Under A Velvet Cloak Read Online Free PDF

was gone, but surely not dead, for his body was not there. His Seeing ability and general knowledge should have protected him from almost any ugly surprise. So what had happened?
    Obviously he had been tricked in some fashion. Kerena used her Seeing, which had progressed less rapidly than her body or her practical expertise; it had refused to be hurried. But it did enable her to pick up recent physical and emotional events in the area, in a general way. She moved about the house, extending her awareness. Morely had been there, unconcerned as dusk approached. Then he looked out and saw Kerena coming. He went out gladly to meet her.
    Uh-oh,
Jolie thought.
    But Kerena had not arrived back at dusk. She had been a good hour later. That arrival could not have been her.
    She went to the cloak, still on the ground. Why had he put it there? Normally he wore it, or spread it on the ground when they lay outside gazing up at the stars. But the dusk today was overcast; there were no stars to be seen.
    Or when they made love. They had a good bed inside, but still liked to do it out on the cloak, reenacting their first tryst. She liked to pretend to be seducing him for the first time, and he liked to play along. She even winced at his penetration, though it never hurt later. Somehow the reenactment never got dull.
    Along with the drops of blood on the cloak was a fresh stain of sex.
    His presence was there by the cloak, along with someone else. Kerena could not fathom the other; it was strange and magical, resistive to her Seeing. Female, but otherwise obscure.
    But Morely would not have done it with a strange woman. He had been resolutely loyal to Kerena, even before she seduced him. Especially not on their cloak. Had his business required him to bed a female client he would have done it; she understood about that. She herself might someday have to bed a male client, as business. But never in this manner.
    Yet it seemed he had. How could that be?
    Think magic, girl.
    The answer came in a blinding nonmagical flash of insight. Morely had gone out to meet Kerena, and had spread the cloak. He had sought to love her.
He had thought it was her.
    Someone had timed it for when Kerena should normally have arrived, and somehow emulated her, and indicated she was ready for love. He would not have questioned that; he did love her, and making love (now sex and love really did merge) was their chief joy together. He had gladly joined the im~ poster 1 -and she had drugged him or enchanted him and taken him away. The drops of blood on the cloak-perhaps a poisoned needle, stabbing him, drawing blood, then paralyzing him. He would not have been wary while clasping Kerena; he would have embraced her, and maybe hardly felt the prick of the needle as he climaxed within her.
    “I betrayed him!” she exclaimed, appalled. “My semblance deceived him, made him unwary. He walked blithely into the only trap that could have snared him. Because of me.” Tears of outrage and guilt flowed.
    Not your fault, girl.
    Kerena picked up the cloak. She shook it and brushed it off, but did not go after the stains. Whatever there was of Morely was there, and she valued it.
    There must have been more than one person, because a woman petite enough to emulate Kerena would not have had the strength to carry away an unconscious man. Indeed, someone must have carried him, because now she found indentations in the ground beside the spot the cloak had lain, leading away from the house. She tried to follow them, but the ground turned hard and they disappeared. Her Seeing was blocked; she could not divine the trail. They must have known she would try to follow, and prevented it. They had had time to get well away; there could have been a horse nearby.
    Why had they done it? Possible reasons abounded. The husband of a client could finally have discovered the connection, and come to extract revenge by imprisoning and torturing Morely. A rival Seer could have sought to enslave him, making