Read Online Jeweled by Anya Bast - Free Book Online Page B

hand, looking at the already-blooming bruise and split skin on the back on his hand where he’d punched the man on her behalf.
    “It’s all right.”
    “It’s not.” She frowned. “It needs to be washed and disinfected.”
    He glanced around them. “Not much chance of that.”
    She held on to his hand, warm, broad, and strong in hers. “It will give us a goal. We need something to concentrate on other than what’s going on in front of Belai.”
    He drew his hand from hers. “We have another goal—finding food and shelter.”
    “Yes, there is that.” Her stomach still wasn’t sure if it wanted food or not yet, but give it a couple hours and she’d be starving.
    “You can feel now,” said Anatol with wonder in his voice.
    “It was the beheadings.” She glanced to the side and pressed her hand to her stomach. “Or, I don’t know, it’s all this. I used to have beautiful strong walls up all around me. Now they’re gone. Now I can feel.”
    Anatol smiled. “I’m happy for you.”
    She licked dry lips, her breath puffing white in the cold. “I’m not. It’s a curse.”
    “It’s a gift. It just might take you some time to see it that way.”
    She shook her head. “No, Anatol. You don’t understand. I don’t remember much from my childhood, but I remember emotion. I remember feeling.” She paused, catching the tail end of a memory and then losing it before she could close her mental fingers around it securely. “Emotion almost killed me as a child. Grief. Loss. Rejection. The walls I built saved my life and now they’re gone.”
    Anatol took her hands, making her flinch. “You’ll adapt. Eventually you’ll see this for the advantage it is.”
    She met his gaze and held it for a long moment. She didn’t believe what he was saying, but she couldn’t find the words to reply to him. Using just the thinnest threads of her power, she reached out to touch his emotions. Hope had bloomed in him. He liked her. Blessed Joshui, Anatol was fond of her.
    Footsteps on gravel drew their heads to the mouth of the alley. Evangeline’s blood chilled at the sound, expecting more trouble, but it was a finely dressed woman who stood there instead of a group of men. She wasn’t a noblewoman, that much was clear. Someone from the middle class, Evangeline assumed. The middle class had mostly been left alone by the mob. Evangeline shivered, jealous of the woman’s expensive coat.
    The dark-haired woman blinked once, slowly, her jaw locking as she took them both in. Then a smile spread over her lush, red lips. “Who do you two think you’re fooling?”

Five

    Excuse me?” The chill had returned to Evangeline’s blood. She’d give anything to have the walls back up around her emotions. Numbness was far more comfortable. Like a newborn babe, she felt ready to cry at anything and everything right now.
    The woman studied them with dark eyes too keen by half, then took a couple sauntering steps toward them. “You’re both too beautiful to come from anywhere but the aristocracy.” She encompassed them head to toe with a sweep of her gloved hand. “Oh, sure, your clothes are worn and tattered, and you’re bruised and dirty, but look at your healthy hair, perfect skin, straight white teeth. You have no glow of the sun on you from outdoor work. You, beautiful dark-haired man, you have a far more muscular build than would be expected of a well-heeled court fop, yet you can still tell you’re no low-born. And you,” the woman motioned at Evangeline, “there’s no question you came from Belai. Where are your reddened, calloused hands? The stoop in your back from bending over a washboard? Where’s the hungry, defeated look in your eyes. I gaze into your eyes and I see icy pride.”
    Beside her, Anatol stiffened.
    The woman held up a gloved hand. “I won’t turn you over to the mob. You can trust me. My name is Lilya.”
    “We can’t afford to trust anyone.” Anatol put an arm around Evangeline’s waist in an