Heart Wood by Katey Hawthorne

Author:Katey Hawthorne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, fantasy, epic fantasy, mm, romantic fantasy, eco, eco fantasy
Publisher: KV Taylor

Chapter 3: Wildcrafter Settlement, Heart Wood

A wagon full of books, heavy and leatherbound rather than the light, bark-bound books popular in the Heart Wood, arrived in the middle of another Council meeting. Kajja, Marsalis, Thad, and Jessica commandeered Dagan, Innan, and several other involved parties to weed through the masses of information buried within them.

Hendrik had never cared that he was a weak reader until this precise moment. He accepted a glass of wine from a server, who set it down before him. “Need anything else, let me know.”

Hendrik waved them off but accepted the glass. It was elderberry, not as good as Dagan’s mother’s, but lovely and silken on the tongue. Food and drink tasted so much more vibrant here than what he remembered from the Stone City. Of course, he couldn’t let the Heart Wood fall to the same evil that had taken Kass. Of course, he was going to do everything he could to avenge Kass and Lyla and the probably thousands of people that had died in vain before them.

But the list of people he cared for was thin, to say the least, and it couldn’t be that every single one of them had to be involved, too. What was next, Alara and Kon as secret resistance agents?

Kajja and Dagan had that same drive and the same right to protect what they loved, too. And yet, Hendrik’s mind couldn’t wrap around the idea of them facing the City itself, let alone whatever ripped out dozens of throats a year and, potentially, magically sapped the land itself when that wasn’t enough. Of course, it might not be the same thing…but was it likely there were two life-eating forces at play here?

The thought sent a shiver of dread down his spine. He downed the glass of wine and waved politely for another.

The readers barely paused for supper, and by the time they finished for the night Hendrik was well and truly drunk. Which made him less angry but slightly more indignant, somehow. Dagan, Kajja, and Innan found him in the hall, carrying glasses of their preferred drinks, and slid into his table.

“My brain hurts.” Dagan knocked back a glass of wine in two gulps and waved for another.

“Hen, you can’t believe how ugly it all is.” Kajja sighed. “I mean, mostly it’s just lists of births and deaths and the Founder’s bloodline, but the books that do have some history in them…”

“I don’t understand how Marsalis smuggled them all out,” Innan said, shaking their head. “Did he do it in shifts or…how?”

“Piret said security was mostly outside the Archives before he took them all; I guess it was easier back then,” Kajja replied. “My question is, how did no one think to do it before him? Or just to make this all public knowledge in the City?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Hendrik said suddenly.

“About what?” Kajja asked.

“The—the why no one told us about all this—this stuff from the Archives. That,” Hendrik replied.

Dagan laughed and slid an arm around his waist.

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