The Lady of the Storm - 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

be awhile before someone else can tend to him.”
    Cecily gathered the power to her again, her blood thrumming in response until it felt as if her very skin shivered with the force of it. Will jerked his arm from about her shoulders. Perhaps it truly did.
    Several healers had already started pots of water to boil, and she called thin streams of it to her, the air cooling it by the time it reached her. Cecily guided it with her fingers, washing off Giles’s chest, noting a thin wound across that perfect skin, but otherwise no injuries except for the bullet hole. She angled the liquid into a point and swirled it to make it strong enough to penetrate that opening, then allowed it to trickle back out with red, then a tint of pink. She continued to force the water into the wound until the musket ball popped out.
    Cecily heaved a sigh of relief.
    “Well done,” whispered Will.
    She nodded at his words, ignoring the awe that had crept into his voice. She tore more cloth from her chemise and bound the blacksmith’s shoulder.
    “What shall we do with him?”
    Will rose to his feet, grabbed Giles’s ankles, attempting to drag him. “I’ll take him over with the rest of the injured—damn, the man must weigh a hundred stone.”
    “Do stop, Will. You’re likely to hurt him.” Cecily curled her arms beneath the blacksmith’s back and knees, lifting him with a grunt. Despite her elven strength, all that muscle of his made him heavy. And her smaller height allowed his head to nearly touch the ground, his feet to drag through the mud. But it was better than Will tugging him about like one of his sheep. “Where?”
    Will just gaped at her.
    Cecily inwardly groaned. For years she’d hidden her elven strength just as much as she’d hidden her magic, longing to fit in with her fellow villagers. Well, except for the time that beam had fallen on Gregory—but she’d been careful that no one had seen her move it. And once, when Becca’s little sister had wandered near the cliffs, Cecily had used her elven speed to catch the girl before she tumbled over the edge. Isolated incidences with few witnesses. Quickly forgotten because for most of the time she appeared entirely human. But today…
    Today’s events had destroyed all of her diligent subterfuge.
    “Where do I take him, Will? He’s heavy.”
    He snapped his mouth shut and led her to Old Man Hugh’s cottage, which already held several other wounded men. Cecily laid the blacksmith down on a clean pallet just beyond the doorway, her muscles trembling with relief as she settled him. Despite everything, she felt hesitant to leave him. What if he’d lost so much blood he’d never manage to wake up?
    She broke another habit she’d developed to protect herself. She looked into his face.
    Merciful heavens. Cecily stroked his thick white hair off his brow. The pale strands lacked the sparkle of silver that marked the elven lords, but it only made him appear more human. Made his beauty more real. The sculpted cheekbones, the perfectly formed nose and chin. His skin also lacked the paleness attributed to the pure elven—a light golden color that, along with his ordinary-shaped eyes, betrayed his more human blood.
    But he’d inherited entirely too much of the elven beauty for any woman to be unaffected by the mere sight of him.
    Cecily had been but nine years old when Giles had come to apprentice to the old blacksmith. At the age of fifteen, Giles had already reached his manhood, while she had been nothing but a scrawny child. Within a few years Giles had taken over the forge and seduced half the maidens in the village.
    And like all the rest, Cecily had imagined herself in love with him.
    She could not look into his eyes without feeling as if she’d swoon, so she had avoided his gaze. His mere presence left her breathless, heart hammering and palms sweating, so she could not gather the nerve to speak to him. But she took to hanging out about the smithy with all the rest of the