Leoht (BloodRunes: Book 3) by Laura R Cole Read Free Book Online

and handed it to her and
she deftly turned it so that it revealed its opening. Katya raised
her eyebrows as she lifted out a beautiful silver necklace. A jewel
was encrusted in the center of the pendant, surrounded by the
images of a dragon and a phoenix.
    “It’s beautiful.”
    Katya spoke, “Do you recognize it?”
    Layna shook her head negatively as she
reverently placed it around her neck.
    “Your father said something about you
deserving to know who you are…” She looked at Layna expectantly as
though this would mean something to her, but it didn’t. Layna knew
who she was. She shrugged and Katya continued, “Your mother also
insisted that it wasn’t my presence that had brought about their
deaths, that they had been expecting the day…”
    “Why would they have been expecting it?”
    “I was hoping you could tell me,” Katya
answered unhelpfully. “I went to see them in hopes that they could
give me some clue as to my past, but before I could ask them…it
happened.”
    “Why would just an image of them cause you to
track them down?”
    “My memories of my childhood were completely
erased from my mind, the images of your parents are the first I’ve
ever had…finding out who I really am, who I used to be, is very
important to me,” she paused, unable to put into words what she
wanted to say, “I thought maybe they could help me find out who I
was before…or that they, or you, might have recognized me.”
    Layna looked harder at the woman, trying to
imagine her as a little girl, and scouring her own memories for any
other children she’d come across. As she did so, she felt something
strange about her, and Layna shifted her focus to look within the
girl with her magesight. Inside her mind was the taint of another,
and Layna wrinkled her nose. The Three helped her understand what
it was. “I think that someone may have implanted the memory of
their faces into your mind,” she regretfully told Katya who looked
taken aback. “They may not have had anything to do with you at all.
I’m sorry.”
    “Who did it? And why?” Katya asked.
    Layna just shrugged, having reached the
extent of the information that she could pass along to the girl,
and the shock of her parent’s death weighed down on her. Katya’s
eyes grew full of concern, and she looked down awkwardly.
    Gryffon stepped back into their campsite just
then and looked down at the two of them. “What’s going on?” he
asked, setting the wood down next to the fire.
    “Katya just told me that my parents are
dead,” Layna said, her voice cracking.
    Katya hastily stood and excused herself,
disappearing into the woods.
    “Are you okay?” Gryffon asked softly, coming
to sit down beside her. A light rain sprinkled down on them and
when she nodded but seemed content to say nothing, he got up and
put canvases over their bags and tied one up over their heads
before sitting next to her once more.
    “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Gryffon said
and she was only slightly surprised by his words, “she traveled all
this way to give you the news and the package that your father had
asked her to give you, I figured it was right to have her be the
one to do it…”
    She looked at him and gave him a small smile
and nodded, “She was.”
    “There’s something about her though,” Gryffon
said, thoughtful. “Like she’s not being entirely honest with us.
I’m not completely convinced that we can trust her to find
Nuko.”
    Layna’s sad smile grew. “I think we can,” she
said, letting out a short breath of air, “she wants to find out who
she is, and she can only do that by helping us. I think she was
abused in a lot of ways, and used for other people’s purposes most
of her life. She is just now figuring out that she can make a
difference. She seems to want to do the right thing.”
    Gryffon looked thoughtful a moment before
changing the subject. “What did your father give you?”
    Layna held up the necklace for him to see.
“Katya said