Dance of the Gods by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online

I wouldn’t have believed any of this, not at the heart of it. And now, well…” He stared thoughtfully at the wall of rock and sod. “What’s a man to do?” he repeated.
    He had a point she decided. She moved over to join him, angling her body so that she could scan one sweep of the cliff face while he took the other. “I was four.”
    â€œYoung. Young to have any understanding of matters that dark. That they’re real, I’m saying, and not just the shadows a child imagines are monsters.”
    â€œThings are a little different in my family. I thought it would be my brother. I was jealous. I guess that’s natural enough, the sibling rivalry.” She slid her hands into the pockets of her coat, idly toying with the plastic bottle of holy water she’d shoved in there before they’d left. “He’d have been six—six and a half. My father’d been working with him. Simple tumbling, basic martial arts and weaponry. Lots of tension in the house back then. My parents’ marriage was falling apart.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œIt happens.” Maybe in his world the sky was rosy pink and love was forever. “People get dissatisfied, feelings change. Added to it my mother was sick of the life, the things that took my father away. She wanted normal, and it was her mistake she’d married someone who’d never give it to her. So she was busy picking fights with my father, and he was busy ignoring her and working with my brother.”
    Which would mean, Larkin thought, that no one was paying attention to her. Poor little lamb.
    â€œSo I was always after my father to train me, too, or trying to do some of the stuff my brother was doing.”
    â€œMy younger brother trailed after me like a shadow when we were children. This is the same in all worlds, I suppose.”
    â€œBug you? Bother you?” she amended.
    â€œOh, drove me mad some of the time. Others, I didn’t mind so much. If he was close by, it was easier to devil him. And others yet, well, it wasn’t so bad as company.”
    â€œSo pretty much the same as with me and my brother. Then this one day they were down in the training area—a space most people would have a family room.” But you had to have a family to rate a family room. “We had equipment—weights, a pommel horse, uneven bars, rings. One whole wall was mirrored.”
    She could still see it, perfectly, and the way they’d reflected her father and her brother, so close together, while she’d been off to the side. And alone.
    â€œI watched them in the mirrors; they didn’t know I was there. My father was giving Mick—my brother—a rash of grief because Mick just couldn’t get this move. Back flip,” she murmured, “dive, shoulder roll, throw the stake into the target. Mick just couldn’t get it, and my father was dead set he would. Finally, Mick got pissy himself, and he threw the stake across the room.”
    It had almost brushed her fingers, she remembered. As if it had been meant for her hand.
    â€œIt rolled right to me. I knew I could do it. I just wanted to show my father I could do it. I just wanted him to look at me. So I did. I called his name: ‘Watch me, Daddy,’ and I did it, the way I’d watched him do it over and over trying to get Mick to understand the rhythm.”
    She closed her eyes a moment because she could still see herself, still feel it in her. As if the world had stopped, and only she was in motion for those few seconds.
    â€œHit the heart. Mostly luck, but I hit the heart. I was so happy. Look what I did! Mick’s eyes just about fell out ofhis head, then…there was this little smile in them—just a little. I didn’t know what it meant then, I thought he’d just gotten a kick out what I did, because we mostly got along pretty well. My father didn’t say anything, not for a few seconds—seemed