Winded by Sherri L. King Read Free Book Online

his mouth.
    When he’d carried her to the keystone where she’d first
called him, the only safe place he could think of, he placed her gently on the
broken blooms scattered over the ground and tucked her beneath the shelter of
the boulder. He eyed the beastie that was her Familiar. “Can you go back and
destroy the bodies in the house so that I can stay with her?” he asked in a low
voice, barely louder than the blitzing air, afraid of drawing attention should
more enemies be lurking close.
    Ball huffed, as if such a request were insulting to his
great talents. Still, he turned and raced for the house, leaving his mistress
in Boreas’ protection.

Chapter Six
     
    Vetiver awoke to see her house engulfed by fire.
    There were better ways to greet the dawn.
    Her head was in Boreas’ lap. His hand was stroking her hair
and he, too, was watching the spectacle of her home—the last tie to her
heritage and family—go down in a blaze of glory.
    The sun had not yet breached the horizon, and with the storm
still raging, the clouds dense overhead, it would not touch the island today.
The wind was still up, the trees bending at alarmingly sharp angles, but none
of it touched them where they rested underneath their shelter of granite. The
ground was still littered with blooms from where Boreas had sprouted—had it
only been last night?—and the freshly overturned soil was a strong scent in her
nose, but not strong enough to blot out the acrid odor of her burning home.
    It was over.
    Everything she owned consumed by hungry flames.
    Everything that had owned her , that held her to this
place, was torn away; dead roots to a tree that would bear no more fruit.
    The Grimoires, the antiques, the heirlooms, the foundation
of her life and the lives of so many of her ancestors, all of it transmuted to
ash in but a few hours.
    She couldn’t help but feel a little lost.
    Who was she now? A woman without a home. A witch without a
purpose. Her New England island was doomed to a watery grave. And she had
nothing save the dirty clothes on her back and the silver cuff she’d managed to
keep secured on her arm.
    All that remained of the Device family wisdom now slumbered
in her memory. Long days of study at her granny’s knee, Ball at her mother’s
side while she went about making a poultice for some friendly islander. Sleepless
nights spent worrying over the next Warding ritual when she’d inherited her
powers, and Ball along with them. The sudden loss of her mother and
grandmother, the comfort she’d taken in all they’d left behind for her. The
many tears she’d shed as she had worked hard to memorize every spell her mother
had written, every recipe her grandmother had saved during the course of her
long life, the better to help them live on when the time came for Vetiver
herself to give birth to a Device girl child.
    If only she had known the hand of fate was guiding her down
this path, she would have secreted the Grimoires away, off the island, stored
away for her descendents.
    It was a strange legacy, stranger still to be cast loose
from the moors of the responsibilities that had accompanied it. It was all
Vetiver knew.
    And now it was over.
    She sat up and looked at Boreas. This strange, electrifying
man who had swooped into her life, with hell close on his heels. She didn’t
blame him. What had happened was destined. She’d felt it when she had first
come here to call upon the elements for their aid, though she hadn’t understood
it at the time. Nor did she feel bitter that it was she who had been chosen to
enter this fray and meet the Unnamed foe their family had feared for so many centuries.
    What she felt was a confusing mix of defiance against her
lot, resignation to it, anticipation of what might await her next and a deep
appreciation that she had this strong, fearless warrior at her side to help her
weather the storm he’d brought to liberate her.
    “Will more of them come?” she asked, her voice husky from
sleep and