Wild Blood (Book 7) by Anne Logston Read Free Book Online

little time to rest before the sun sets, but remember that you must not sleep yet. Come, you can lie down and Lahti will stay with you. When I left Rowan after mixing the potion, the other elders were still arguing.”
    Val was miserably glad to crawl to the furs Dusk had spread on the ground and lie down, closing his eyes so he would not have to watch the dizzy spin of the world around him. Oh, for only one hour’s peaceful sleep. But he was forbidden sleep until his dreaming time came at sunset. Val grimly forced his eyes open again.
    Lahti appeared at his side as if by magic, her long brown braid tickling his face until she flipped it back over her shoulder. Her warm brown eyes, usually sparkling with mischief, were now wide with worry.
    “I’ve brought you some cold minted water,” she said, easing her forearm under Val’s shoulders, “Dusk said it would ease your stomach.” She lifted him with some difficulty; although she was tall for her age and her clan, like most of the elves in Inner Heart she was small compared to Valann. Val helped as best he could, and Lahti was able to support him in a half-sitting position and hold the wooden cup to his lips.
    His senses almost painfully heightened, Val breathed in Lahti’s scent, a mixture of the leather of her clothing, the pungent odor of the herbs she’d bathed in to purify herself so she could assist Dusk and be with Val during the rituals, her own slightly musky scent—but over it all, the sharp tang of her fear. She was terribly afraid for him, as he knew Dusk and Rowan were despite their seeming calm—no elf, to anyone’s knowledge, had ever taken the trials of passage into adulthood so young. And there had never been, to anyone’s knowledge, a youth of only part elven blood to face the trials at all.
    “Dusk said the elders were still arguing,” Val rasped painfully.
    “Still.” Lahti smiled a little. “Don’t make that fierce scowl, my friend. The elders are only concerned for you, so young and your blood not pure. What if the potion poisoned you, like the mushrooms you ate three years ago that almost killed you? Even Dusk can’t be certain, and he’s tended you all your life. And what if your spirit isn’t old and strong enough to make the journey to the Mother Forest and back? Some have failed on their first journey; some have even died, or been spirit-lost and worse than dead. I have two decades and five years, and I’ve trained with Dusk for years, and my spirit still hasn’t called for the journey. How can your spirit be ready almost a decade sooner?”
    As always, Lahti’s touch, her scent, were almost as much a torment as they were soothing. He fumbled for her hand, held it over his heart where the springy black curls had grown, so that she felt the quickened beat of his blood.
    “My spirit is ready,” he whispered.
    “I know.” Lahti glanced around her, then smiled mischievously and ran her fingers up the inside of his thigh, making Val gasp involuntarily. Then she took pity on him and stopped. “I feel your body calling. I wish mine could answer. I wish I could be the one to come to your hut after you return from the Mother Forest.”
    “I wish that, too.” Val shivered as a new wave of nausea washed through him, banishing his arousal as abruptly as it had come. “But for now I only want this all to be done. It seems like forever since I last had a mouthful of meat, since I last slept.”
    “It can’t be rushed. Without the trials to strengthen your spirit, you might not return safely from your journey.” Lahti lowered Val back to the furs and glanced around again. This time she laid one small, callused palm on Val’s forehead, the other over his heart, and Val felt her healing power flow into him as smoothly as the sunlight flowed down through the leafy canopy. Immediately his stomach eased and his reeling head settled in a wave of cool well-being. Val caught at Lahti’s hands, pulled them away from his body.
    “You