Mistweavers 01 - Enchanted No More Read Free

losses, too.” He looked away. “I am sad when I think of my lost friends. Your father, your brothers.”
    She didn’t care. Sometimes she had moments when wild grief tore at her from the inside.
    “You didn’t say goodbye,” Aric said.
    The sentence was a blow that stopped her breath. She struggled for air. She understood, then, that though Aric might grieve as she did, he felt none of her guilt for making love instead of being with her family for their mission.
    That was a wide gulf between them that she couldn’t cross, didn’t even want to think about. Didn’t want to think about that time at all, only could speak one sentence of her own to reply. “I thought Rothly throwing salt and silver at us, showing we were dead to him, was enough.” Again her voice rasped from her throat.
    She turned away, ready to hurry back to her house, her home, her sanctuary. A place untouched by any magic save her own and the brownies’.
    His wide, warm fingers curled around her wrist, touching her skin, and she experienced an unwelcome shock of attraction. While she was dealing with that, he said, “You could be a Lightfolk Princess, that’s what the Eight are offering you as payment for this mission.”
    She snorted. “Unlikely.” Then she shrugged. “I don’t want to be a princess.” But she felt the vibration of yearning in his body, saw the ambition in his eyes. When had he become interested in Lightfolk status? He hadn’t been much before. He’d been as easygoing and laid-back as any Treefolk man she’d known. She wouldn’t ask. None of her business.
    “There is nothing you can offer me that would make me help the Lightfolk. My parents—family—wanted to be accepted, like most half humans. They’re dead and I’ve made my home in the mortal world. Leave me be.” She tugged at her hand.
    “It’s not just the Eight, the Lightfolk rulers. The entire magical community needs you, fast. Just for a month and a half—through March.”
    “I don’t need the magical community!”
    His jaw flexed. “My family needs you.”
    “My family needed you and you failed them.” Her anger poured out with the words, her hair charged with her temper, lifted and nearly sizzled in the cold air.
    Aric dropped her wrist, stepped back.
    Ugly emotions seethed between them. Jenni couldn’t take the words back. She swallowed and pressed on. May as well lance this festering boil. “When you and I ran to the ambush at the dimensional gate, I went to my family to try to help—to balance the energies—to save them from the Darkfolk warriors. You went to the royals and fought.” Another thing she didn’t think she could forgive him for.
    He paled, and replied steadily, “I knew if the Eight fell, all would fall. The loss of the greatest elemental leaders would be such a blow, cause such an imbalance, that the Lightfolk wouldn’t recover for centuries. Easy for the Darkfolk to kill us, take us over.”
    Her smile was cold. “And my brother and I struggled with all the elemental energies in the interdimension. A huge mass of energies that my whole family had called, stabilizing the magic, releasing it slowly so magic would not destroy everyone . Knowing if we stepped out of the gray mist we would be attacked and killed.” She found she was grinding her teeth.
    A huge shudder shook Aric. “I didn’t know.”
    He would have if he’d thought about it instead of springing to help the royals. Jenni trembled, too, then cut her hand through the air. “Past is past. But the disaster was such that I have no love of the magical community, no reason to help, no wish to help.”
    His nostrils flared. He set his feet as if settling into a solid balance, braced to give or take a blow. “I have news of your brother.”
    Jenni flinched, caught sight of birds circling in the blue sky and realized they were talking of matters in the open where wind could take words to Lightfolk—or Darkfolk. She was glad Aric hadn’t said Rothly’s