Prized by Caragh M. O'brien Read Free Book Online Page A

had a sketchbook. I’ll see if I can have my husband Dominic find it.” She tilted her face slightly and pressed her knitting needle idly against her chin. “I think we need to work out a deal.”
    â€œYou’ll give me my sister back?”
    She shook her head. “Please face the truth, Mlass Gaia. You’re sixteen. You’re still weak from crossing the wasteland. You’re in no condition to watch over an infant who needs constant care and nursing. I have a mother here who will love her and care for her as her own.”
    â€œYou just don’t think I’m fit to raise a baby.”
    The Matrarc smiled. “You’ve been talking to Mx. Dinah. You’ll be perfectly fit to raise your own baby in a loving home someday. I’m certain of that.”
    â€œUnlike Mx. Josephine,” Gaia said, with an edge.
    The Matrarc took a sip of her tea. “You liked them, didn’t you? Mx. Dinah and Mx. Josephine are wonderful women. They’ve just made different choices, and trust me when I say they made them with their eyes wide open. But I don’t care to go into the matter of the libbies at the moment. We have things to work out between us.”
    â€œLike when I can see my sister? Where is she?”
    â€œYou broke out of the lodge to try to find her, obviously,” the Matrarc said.
    Gaia drank another swallow of her tea. “I’ll do it again, as soon as I can. You might as well just let me see her.”

    The Matrarc’s eyebrows arched slightly. “You sound so much like your grandmother sometimes. Come here. Kneel before me.” She set down her teacup and held out her hands. “I want to touch your face, child. Don’t resist me this time.”
    Gaia’s gut instinct was to back away as fast as possible, but the Matrarc merely waited. Gaia eyed the woman’s slender fingers, her pensive face, the rich red color of her skirt draping around her pregnant shape, and gradually her wariness yielded to the Matrarc’s wordless patience. She set her cup lightly on the hearth with a faint clink, then she shifted nearer so that she could gently lean her face up against the Matrarc’s waiting fingers.
    She closed her eyes as a trembling coolness rippled through her. Ten impossibly light fingertips touched along her face, instantly sensitizing every millimeter of her skin. Her eyebrows were traced in simultaneous curves, and then her cheeks. She could feel her scar respond as the Matrarc’s touch returned across the mottled skin of her left cheek a second time, examining, smoothing, and then the touch glided tenderly down her nose, and lips, and chin. The touch came to pause at her jawline, holding her, memorizing her. Gaia could hardly breathe.
    Gaia opened her eyes to see a question in the Matrarc’s expression. No matter how many times people had stared, no stranger had ever touched her this way before, and the intimacy unglued Gaia. The Matrarc’s inspection went deep into her marrow, a cross between suffocation and a kiss.
    The Matrarc’s own face was a study of concentration, and her clear, sightless eyes flickered with prisms of firelight.
    Confused, Gaia knew it was time to shift away, but somehow she couldn’t. Nor could she speak. The Matrarc’s hands slid lightly over her hair and down to her shoulders, meeting the chain of her necklace.

    â€œWhat’s this?” the Matrarc asked. As she lifted the locket, the ticking became audible.
    As if released from a spell, Gaia could breathe again. She leaned back slightly. “My locket watch. My parents gave it to me.”
    The Matrarc lowered it carefully. A belated shiver lifted along Gaia’s skin, and she crouched back to her old place beside the fire, hugging her arms around her. What did you do to me? she wondered.
    â€œI didn’t realize things were so complicated,” the Matrarc said finally.
    Gaia felt the heat of a blush start up her