Read Online 02 - The Barbed Rose by Gail Dayton - Free Book Online Page B

all its gears yet. They were alive . They were safe.
    “What are they doin’ in the snow anyway?” Torchay raised his hand again, and this time managed to push his half-dry curls out of his face by means of lowering his head to meet his hand.
    “Hunting, I think. That was the impression I got.” Her thumb made little circles on the skin inside Joh’s wrist. “I imagine they scared off whatever they were hunting and everything else within hearing distance.”
    “Aye, likely.” Torchay opened an eye, then both of them, meeting Kallista’s gaze. “They seemed well, safe enough.”
    She settled her cheek more comfortably against Joh’s thigh. “They did, didn’t they?” The box full of fear had vanished from her mind.
    Torchay sighed, pushing away from the chair to sit unsupported. “Might as well not have bothered with bathing. Soon as I change my trousers, I’ll get the key from the lieutenant.” He shook his head at her. “Do you always have to pet the new ones?”
    Was she? Kallista lifted her head a fraction and saw her hand stroking over Joh’s thigh, her other caressing his wrist. “I suppose I must.” She slanted a look at Torchay. “Did I not pet you enough when you were first marked?”
    “We were busy escaping from Tsekrish, as I recall.” He leered playfully at her, a bit of Stone rubbed off on him, perhaps. “But if you want to make up for it, I won’t object.”
    She lifted a hand weighted down with invisible rocks and pointed at the suite door. “Go get the key.”
    “After I change.” He crawled to his hands and knees and used Joh’s chair to pull himself to his feet. In silence, Obed hauled himself upright and staggered after him. Kallista bit her lip, watching him go, then put her worry out of her mind. If Obed refused to share what troubled him, she couldn’t resolve it on her own.
    If things didn’t get better, something would have to be done. She didn’t want to let him go. Besides her personal feelings, they needed the magic he carried, but if he couldn’t bear to stay, she would have to do it. That could wait, for now.
    Her neck scarcely seemed strong enough to connect head to body, much less actually raise her head from its very comfortable spot, but she forced it to do so anyway. “Joh?”
    His cheeks were wet with tears that squeezed from beneath his tight-closed eyelids. When she whispered his name, he raised a shoulder and wiped his face across it. “Sweet Goddess—” His voice rasped like stones grinding together, its former deep richness lost. “What was that?”
    Kallista had to laugh, though it sounded little better than Joh’s croak. “The magic.”
    “Saints and all the holy sinners—why didn’t the Tibran fall to his knees and beg you to keep him when I brought him as a prisoner to Arikon?”
    “It’s never been like that before.” She had lazed on the floor long enough, but halfway to her feet, a wave of dizziness hit her. She managed to collapse on the arm of Joh’s chair, then slid down into the seat, more on top of him than beside him. “Sorry,” she mumbled, holding her head up with both hands.
    “Head down.” He nudged at her elbows propped on her knees. “You shouldn’t have tried to stand so soon.”
    “ They did.” And she was the captain. Maybe she didn’t have the same strength as her men, but she’d always been able to match Torchay in sheer endurance.
    “They weren’t holding that—that madness together. You were.” Joh urged her head toward his knees, moving his chains out of the way.
    “It wasn’t like that before.” She let him push her where he wanted, unable to argue, until the dizziness began to fade. Then it felt too nice, even if she was bent nearly in half. And she could think again.
    “What was different about it?”
    “Before, it was only me and the one I was touching. Well, except with Obed, when Stone got in the way. But then it was only the three of us, because we were all touching. And it only happened