Read Online Bloodstone by Helen C. Johannes - Free Book Online Page B

relief, the lacing was still intact. Even so, blood pounded in her throat. He’d gotten too close, and she’d been lucky—this time. She vowed to stay beside her father and make sure Rees had no further opportunity.
    She combed fingers through her hair while Tolbert brought her a cup of tea and a bowl of porridge. The brightness of his eyes and a faint flush coloring his cheekbones made her gaze linger on his face as she sipped the herbal brew. Years of watching her father’s animation over some new stone’s color or a hummingbird’s vibrant hues or the unexpected presence of a flower amid a swath of green told her he was bursting now with the same childlike enthusiasm. Whatever fear there was last night, it’s clear you never felt it, Papa. And I’m glad.
    “You won’t believe what Pumble found this morning.” He gestured across the fire pit toward the short man shouldering a sack. “It’s the biggest lion track I’ve ever seen.”
    Pumble’s fleshy cheeks colored, but he grinned. “Bigger than your hand, Miss,” he said, spreading his fingers.
    “It’s right over here.” Tolbert plucked the porridge dish from her hands before she could eat a spoonful and set it on the ground. “Come on.” He pulled her to her feet. “You have to see this. It’s simply incredible for size, and the print is so clear, you’d think it was cast.” He paused. Wrinkles congregated on his forehead. “I wonder if the Master of Nolar would like a jeweled lion’s paw. I could make a cast of this and show him.”
    Mirianna smiled, accustomed to the sudden turns of her father’s thoughts. “Perhaps later, Papa—after you make the wedding jewels.” She disengaged her fingers and patted his hand.
    Her porridge stood wafting steam beside her bedding. By all rights, her stomach should be craving it despite the unappealing color, but no overriding desire to eat compelled her hand toward it. Instead, her head obeyed an impulse to turn toward the clearing’s edge. “Where did you say the lion’s print was?”
    Tolbert had knelt and was busily drawing shapes in the sand for his new creation. “Hmm? Oh. Right behind that tree with the double trunk.”
    Mirianna crossed the clearing in the direction he indicated. When she reached the border of birches, she picked out two trunks, each the size of a man’s arm, leaning away from a joined base. A whisper of air glided over her face as she approached. Warm .
    “—Like a breath—” a voice murmured.
    Whose breath? her mind responded to the voice as if she had known it would be there.
    “—His—”
    Ahh... Her eyelids closed and her lover materialized. Tall, strong-shouldered, the sun bursting from behind him, his touch seared with the heat of it. She reached out. Her hands found his arms and wrapped around them. Let me see your face. Let me know who you are.
    Even as she pleaded, the image faded and she found herself clinging to the papery bark of the twin birches.
    She flashed a guilty look toward the campsite, saw Pumble was gone, presumably loading the pack animals, and her father still knelt in the sand, hunched over his drawing. Rees was nowhere in sight. She exhaled, blowing air over her flushed face.
    Early in the journey, she’d given the dream image Rees’s face just to see what would happen. How stupid, to think it could be him! His visage had promptly melted, just as all the others she’d tried to envision there, all the others who’d presented themselves as possible lovers and husbands. The right man would impose his face upon those dreams and even—Mirianna flushed hotter at the thought—fulfill them.
    But now wasn’t the time to think about such fantasies. They belonged, quite properly, to the night. Now was the time to break her fast and begin the day’s work. Pushing away from the birches, she glanced at their base and glimpsed something that made her stand stock still and stare.
    Imprinted in a patch of dirty yellow sand was the large, irregular shape