Seeker Read Free Page A

animals in them,but others, like the enormous training barn, were where the apprentices practiced the skills they would need as Seekers.
    John walked through the shadows at the edge of the woods, then headed deeper into the trees. Even with his tremendous failure on the practice floor hanging over him, he felt his pulse quickening. He was entering another world, when he was in the woods with Quin, away from the parts of his life that usually overshadowed everything. He hadn’t been alone with her in days, and finding her seemed more important than anything else at this moment.
    She never chose the same spot to wait, but he must be getting close now. He was in their favorite part of the woods, where the canopies of the great trees touched overhead, blocking the sun and leaving the forest floor dark and quiet. A moment later, he felt hands encircling his waist and a chin sliding onto his shoulder.
    “Hello,” she whispered into his ear.
    “Hello,” he whispered back, smiling.
    “Look what I found …”
    She slipped her hand into his. Quin had dark hair cut chin length and a lovely face with ivory skin and large, dark eyes. Those eyes flashed at him mischievously as he followed. She led him to a stand of oaks that had grown in such a way as to create a tiny, secluded space in their center. She stepped through an opening between two of the trees and pulled John after her.
    In a moment they were standing together inside the thicket. “It’s not exactly the finest room at the village inn,” she murmured.
    “It’s better,” he said. “At an inn, you might be standing farther away.”
    There wasn’t really enough room for both of them, and John was forced to pull her up against him, which was all right with him. He leaned down to kiss her, but Quin stopped him, putting her hands on either side of his face.
    “I’m worried,” she whispered.
    He could tell. He could feel it coming off her in waves, like heat off asphalt in the summer. She was right to be worried, of course. The knowledge they were being taught was ancient, and highly protected. And in John’s case, only perfection in his assigned tasks would win him the privilege of learning it. He was hardly a favorite of Briac’s. His failure in today’s fight was surely the excuse Briac had been looking for.
    “I’ve never heard my father say anything quite so … final to you,” she said quietly. “What if he means to kick you out?”
    The anticipation of meeting her in the forest had pushed aside John’s dread for a few minutes, but now it came back in full force. He was the strongest fighter of the three, yet he’d failed in the fight. He’d failed at the moment when he’d most needed to succeed.
    He let his head fall back against a tree trunk. For a moment, he fought the sensation of a large stone pulling him to the bottom of the ocean.
No
, he thought,
I can’t fail. I won’t
.
    His whole life was wrapped up in taking this oath. He was John Hart. He would get back what was taken and be at no one’s mercy again. He had promised, and he would keep the promise.
    “Briac has to take this seriously,” he told Quin, working hard to sound reassuring, both to her and to himself. He must pull himself up from despair. “I was … horrible in that fight, wasn’t I? He’s got to be strict. He’s the ‘protector of hidden ways’ and all that. But he’s spent years training me. I’m almost there. It would be wrong to kick me out now.”
    “Of course it would be wrong. It would be completely wrong. But he’s saying—”
    “Your father’s an honorable man, isn’t he? He’s going to do what’s right. I’m not worried. And you shouldn’t be either.”
    Quin nodded, but her dark eyes were full of doubt. He couldn’t blame her. John didn’t believe the things he was saying about Briac either. He knew very well the kind of man Quin’s father was, but he clung to the hope that Briac would keep his promises. There had been witnesses to those