Fire Hawk by Justine Dare Justine Davis Read Free Book Online Page B

became obvious this was no ordinary forest. Not only did it abound with game, but even after months of trapping the number did not seem to lessen. The crops flourished beyond anything anyone had ever seen, yielding so much there was abundance for all. There was the perfect amount of rain, and sun, and it was never too cold or too hot.”
    “Paradise indeed,” Kane muttered. “I’m surprised you were not overrun with folk eager to partake of such bounty.”
    “That was yet another way in which the forest was . . . unusual. On the few times when outsiders approached our village, even though they passed close by, they never stopped, as if they had never seen the village at all, though they must have.”
    Kane’s brows lowered, and she felt his suddenly sharpened gaze as if it were a physical thing. She sensed it was not just the Hawk story that had caused this sudden intentness, but she didn’t know what else it could be. Perhaps he’d decided she was crazy, or worse, a witch or sorceress of some kind, and was even now wondering if he should kill her. She went on hastily.
    “The Hawk clan has lived in peace since that time. There were minor disputes, as there always are among people living in a small place, but they were quickly resolved. Yes, like any other clan, we have the occasional outlaw, but they soon depart for other climes. We have little worth stealing, except that which cannot be stolen.”
    Jenna tried to concentrate on what she should say next, but found it difficult under the steady gaze of those gray eyes. All she could do was remember how flat and dead they had looked. And she wasn’t sure she liked what she saw there now very much better. He looked away then, tossing a piece of wood on the cooking fire that had nearly died out. A shower of sparks arose, and a few moments later there was a series of loud snaps as the resin in the log heated and popped.
    He lifted his head to look at her. “Why you?”
    She blinked. “What?”
    “Why were you sent to . . .” He paused, then lifted one shoulder, causing the pelt he wore to gleam in the last rays of sunlight. “To approach the lion?”
    The lion. It was a lion’s pelt he wore slung over his shoulder.
    The serpent’s tongue, the lion’s roar . . .
    The storyteller’s words echoed in her head. So he’d been right all along. As he usually was. She had indeed heard the lion’s roar; it simply had not been in the way she’d anticipated. She nearly smiled.
    “Jenna?”
    She shook her head, as if the action would somehow release her from the odd sensation that seemed to make her senseless whenever he spoke her name.
    “Why you?” he repeated.
    “Because it is my duty. As the Hawk.”
    “As what?”
    “The hereditary leader of the Hawk clan.”
    He seemed to go very still. “So that explains why you refer to them as ‘your people.’ You’re . . . the leader of this clan?”
    She took in a deep breath. “Not . . . by choice. The Hawk was to have gone to my brother.”
    “The Hawk?”
    “It is the badge of office. A golden Hawk, that is passed from leader to leader. My family has held it since the beginning. They voted Marrifay as the first Hawk, and it has passed down directly to her descendants.”
    “And now you hold it?”
    “I do. My father became the Hawk after my grandfather died. It passed to my mother when my father died.”
    “It passes out of the direct bloodline?”
    He sounded merely curious, not critical, so she answered him evenly. “With the understanding it will pass to the children of the bloodline in turn. But while she held it, my mother was the Hawk as much as my father was, and so she was treated.”
    “Interesting.”
    Jenna shrugged. “When you marry a Hawk, you become one as if by blood, in the eyes of my people.”
    “What happened to your brother?”
    The anger burst through her, catching her unaware; it had driven her to complete her journey, but she’d been too weak for the luxury of it