Read Online Shapeshifters by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes - Free Book Online

dream, because all I see then are the people I have lost. I don’t want to smell the stench of death and decay and rotten blood. I don’t want to hear the wet sputter of someone trying to breathe past pain. I don’t want to see dying children whenever I close my eyes. But I am nearly Tuuli Thea,” I said more quietly, “and once I am, that will be my entire life. War. Death. And I don’t know how to stop it. ”
    For a brief moment the arrogance was gone from Zane’s expression, and he regarded me with what almost looked like respect.
    â€œIf I knew how to grant that wish,” he finallyanswered, voice soft, “I would have done so already, before this damn war had taken so many from me, too. Friends, lovers, family; I would have saved them all if I knew how. But if we both want peace, I can’t believe that it is impossible to manage.”
    I caught him sizing me up, his gaze flickering down my form and up again. “Perhaps there is more to you than I see here, Danica,” Zane mused aloud. “More than the stoic avian poise and emotionless reserve.”
    He reached up and ran his fingers through my hair, which brought him alarmingly close. His wrapping an arm around my waist brought me even closer, and then he kissed me, this time not hesitant in the face of my recoil or hurried to avoid a knife from the Royal Flight.
    The sensation of his lips lingering over mine was startling; the light pressure of his body as he held me against himself was unexpected. He broke the kiss at the same time he pressed something into my hand.
    â€œTomorrow afternoon, Danica. I’ll make sure the guards on the door are loyal and will let you in safely,” Zane said, voice intense despite the fact that my mind was barely following it. I could feel myself sliding into the next dream segment, and I shrank from it, knowing the next scene would probably be a lot bloodier than this one. “We can’t meet here in the open—your guardswill kill me if they catch me—but I have enough control in the palace that we can make plans there … if you’ll come.”
    I nodded, closing my hand on whatever he had given me.
    He brushed the back of his hand gently across my cheek and then crossed the room to my balcony doors. I had a vague picture of him spreading wing and flying away.
    Then I sat down to look at what Zane had pressed into my hand; before my fingers had finished uncurling, the scene changed and I was in the court, listening as Vasili debated some point I hardly understood but was willing to listen to simply for the chance to hear his smooth voice.

I DID NOT ATTEND MARKET THE NEXT DAY ; I was so exhausted I probably would have fallen out of my seat. By midday, however, I had been summoned from my room.
    I followed the messenger up to my mother’s personal balcony, the open top floor of the Hawk’s Keep. There was a gentle breeze today, and my mother looked like a romantic portrait, noble and sad, but beautiful. She was dressed in raw silk, nearly white, with golden threads woven into the material around her throat, wrists and the hem of her pants.
    The topic she wished to discuss was far from romance.
    â€œShardae,” she greeted me, dismissing the sparrow with a delicate nod. “I have a meetingthis afternoon with the flight leaders. This is the last assembly before your coronation, and I thought it best that you joined me.” I did not have a chance to do anything but nod before my mother added, “Come, they wait.”
    Though I was capable of putting faces to names and matching those names with the flights they commanded, I knew very few of the flight leaders personally. Most of them reported to Rei, who then spoke to my mother or me if there was a problem.
    Avian flights were designed to work autonomously, each having its own specialties and tactics. Rarely did all the leaders meet unless the Tuuli Thea called them to, and since the