When Magic Dares (Darkly Fae Book 2) by Tera Lynn Childs Read Free Book Online Page B

humans within five miles will be able to smell the campfire.”
    He shrugged and held his hands closer to the heat.
    Since he did not seem inclined to leave his handiwork, Arianne grabbed a pair of hand pies and joined him next to the fire. The warmth of the flame washed over her face and it took all her self-control not to dive into it. She handed him a pie and then settled onto the ground as close to the heat as she could stand.
    She took a bite of her pie—a delicious mixture of carrots, onions, and purple potatoes—and could not hold back the groan of pleasure. Food in her stomach. Heat from the fire. Perhaps she truly was the spoiled weakling so many assumed her to be. One day of hard walking and cold weather and she was ready to curl up into a little ball.
    Tearloch rose and moved away, but she couldn’t bear to turn away from the fire long enough to see what he was doing. He returned shortly, the blanket containing the rest of their dinner cradled in his arms.
    He set the bundle down next to her and held up the empty sweet-meade bottle from their lunch. “I’ll get water.”
    As she hungrily devoured both her pie and the one he had left behind, she watched him walk to the lake’s edge and bend down to fill the bottle with icy mountain water.
    “It’s amazing,” she said as he returned to her side, “how much better a bit of warmth and food makes everything seem.”
    Just then, a bold breeze blew across the lake, whistling around their campfire and racing down her spine. Tearloch carefully moved the food to the ground and then held out the blanket in which it had been bundled.
    “Wrap this around your shoulders,” he said. “It will ward off the chill from behind.”
    Arianne accepted the blanket and braced herself for the seemingly inevitable. Why can’t you warm yourself? What’s wrong with your powers? What’s wrong with you ?
    Tearloch sat next to her, nothing more than a thin linen shirt separating him from the elements, without so much as a shiver. But to her surprise, he did not ask the questions.
    The Moraine might have been a gray clan, sworn, like the Deachair, not to harm humans for magical gain, but they still had access to their full powers. They could still feed their magic with negative human emotion. Pain. Sadness. Grief. They could capitalize on the natural pain of mortal life.
    The Deachair could not.
    It had been so long since she could freely use her powers, Arianne had stopped even trying. What used to be habit now seemed a trick of memory.
    As she wrapped the blanket around herself, she felt out of place next to the fae warrior. She felt… weak. That was not a feeling she enjoyed.
    She reached instinctively for the fox pendant that hung from the chain around her neck. It had long ago become a kind of talisman, a touchstone that she could hold and feel when the world became too much. That reminded her that there was good in the world, and that if she only had patience and persistence, things would work out.
    Some days it was hard to maintain her optimism.
    “What is that?”
    His question tore her out of memory.
    “Oh, this?” She glanced down at it, as if having to reassure herself of what she held. “A lucky charm of sorts.”
    She held it out to the end of the chain for him to see. But he only seemed to be looking at her.
    He said simply, “The fox is the sign of the Moraine.”
    There was something in the way he said it, like it was an accusation, that had her stuffing it back beneath her shirt.
    “I know.”
    “Then why do you wear it?”
    She shrugged again. “Once I was lost,” she said. “It was a gift from the boy who found me.”
    He stared at her for what felt like an eternity. She expected him to say… something. Do something. Demand she remove the symbol of his clan, demand she throw it in the lake, something .
    He pushed to his feet.
    “Do not sleep too close to the fire,” he said. “Though the warmth is tempting, it is also dangerous.”
    And with that