Blood of the Watcher (The Dark Ability Book 4) by D.K. Holmberg Read Free Book Online Page A

“You make my point.”
    “That’s just it, Haern. Had I not been trapped by the chains, I’m not sure that I would have learned about how I could connect to the heartstone.”
    Haern’s eyes narrowed. “You think that it was a good thing that Shael attacked you? That he trapped you on Firell’s ship?”
    “Not a good thing, no,” Rsiran started. The time he’d spent trapped on Firell’s ship had been torment, but mostly because he didn’t know what had happened to Jessa, where Josun had dragged her. He would have done anything to find out. “But good came from it.”
    “And Venass?” Haern asked. “You were trapped there, I seem to remember you sharing. Do you think that some good came from your time there?”
    Rsiran didn’t think that anything good could come from a place like Venass. After they had trapped him, essentially buried him in lorcith until he managed to find a way free, the only thing that he had gotten from Venass had been an antidote that hadn’t even been needed for Brusus. But hadn’t he come to understand that they were a threat?
    Haern shook his head and grunted. “Always so damn positive. If you think that there were lessons you were meant to take from that place, then you are a fool,” he said. “From that line of thinking, then you’ll probably think there was a good reason you ended up trapped by the Forgotten.”
    Of all the times he’d been trapped, for some reason, it was that time that had left him feeling the most helpless. He couldn’t stop what they did to him, how they assaulted him. Not the physical attacks so much, but the way they had attacked his mind, attempting to steal knowledge from him, secrets that were his alone.
    Because of that, he hated the Forgotten the most. That, and the fact that they had not only poisoned him, but Jessa as well. They had forced Firell to help find him, tormenting him by threatening harm to his daughter.
    “Not good. But at least I know how far they’ll go to get what they want.”
    Haern grunted again. “You could have learned that without getting abducted. Think about how long they have been in hiding, with no sign that they were organized as they are. Even Brusus hadn’t learned about the extent of their organization.”
    “Or you,” Rsiran said.
    Haern often downplayed his connections, but he had been an assassin before coming to Elaeavn. Those skills would have given him a different sort of insight than someone like Brusus who had been born and raised in Elaeavn, even if his mother had been exiled.
    “Yes. Or me,” Haern said.
    “You’ve never told me much about your time before Elaeavn, other than the fact that you were an assassin,” Rsiran said.
    Haern’s face remained neutral, but there was a certain tension to his shoulders. His hand clenched around the hilt of the steel sword—one of Rsiran’s that Haern had asked him to make—and he took a slow breath. “There aren’t many who know of that time.”
    “Jessa knows.”
    “Jessa knows some.”
    “How did you end up in Venass?”
    Haern’s eyes seemed to take in everything in the smithy, before pausing on Rsiran. “You don’t end up in Venass. They claim you if they think there’s something you can do for them. Like your abilities.”
    “They wanted what you can See?”
    Haern traced a finger along the scar on his face. “Seers have different levels of ability, you know that, Rsiran?”
    He didn’t, so he shook his head.
    “Don’t really know how it works, but it’s like each person catches a different glimpse of what the Great Watcher knows. You take all of that, and you piece it together…”
    Rsiran thought he understood. Venass could use the combined knowledge gained from Seers in some way. “When did you remove it?”
    Haern tapped the scar. “You can never really get away if you continue to use what they give you. That’s something I learned early on. But it’s been hard. A man gets used to having certain gifts. Thing like enhancement to