Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) by Rose Christo Read Free Book Online Page A

leaned toward Annie with his hands on his knees, big fingers splayed out, a wide puppy dog grin on his face.  Puppy dog was a good way to describe him, from his long, gangling legs to his equally long, rail-thin arms.  Why wasn't he eating anything?  He should have been eating something.  He had a brown birthmark on one cheek and a straight, thin, kind of pointy nose.  He reminded me of an elf.  He reminded me of a muffin.  His hair was the fluffiest thing I'd ever seen.
    Christine St. Clair was written all over that guy's face.  I'd seen her face before, not just in my blurry memories, but in Uncle Gabriel's photo albums, in my own drawings, apologies I'd left on her grave and in her abandoned house.  The ghost of my father was written on my face, a face everyone hated, me most of all.  I wanted to rip my face off.  I wanted to rip Christine's kid's face off.  I really thought I might kill him.  First I figured it was Dad speaking through me.  Either he wanted to finish the job he'd never completed, or he wanted to relive whatever sick fantasy killing Christine had satiated in him.  Then I realized:  These weren't Dad's feelings.  These were my feelings.  I knew they were irrational.  I knew they were wrong.  But when Christine St. Clair's son survived that night, I lost my dad.  I missed my dad.  I didn't understand how he had turned into a monster without my noticing, or--or maybe he had been a monster all along, maybe I'd been too stupid to see it, we all had; but how?  How do you look right into a devil's eyes and think you're staring at a human?  What was wrong with me?  By loving my dad, by missing my dad, wasn't that the same as saying it was alright for him to take so many lives?  That he should have taken more?
    My hand tightened against the oak's trunk.  I was the monster.  I was the one the council should have killed by blood law.
    My shoulders stiffened; because at that moment the blond guy lifted his head.  His eyes trailed through the shadows--my shadows--covering the crowd.  Tendrils of darkness reached for him, but drew back.  I couldn't see anybody's face, just his.  I'd made up my mind that I was going to hate him.  It didn't have to make sense.  Nothing about me made sense.
    The guy locked eyes with me.  I forced my face into the most hateful, concentrated glower I could muster.  He jumped in his seat and I immediately felt guilty.  He hadn't done anything wrong.  I could see in his eyes that he recognized me; which meant he recognized Dad's face on me; which meant he remembered the night he'd lost his mom.  I was a painful, walking reminder, the living commemoration of seven lives lost, hundreds of lives ruined.
    The guy smiled at me.
    The shadows covering the ground burst apart.  The shadows released my ankles, warmth spreading up my legs, into my knees.  The faces around me went completely visible, talking, laughing, a mother chasing her kid around the firepit, three old men viciously arguing about their quinoa crops.  Light spread into the sky and stripped the shadows down, reproachful, but gentle.  The sky bled red with sunset, matching the bonfire.  The clouds lit up yellow, fanning out like daisy chains, their glow so clear, so crisp it felt like I'd never seen it before; I'd never seen anything before.  Light splashed across the dry grass on the ground, the dead brown tinting bronze, alive.  Light enveloped Morgan Stout with his flute and Solomon Knows the Woods with his wineskin and Autumn Rose In Winter, the big white bow in her girlish, bobbing ponytail, the soft smile on her face when she talked with her brothers.
    When I looked at Christine's son again he'd already turned his back on me, Annie Little Hawk chatting in his ear.  It was a good thing he couldn't see me.  I didn't know what my face was doing.  Light flitted in and out of the empty spaces between my fingers.  I closed my hands, trying to catch it, to hold it.  My head buzzed with