Seeker Read Free Page B

promises, and Briac must honor his commitments. If he didn’t …
    He forced the thought away. Life had been good here on the estate with Quin—as good as his life had ever been, much better than he’d dared to hope for—and he didn’t want that to change.
    Quin had made friends with John on the day he arrived. They’d been kids then—John only twelve—but even so, his first thought had been of how pretty she was.
    In that first year, she and Shinobu both came to visit John in his own cottage frequently, but it was Quin’s visits alone he liked the most. She was fascinated with his descriptions of London, and eager to show him all of the estate.
    When John’s mother had been alive, she’d warned him to keep up his guard around everyone, and he did. But he liked to hear about Quin’s family, about the lore of the estate. And Quin seemed to enjoy his company—not because he was wealthy or because his family was important but because she liked him. Just him. He’d never experienced that before. Even at twelve, John refused to let this move him—her interest might have been a trick, a way to get past his defenses and learn his secrets. Still, he spent time with her. With Shinobu he would practice fighting. With Quin he would take walks.
    And she began to get … curves. He hadn’t realized how distracting curves could be. He knew he was in trouble when he was fourteen, sitting in their languages class, and he found himself examining the way Quin’s slender waist twisted into her hips. They were being asked to read aloud in Dutch, but he was imagining his hand tracingthe line of her body. He tried to keep her from his mind, to stay as clear and calculating as his mother would have wanted him to be, but he couldn’t believe that Quin’s friendliness was false.
    Then, when she was nearly fifteen, they were paired in an especially difficult practice match in the training barn. Alistair was sending them against each other again and again, demanding that they fight at the extreme limits of their strength.
    “Come on, John. Strike her!” Alistair yelled, apparently thinking John was taking it easy on Quin.
    Maybe he
was
taking it easy on her. It was winter, and her cheeks were flushed, her dark eyes bright with the exertion of the fight as she moved nimbly with her sword.
    She struck him hard and he fell. Perhaps he’d let her hit him, because he didn’t mind falling. He imagined tumbling onto the floor with her … Then the fight was over and they were both breathing hard, staring at each other across the practice area.
    Alistair dismissed them, and John found himself walking outside the training barn in a daze, trying to carry himself as far away from her as he could. He could not see where he was going. He could only see Quin. The desire to be with her was overwhelming.
    He stopped around the back of the barn, hiding himself behind the trunks of the barren winter trees. There he leaned against the stone wall, his breath filling the air with steam.
    He didn’t want to feel what he was feeling. His mother had warned him against love so many times.
When you love, you open yourself to a dagger
, she had told him all those years ago.
When you love deeply, you have thrust the dagger into your own heart
. Love did not fit into any of his plans. But how could you plan for this? It wasn’t just her beauty he wanted. It was all of her: the girl who talked to him, the girl who would bite her bottom lip when she was concentrating intensely, the girl who smiled when they walked through the woods together.
    He pressed his cheek against the cold stone of the barn, feeling his heart beating wildly, trying to rid himself of the image of her.
    Then Quin was there, walking past the end of the barn, only a few feet from him. She was staring ahead, into the woods, also dazed. Their eyes met, and suddenly he knew—he knew she had come looking for him.
    John reached out his hand and grabbed the sleeve of her coat, pulling her