Bound (Bound Trilogy) by Kate Sparkes Read Free Book Online

together over the bone, and the sharp bend in the wing straightened under the feathers with a soft cracking sound. Skin grew over the wound, dark pink and rippled, but nearly whole.
    Grey patches bloomed out of the white lights and crowded everything else out. The world turned black, and I fell into darkness.
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Six
    Aren
     
    H er magic disappeared from the room as she hit the floor, but it lingered in me, its glowing embers all that remained of the healing force that had taken me by surprise. I lifted my head and shifted my body to the edge of the table. There she lay, head cocked at an awkward angle and thick hair covering her face, chest rising and falling regularly. I closed my eyes, half-hypnotized by the strange feeling that flowed through me, pulsing outward from my injured wing. Hours before, I’d thought I was going to die, crippled, shot with an arrow that poisoned my blood and kept me from using my magic. Now I would live, if I could get away.
    Perhaps a rest first, though.
    I opened my eyes again, and blinked hard, fighting the influence of her magic, which felt so unlike my own in its warmth and gentle strength. It would have been easy to let myself drift off into it as it healed me, but I couldn’t. I was still in danger, and needed to get home. It wouldn’t be long before my body made the magic its own. I just needed to be patient.
    I forced myself to my feet, bracing my talons against the flat surface of the table. I stretched my injured wing, resisting the contented laziness that infused my muscles. It wasn’t fully healed, but that girl had done what I couldn’t. She’d cleansed my blood of the poison, and healed my wounds far more efficiently than I’d have been able to under any circumstances.
    There was no way I could open the window behind me without transforming back into my human body. I flapped to the floor and made my way through an open doorway into a tidy little bedroom, but the only window in there was closed, too.
    There was nothing else to be done. I drew on that unfamiliar magic within me and transformed, sending the eagle’s body away as I drew my own form back to myself until I crouched with my bare feet pressed against the smooth, wooden floorboards of the bedroom. The temperature in the room dropped as the process began. Focus , I told myself. Transformation was still a relatively new skill for me, and I had to be careful.
    I wrapped myself in a quilt from the bed. Not for the first time, I decided that forming clothes after transformation was going to be the next skill I studied. At twenty-three I was far more powerful and skilled in magic than anyone had expected, but I couldn’t let myself rest when there was still so much to learn.
    The tiny sitting room where I’d left her was warmer and brighter than the bedroom. I sat in a worn-out armchair and examined my arm in the lamplight. The wound had transferred, as they always did, and it still throbbed with that unfamiliar magic. I found that I could think more clearly now that I had returned to my natural form, and several conclusions fell into place.
    First, this young woman was no professional healer. The ability to heal another was among the rarest magical gifts. Besides that, anyone in my own country who regularly used magic to heal learned to strip their personal essence from the power before it left them, leaving it as blank as the ambient magic in the land around them. Their work felt nothing like this. Her magic was soft, yet powerful enough to make me feel light-headed. Her concern for me when the healing began was there, a feeling of peace and belonging that I hadn’t felt in years.
    The intimacy of it made me shudder. I didn’t want this Darmish girl’s magic and her essence to be a part of me. I hardened myself to its influence, and waited for the power to become my own. But as her influence began to fade, an ache spread through my chest, a feeling of regret which I refused to examine.