Through Rain and Missing Mantaurs by Jeanne Marcella

Author:Jeanne Marcella [Marcella, Jeanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jeanne Marcella

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jarren shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. “May I talk to you? Just for a few minutes. I know you must be tired.”

Hesitating, for she didn’t know how much more she could handle, Xanthee found herself nodding.

“Come,” Tobias called. “Both of you sit with me.”

She found a chair beside the hearth.

“I wanted to apologize again.” Jarren sat across from Tobias. “I never meant to hurt or scare you. But I’ve lost my mother and two of my brothers. I wasn’t thinking straight. And I’d smoked too much medicine that day.”

“Brothers?” Xanthee asked.

“You had Christos’s bow.” Jarren nervously pulled his attention away from the hovering Tobias. “He was so close and I never knew it. I would’ve dragged him home.”

“The wet-behind-the-ears palomino centaur?” she guessed. “The one who attacked me at the Junction?”

Jarren’s mouth went tight. “Christos is my baby brother, born from the horse Hendrik and I gifted our father a little more than a decade ago.”

Xanthee rubbed at her neck. The shocks and surprises were beginning to become a common occurrence; she’d roll with it like everything else.

Jarren was trying not to fidget. “When Christos recently disappeared, my father broke. He never recovered from losing Orion and our human mother.”

She tried to form her answer with tact. “Christos seemed to be in good health other than the blow to the head I gave him after he and his friends manhandled me.”

“Friends?”

“Mr. Jarren, your brother runs with the centaurs brutalizing and killing couriers along the northern roads.”

Jarren gasped before sputtering, “Uppity little suckling. What’s he thinking? Kon needs to know this.” He glanced over to Tobias before continuing. “So does my father. Miss Xanthee, do you remember these other centaurs? Were they wearing herd colors?”

“If you mean the blankets, they were all black, except the one your brother wore, and the group’s leader. He was a big black centaur. Draft type. His blanket was edged in a metallic green.”

“Damn,” Jarren croaked.

“You know them?”

Tobias interrupted. “I may, although it’s been years since we’ve talked. Summanus could be the black you saw. He’s heir to the Black Jade herd. He is also my half-brother.”

Xanthee shut her eyes and rubbed her temples. “So Summanus and Christos are the rumored telepathic centaurs?”

When she didn’t get an answer, she discovered both Tobias and Jarren staring at her with stunned puzzlement.

“Yes, Summanus is telepathic, but I don’t…” Tobias trailed off, looking to Jarren for confirmation.

Jarren nodded. “Christos is a budding telepath, but of minimal talent. No one outside of Sanctuary knows that.”

Both men continued to stare at her.

The very idea, and their heavy scrutiny, was so ludicrous that for the first time in days, Xanthee felt a little like her old self. She shook her head, offering an exhausted, sassy grin. “Boys, if I was a telepath, I would’ve happily scooped the answers out of your brainpans on that first encounter and be on my merry way.”

Tobias shared a glance with Jarren. “It does run in her bloodline, and her Uncle Soner had it.

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