Death's Awakening by Sarra Cannon Read Free Book Online Page A

tight and tired.
    A heavy blanket covered
her body and sweat trickled across her temple. She grabbed the edge
of the blanket and moved it to the side. The fabric seemed to weigh a
thousand pounds and the muscles in her arms screamed at the simple
motion.
    She sat up, but the
room began to spin and she had to close her eyes to keep from falling
backward. She moaned and ran her fingertips across her forehead.
    Footsteps sounded on
the floorboards outside her room, followed by a knock at the door.
    Startled, she looked
up, taking in her surroundings for the first time. She shook her
head, not remembering at first. Nothing here looked familiar and she
wondered if she was still caught inside a dream.
    “Are you awake?
Mind if I come in?” A man’s voice followed by another
soft knock.
    The witch went to
answer, but her voice was a mere whisper. Her throat was dry as a
desert.
    The door opened slowly
and a pair of blue eyes peered inside. When he saw that she was
awake, the man’s face broke out in a smile. “Hi,”
he said. He motioned toward the table by her bedside. “Do you
mind?”
    She shook her head,
still trying to swallow and find her voice.
    The man carried a small
tray inside and set it down on the table. He poured a cup of steaming
brown liquid and handed it to her.
    She lifted her hands
and wrapped them around the warm cup.
    He nodded to her, then
glanced at the drink.
    Slowly, she brought it
to her cracked lips and took a sip. The taste was bitter, but felt
delicious against her sore throat. She took another sip and her
stomach rumbled.
    The man reached for the
wooden chair near the door and pulled it over toward the bed. He
turned it backwards and sat down facing her. His eyes never left her
face. “How are you feeling? I can’t tell you how relieved
I am to see you awake,” he said. “I was going to give it
one more day before I drove you into the city. I would have taken you
sooner, but Momma’s really sick herself and said she didn’t
want to be moved. I didn’t feel right leaving her here alone,
but I was scared you weren’t gonna make it.”
    The witch narrowed her
eyes at him and placed her hands in her lap, still holding on to the
delicate cup even though it was empty. “Where am I?”
    The man tilted his head
a bit. “Don’t you remember? My momma and I found you
outside on the ground a few days ago,” he said. “You were
passed out for Lord knows how long. Momma said maybe days. No idea
how you survived it, really.”
    She shook her head.
“No, I mean where am I?” she asked. “What’s
this world called?”
    The man’s
nostrils flared a bit and he laughed. “This world?” He
sat up straighter. “What do you mean? Like what county?”
    The witch looked down
at the cup in her hands. She wasn’t thinking straight. She
needed time to gather her thoughts and figure this out. She
definitely wasn’t still in her homeland. No, wherever Tobias
had gone, it was definitely another dimension.
    She’d never seen
another world before, but she’d read about them many times in
the Council’s history books. Before the War of Fire and Ice,
witches and wizards used to travel freely between dimensions. It was
only after the Dark One was banished that the guardians made it a
crime to use portal magic. They never told anyone where they’d
sent the Dark One, and they’d hoped no one would ever be able
to find her.
    But Tobias had led her
straight here.
    “What’s
your name, anyway?” the man asked.
    She lifted her eyes to
his. “I have no name,” she said.
    He laughed again.
“Everyone’s got a name.”
    She lifted the delicate
cup and put it back on the man’s tray. “Thank you for the
drink. It was very kind of you to take me in.”
    He shrugged. “It’s
no problem,” he said. “Up here in the mountains, we don’t
get many visitors and it’s a long way to the nearest hospital.
I would have called a doctor, but me and Momma, we don’t have a
lot of money right now. The crops