Vengeance of the Hunter by Angela Highland Read Free Book Online

ignore the hurts Julian had dealt his opponent. It warned her that the man was bleeding from three different places, a steady flow of blood that sapped his strength—but he was still holding his own against the Rook.
    And as she came close enough to finally see them, he drove a hammer of a blow into Julian’s jaw, sending him to his knees.
    Faanshi didn’t think and didn’t pause, not even to draw the knife at her side. Instead she threw herself at the Hawk, her palms blazing with radiance of their own, as anger she so seldom set free ripped down the mental hearth she’d been taught to build around her magic. Power surged, furious and bright. As her hands pushed into his back, the Hawk screamed, arching backward and nearly toppling over onto her.
    Before she could dodge, Julian lurched up from the ground and slashed the Hawk’s throat with his final knife, the black-hilted one, the one he never let Faanshi touch.
    The blow was harsh and brutal. It dropped the Hawk into a lifeless heap at her feet.
    Once before, when her power had first awakened, she’d witnessed death—when the duke who’d been her master let the old groom Kennach die of his heart attack rather than allow a living witness to her power. This time was worse. Her power roiled, caught between her own fury at the man’s attack and an immediate, instinctive revulsion at the abrupt cutting off of his existence.
    The effort to hold herself back, to keep her hands from mending damage when only a moment before they’d delivered agony, nearly made her retch where she stood. The world spun. All at once, the fog around her felt very, very cold.
    Then Julian was there, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her away from the body. “Don’t look,” he whispered raggedly. “Come away, girl. You don’t have to look. You don’t have to touch him.”
    Faanshi welcomed the distraction, for as soon as he touched her, she felt that what little strength he had left had been ground away to nothing. Pain so fierce she could almost hear it throbbed through his head, and his new right hand shuddered even as he clung to her. That trembling spread through his entire frame, and Faanshi was afraid to let go of him for fear that he might fall. “You shouldn’t have done that. Julian, you can barely stand.”
    “I’ll make it. No choice. Just...Morrigh. Find the horse...”
    His head drooped onto her shoulder as he trailed off, leaving her no option but to hold him close and let her restless power flood over him. It gentled as it struck, and Julian palpably relaxed—too much so, for she had to struggle to continue to hold him up. “Can you hang onto me? Can you walk? We can’t stay here!”
    “No,” he agreed, though his voice was thin and faint now, as though he spoke from a great distance away. “Get you out of here. Keep you safe.”
    As she lifted a still-glowing hand to smooth his hair, Faanshi said swiftly, “You are. You killed the man who would have seen me Cleansed. You pushed me away from the fire that would have struck me down.”
    “Had to, little dove.”
    She wasn’t at all sure she’d heard those muttered words correctly, but they caught somewhere behind her breastbone and stayed there, refusing to be dislodged or denied. Little dove. Nine-fingered Rab had called her that. It was different from Julian; how, she wasn’t prepared to name.
    “Brave Rook,” she murmured. That made him lift his head and blink at her in hazy surprise, exactly as she’d hoped he might. “If anyone says you’re not a good man, Almighty Djashtet be my witness, I’ll hit them. Later. We need to move now. Please. I can’t carry you.”
    But before he could muster a reply, much to Faanshi’s profound relief, Alarrah and Kirinil emerged out of the fog. None of them dared speak too loudly, lest other ears might hear. With the elves’ help, though, they gathered the horses, retrieved Julian’s knives and got the assassin himself back into the saddle.
    Faanshi