Read Online The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing by Tara Maya - Free Book Online

snow. He felt unclean in more ways
than one.
    “You saw what I do. You know what I am.”
    “Yes.” She tucked contempt and terror into one
word.
    His nostrils flared. He slapped his gloves onto the
rocks on the bank, leaped to his feet and advanced on her. For the
past year, he had lived among the old, the diseased, the scarred,
the withered and decayed. The only non-Deathsworn women he had seen
had been from afar, held apart by an impossible gulf of physical
and social distance. And now here was this exquisite swan, fresh
and young, with pearl skin and eyes tumultuous like the sea. Her
hair had been dyed like flame, bright enough to lure moths to their
deaths. Even the bloody, ragged cape couldn’t hide her slender
waist and long legs. He wanted her and hated her for it.
    “I look like your man, don’t I? The one you loved. I
look like the man they all loved. I look like a living man; I have
the desires of a living man. All illusion, delusion and deception.
I am already dead. I will never find a pretty girl, move onto her
farm, tend rows of corn and kraals of aurochsen. It is taboo for me
to marry, or sire heirs. It is taboo for me to take a woman.”
    “But that won’t stop you,” she whispered, for he was
close to her, towering over her. “No one will disturb us here.”
    She was right. It would have been easy.
    “And afterward, you will kill me.” A tear glittered
on her cheek. “Once again I beg you. Don’t wear his face.”
    “I told you, I don’t control how you see me.”
    He untied the gut-string of her cape. It billowed
onto the snow.
    “You must bathe.” He pointed to the pools. “I must
cleanse myself, as must you. Though you have not killed someone
yourself, you’ve been close to the dead, and been touched by
blooded hands. You will bear the stain of murder until you purify
yourself.”
    She just stared at him. “How can that possibly
matter now?”
    “It matters.”
    “I don’t know the right dance.”
    “You cannot purify yourself in any case. Someone
must do it for you.”
    “You?” she said in horror. “Can you even…?”
    “I have magic,” he said, though he suspected that
was not what she meant. “But, no. Not me. Summon the fae. They will
know what to do.”
    “Oh.”
    “Do I need to take off the rest of your clothes, or
can you do it yourself?”
    She blushed like a little cranberry.
    “ I will leave the glen to spare
your modesty,” he said with a sardonic twist to his lips. “But,
remember, you still wear my leash. I will be nearby. Also keep in
mind the enemy may still be about in this wood. Call to me if
anything goes wrong.” From his pack he took out the set of clothes
he had taken from the pelf, and left the pile by the fire. “Oh, and
don’t put those dirty rags back on. I’ve brought you something else
to wear.”
    Umbral withdrew. As he had promised, he did not go
far, just beyond the thicket. He let his eyes stray through the
tangle of saplings and thorn bushes. When he caught a glimpse of
rounded buttocks as Dindi undressed, he quickly looked away, but
not soon enough to prevent a shot of arousal from rushing through
him.
    “What are you doing?” hissed a voice by Umbral’s
side. “Why do you have a girl? Why haven’t you killed her? Are you
planning to keep a pet?”
    Ash. He sighed.
    Umbral trusted Ash with his life, as far as that
went, but he also knew that she was a spy appointed by Obsidian
Mountain to keep an eye on him. As a child, enemy warriors had
attacked her clan. They had raped her. They then had taken the more
valuable women, those older, and more likely to survive, with them,
and had left her with the corpses of her brothers and uncles while
they set fire to her clanhold. When a friendly clan had found her,
still alive, but hideously burned, they had sent her to Obsidian
Mountain to complete her dying. There, instead of death, she had
found new life with the Deathsworn. To this day, much of her face,
indeed, of her body, warped into