Read Online Shadowlander by Theresa Meyers - Free Book Online Page B

piece of the breadlike loaf and a hunk of what looked like cheddar cheese to go with it. It was sweet, yet completely at odds for a man of his royal position to serve her. And as little as it was, it meant a lot to her. “Aman and casin. It doesn’t taste nearly as good as the gilly fruit, but it’ll keep you from being hungry until we can get to Seaneath.”
    Cate bit into the bread and found it soft and savory with hints of rosemary and olives. The casin tasted more like feta cheese than cheddar, salty and a little sharper than she’d expected, but she was happy with both.
    Rook smiled at her, then cut slices of the food for himself. “Fae foods seem to agree with you,” he murmured.
    “Have you ever met a human that they didn’t agree with?” she tossed back at him.
    He chuckled, and Cate’s breath caught at the warm, rich resonance of it. She liked his laugh, liked the way it made her feel warm and bubbly inside. “A few. We once had an Uplander who raided the royal storehouse and ate so much he blew up to the size of a house.”
    The food stuck uncomfortably in her throat and Cate coughed. “This stuff isn’t going to swell me up, is it? Bloating and I don’t really travel well together.”
    He smiled at her and shook his head. “It only happened because he was so greedy and ate far too much. Enough to feed a catamount,” he added.
    Cate felt marginally better but didn’t take seconds when they were offered. She stood, brushing the crumbs from her suede skirt. Every minute she spent with Rook was endearing him more and more to her in a way she couldn’t hope to explain. She needed to be away from him for a bit, just to clear her head.
    “Um, I need to excuse myself to take care of, um, girl stuff.”
    Rook indicated the woods with a sweep of his hand. “The forest is yours, my lady. Just watch that you don’t put any Illith fae in danger.”
    Cate shifted her weight to her other foot, suddenly feeling the forest was a far less hospitable place. “What will they do?”
    He gave her a devilish grin. “Bite you in the bottom.”
    Cate’s suspicious feeling intensified. Wild fae weren’t the only thing about to bite her in the ass.

Chapter Six
    The afternoon sun warming his back and the gurgle of the river would have been pleasant, if a war hadn’t been going on inside him.
    Rook waited until Cate had disappeared into the dense thicket of trees before he hastily wrote a missive to his father on a scrap of vellum.
    Have captured a Seer. Will reach you by tonight.
    He rolled it into a small scroll, then took a beetle flier from his pocket, held it in the palm of his hand, and tapped its hard shell.
    The iridescent blue-green metal casing opened, allowing the small glass- and gold-veined wings to unfurl. “Deliver this missive to the King of Shadows and no other,” he instructed the mechanical messenger as it clasped the scroll between its thin metallic legs. Vibrating faster and faster, the glass wings began to hum, and the beetle lifted into the air. It quickly became a glittering speck before disappearing among the trees.
    It was done. Once the missive reached his father, Rook could not take it back. The entire court would turn out to observe the new Seer brought among them. He stuffed the remnants of their repast back into the saddlebag—and his feelings down deeper, until they swelled painfully in his chest.
    Duty and honor warred with something far darker and deeper that was growing inside him. He’d always admired Cate from afar, thought of her in his dreams, but now that he’d touched her and felt her respond, those feelings were beginning to twist and change into something else entirely.
    He didn’t know what to call it, this powerful drive to protect her, to know she would be his and his alone, no matter the consequences. It was foolhardy and rash. Bold and consuming. Fae generally didn’t have solitary life mates or binds to only one and no others. It was an anomaly among them. And