Roadside Magic by Lilith Saintcrow

Author:Lilith Saintcrow [Saintcrow, Lilith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Dark, Fae, Supernaturals, UF
ISBN: 9780316277860
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2016-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

BELIEVE NO MAN

34

Damn the woman. The stitch in his side gripped even harder, and sweat stung all over him. Still, he kept going, grimly determined to keep her in sight. The dog gave him many a dubious look, but at least there were no mortals about to witness a huge russet hound, the woman with the fiery hair in tattered black velvet, and the man in her wake wearing armor he didn’t have the strength to glamour.

He kept his gaze fixed on the back of her head. What was she thinking? Daisy hadn’t been this . . . difficult. But then, Daisy hadn’t been to Court, and hadn’t survived among the sidhe. Simple, uncomplicated, sunny, that was his dead wife.

Except she’d never breathed a word about her sister. How much had she suspected? Or was Robin just a family secret? A Half’s talents could make things difficult, among mortals. Had Robin been sent away, a shameful blot on the past?

Puck had found her, and brought her to Summer. Now Jeremiah was thinking there was more to the story. Far, far more, but some turn of it escaped him.

If he could manage to earn her trust, she might tell him enough to make the whole story visible. The more he knew, the better he could play both ends to keep her safe. Or as safe as possible even after the poison eventually claimed him.

The sun mounted higher. A buzz and blur of traffic began, drawing nearer, a snake-rattle of warning.

She finally noticed he was lagging. His feet didn’t want to work quite right. Was this what mortals felt, what they called sick? It was different from being wounded.

Much different.

Her fingers, warm against his forehead. The armor was too heavy; now he was thinking he shouldn’t have put it on. The sidewalk glittered with chips of quartz, even the cracks and seams full of rich dirt and tiny green sprouts. His toes caught, he stumbled, and Robin was speaking to him.

“You’re fevered. How long were you in the Markets, Gallow?”

Long enough to find you. His tongue fit oddly in his mouth, so he didn’t say it. Greasy sweat all over him—going without rest, without anything but mortal food, then fighting a running battle through the Gobelins with the poison breeding silently in his side. Movement—she was under his arm, now, and he leaned on her drunkenly. A hot weight on his other side was the dog, pressing close, and Robin whispering. Glamour-chantment, prickling all over him to disguise their bizarre appearances, digging at the scar in his side with tiny diamond claws.

“Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad? Oh, damn it.” She stumbled, too, righted both of them, and a long reeling time later there was a rattling. She propped him against a stone wall, and he lost himself in the veins, cracks, moss, small spots of lichen. “No, Pepperbuckle, stay back. Back. It will hurt you.” More rattling, a whisper of lock-opening chantment, and the raw edge of fear in her voice was wrong.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.