Bloodsong by Eden Bradley Read Free Book Online

the moment I saw her, in that meadow full of lilacs… She’d fallen from her horse. Even though her ankle was badly sprained, she didn’t cry. She was independent. Fiercely so. Brave.”
    He stopped and held so perfectly still he looked as though he were a statue.
    He said softly, “She loved me.”
    When he raised his head and turned back to face her, Meeraj saw such grief in his eyes it hurt to look at him.
    “Of course she did,” she said.
    “Not enough to spend eternity with me. But no, that’s not fair. She simply valued her human life too much. I cannot blame her for that. Not my Emeline.”
    “What happened?”
    “I offered her the Turning Kiss, but she refused to take it. I spent a lifetime with her, watching her age, always remaining young myself. She tried to send me away a few times, but I would never go. I was as stubborn as she was. I loved her as she loved life.”
    “It must have been difficult, to watch her decline. I saw it, with my mother.”
    “Perhaps this is why I can tell you these things. I haven’t spoken her name out loud for a hundred years. I haven’t told anyone about her. Those who caught glimpses of her during the Seeking Kiss have never dared to mention her to me.”
    “I did more than see her, Aleron,” she said.
    “I know.”
    “Can you tell me about the meadow?”
    “Ah.”
    His fingers tightened around her hand once more, hard and hurting, but she drew in a breath. She would bear it for him.
    “She loved that place. She always said it belonged to her. I took her there to die. This is what you saw. Our last night together.”
    “Aleron, I’m sorry!”
    She was crying again. She couldn’t help it. There was so much love, so much pain, in his voice. She felt it in her blood, in her heart. And with it was her own. The old pain of losing Jai, her mother. The still fresh pain of losing Dev.
    “Aleron, how is it that I could have thought I’ve dealt with all of this already, that I’ve moved beyond these things? And for you, a hundred years later, the loss is still fresh.”
    “When you live this long a life, Meeraj, it all melds together. Memory becomes…a bit confused. Or perhaps it’s our sense of time. I understand how long it’s been since I’ve seen her. Yet in my heart it was only yesterday. And in that same way, although we met only yesterday, it feels as though you have been with me for a hundred years.”
    His face was perfectly serious. And although she didn’t have his long life, she had that same strange sense, as though they had known each other a very long time.
    She dared to reach for him then, to touch his face. It was smooth beneath her fingertips. He caught her hand, kissed the palm, then her fingers, warming her.
    “Perhaps there is some reason to the world, after all,” he said. “I’ve never believed it before. And I must admit that I’m surprised there are still things to learn. Arrogant of me. The arrogance of a long life. Perhaps it is inevitable to feel we know it all, we immortals.”
    She smiled at him, happiness like a gentle heat seeping under her skin. She had expected adventure when she’d gone to Midnight Playground. An overload of the senses. An escape. She had never expected this.
    His eyes were drawing her in, deeper and deeper. She couldn’t look away. She looked closer, found the striations of icy silver among the blue, the midnight ring around the brilliant iris. And deeper, to the emotion there, to the glimpse into his soul he was allowing her.
    She felt touched in a way she never had in her life, that he would share this with her, and her alone.
    She felt chosen .
    Her chest was knotting up, but the tears dwindled, faded away. She didn’t need to cry anymore. She simply needed to be with him. And because it was him, because it was her, she knew she could have the tenderness she suddenly craved, and the harshness and the command her body always desired.
    His hand snaked around the back of her neck and he drew her roughly