Kinked (A Novel of the Elder Races) by Thea Harrison

Author:Thea Harrison [Harrison, Thea]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-11-05T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

She woke him after a couple of hours, and without a word they exchanged positions. Dawn had broken, bringing humid warmth. He felt sweaty and dirty, and he wished they were near running water again.

Aryal curled on her side and threw part of her jacket over her face. After that she didn’t move. Quentin rummaged in his pack for the last of his food. He had one more can of beef stew, which he would be heartily glad to see the last of, and three protein bars left. He ate all of it except a final protein bar. He wanted to eat that too, but instead he tucked it away. The promise of new, different food was close, but it wasn’t with them yet.

The sun rose higher and so did the heat. The area was quiet except for the occasional drone of insects and trill of birdsong. No unexplained shadows, no anomalies, at least not any within sight.

He hadn’t had the chance to think much about the four missing Elves—too much had been going on, and Aryal had consumed most of his attention—but now he did so with a sense of foreboding. He didn’t know two of the names that Ferion had given him: Cemalla and Aralorn, the one female, the other male.

He did know the other two Elves, Linwe and Caerreth. Linwe was a firecracker, a young Elf who had recently dyed the tips of her spiky brown hair blue. She had laughing brown eyes and a propensity to teasing—or at least she had before the tragedy at Lirithriel Wood.

Quentin was quite fond of her. They were not related, either by blood or by marriage, but he still considered her part of his larger family group. Caerreth was a shy young male, bookish and remarkably insensitive to his surroundings. Quentin had met him before on his visits to Lirithriel.

All four of them, Ferion had told him, were younger and less experienced. They were the ones who Ferion could spare. Quentin shook his head. The longer time passed without any explanation for their absence, the higher his concern spiked. He was antsy to get to the coast and start investigating, to see if they could find any sign of the Elves there.

He judged the time by the sun’s position in the sky. When he estimated a couple of hours had passed, he said to Aryal, “Time to wake up, sunshine.”

Her sleep-roughened voice sounded from underneath the jacket. “You need to stop calling me that. I don’t know anyone less filled with sunshine than me.”

“I like the irony,” he told her.

She rolled to a sitting position, her hair all over the place. She raked it back with both hands and groped for the leather tie that had come loose in her sleep.

“Why don’t you cut your hair short if it annoys you?” he asked curiously. He stifled the odd, foolish twinge of regret at his own words. Her hair was another thing about her that was simply beautiful, the

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