Winter's Edge (The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Series Book 1) by Lindsey R. Loucks

Author:Lindsey R. Loucks [Loucks, Lindsey R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-02T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

I hated walking through towns, especially now with a walking stick, because I felt like I was shouting the fact that I was blind from the top of my lungs. I grew defensive if anyone got too close or said the wrong thing. Just ask Jade.

“Who? This?” she’d said once while nudging me. “I’m taking care of her and my brother.”

We’d been strolling through Margin with Lee on our heels, and she’d said it to impress some random boy she’d met two seconds earlier. So, I’d taken Lee and Hellbreath back to Margin’s Row without her and made her walk a large chunk of the twenty miles back. I would’ve let her do the whole trek if not for Lee getting upset about it, and after I finally rounded back to pick her up, the summer sun beating down, she didn’t speak to me for weeks.

We had a complicated relationship, and I often hated the attention she received for her looks and was even jealous of her name. Jade sounded so much more exotic than Aika. Jade had purpose. Aika was just some random letters strung together to make a weird sound at the back of your throat.

Still, she might as well have been my blood sister, and now I was leaving her behind in a brothel. Leaving her brother behind to drink even more at another tavern with his so-called friends.

And Archer… He could fend for himself.

I had to believe that, just as I had to believe I was making the right choice by continuing with my original plan.

Guilt dragged at each of my steps, though, as I cut my way through the crowd in slow motion.

Someone's elbow jabbed a little too close to my healing ribs, and I let out a hiss.

Whoever it was just chuckled, a smoky, feminine sound that instantly made me think of sex. Not with her, but in general, like maybe she worked at one of the brothels in town.

"Sorry, dearie, but you're on the wrong side of traffic," she said.

Oh. I swatted at the ground with my walking stick and tried to maneuver to the right, but there were too many bodies. This place was hell.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." I swung my walking stick higher and landed several hits until people finally moved out of my way.

The woman had been right. Over on the right side, the crowd flowed in the direction I needed.

Soon, my ears perked at the sound of horses snorting and pawing the ground up ahead. There was a hitching post there where Hellbreath always went directly to when Baba and I would arrive from the other side of town. Just to the right of it was where I needed to go.

When I got there, I could tell I was in the right place because of the booze and tobacco smell and the certain clang-flap-clang of what sounded like a flag with metal parts beating against its pole. From the sound Baba's voice had made when he was here,

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