Winds of Fury by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online Page B

I for one am truly glad that Kethra is going with your father. I was afraid she might do one of those typically Shin’a’in things and declare she couldn’t leave the Plains!”
    Darkwind grinned, and this time tossed a pillow at her. She ducked. “You are being silly. How could she do anything like that with one of Hyllarr’s feathers, beaded and braided into her hair for all to see? They are mated, silly Herald. She could no more leave him than Hyllarr can.”
    â€œSilly Herald, yourself,” she retorted. “How am I to know what all these beadings and braidings mean? And how in Havens am I to know one feather from another?”
    He shook his head sadly. “Barbarian. Barbarian and ignorant. How could you not tell that the feather was from Hyllarr? From where else would such a great golden primary have come? There are no other birds the size of a crested hawk-eagle here!”
    She cast her eyes up at the ceiling, as if praying for patience. “Just wait,” she replied. “Just wait until I get you home, and you complain about not being able to tell Companions apart! Revenge will be so-o-o-o sweet!”
    He only grinned and went back to his packing, and she to hers and her thoughts. Thinking about the Shin’a’in Healer Kethra made her a great deal happier than worrying about Darkwind. There were going to be problems when she got home that she’d rather not think about right now. . . .
    She and Kethra had struck up an odd friendship over the winter, and a bond forged by their love for Darkwind and Darkwind’s father Starblade, cemented by the new bondbird that Darkwind and Elspeth had found for the weakened Adept. From the very moment that charming Hyllarr had come into Starblade’s life, his recovery from the terrible damage Falconsbane had done to him had been assured. For that alone, Elspeth suspected, Kethra would have been inclined to like her, although Hyllarr’s discovery was still sheer good luck in Elspeth’s mind. But they were surprisingly alike, and that helped; Kethra had been able to deliver authoritative conversations on caring and partnering that would have been a lecture coming from anyone else, but seemed no more than good advice from Kethra.
    It was due to Kethra’s suggestions that Darkwind, Skif, and Elspeth, together and separately, had urged Starblade and Wintermoon—Darkwind’s half brother—to begin simply talking to one another. Wintermoon had long envied Darkwind’s favored-son relationship with his father, and had withdrawn from Starblade when quite young. Kethra felt that the time was long past when they should have reversed that withdrawal.
    Now—with Kethra, Darkwind, Elspeth, and Skif urging and encouraging, Starblade and Wintermoon had begun building the father-son relationship they had never really enjoyed. Another sign of healing, perhaps, but just as importantly it was a sign that Starblade felt worthy of having relationships at all.
    Darkwind had said at one point that he thought in some ways this was the easiest of the relationships for Starblade to establish. There had been so much that had been warped and destroyed of the relationship between Darkwind and his father, that even trying to reestablish it was painful. And so much about loving had been tainted by Falconsbane that simply to permit Kethra into his heart must have been an act of supreme and terrible courage for Starblade.
    Yet another thing Falconsbane has to answer for, whatever hell he’s in , Elspeth thought angrily. The beast .
    In many, many ways, it was a good thing that Darkwind and Starblade would be separated for a while. That would give emotional scars a chance to really heal without constant contact irritating them; give Starblade time to find a new way to think of his son—as something other than a little copy of himself that had been his pride.
    And it would give Darkwind time to reconcile everything that