is long cold by now.”
    Silhara smothered the coals in the brazier.
“Considering breakfast almost got you abducted and likely worse, he
can damn well take the trouble to reheat the plates.”
    “ You know what he’ll say,” she
said as he ushered her toward the door.
    He shrugged and followed her into the black
hallway. “For a man with no tongue, he talks far too much for my
liking.”
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Gurn surprised them both by not only having
the food reheated when they returned to the kitchen but a new pot
of tea readied to replace the one that had turned cold and bitter.
He did gesture to Martise behind Silhara’s back, a sign she easily
translated to the usual “horse’s ass.”
    “ I saw that,” Silhara said and
frowned at the extra orange left beside his plate and cup—Gurn’s
small revenge for having his first efforts ruined by Silhara’s
prolonged stay in his bedchamber with Martise. It didn’t help that
they were oranges bought from another grower.
    In a petty act of revenge for Silhara’s
resistance, the god Corruption had destroyed the orange grove that
was once not only Neith’s source of income but also Silhara’s love,
second only to Martise. She hadn’t always understood his attachment
to the grove until he’d revealed his history and what it
represented—proof of his ability not only to overcome a childhood
of deprivation and violence but to remain independent of the
loathed priesthood who’d first sought to control him and then kill
him.
    Young orange trees grew where the burnt
remains of the first trees fertilized the soil, their slender
branches as yet unable to offer sanctuary to the crows that called
Neith home. Conclave, which once considered the Master of Crows an
unpredictable adversary at best and a heretical threat