Read Online New Blood by Gail Dayton - Free Book Online

welcome.”
    She took off her boots, unfastened the top few buttons of her dress, and lay down fully clothed, prepared for her usual sleepless night. She never slept well in the camp. It was too full of memories. And fear.
    Â 
    A MANUSA JERKED AWAKE in the black dark of deepest night. Her tent was empty. She was alone. “Jax?” she whispered softly, too afraid to make much sound.
    She sat up, reaching blindly into the dark, fighting back the part of herself that wanted to panic. Jax was bound to her. He could not leave. But could he betray her? If she died, wouldn’t that set him free?
    Someone was moving outside her tent.
“Jax?”
she dared to whisper a little louder.
    â€œHere.” The low sound of his voice sent more relief than it should have rocketing through her. “Come. Give me a hand with this.”
    â€œWith what?” Amanusa strained to see through the blackness inside the tent, hunting for her shoes with cold toes.
    â€œProtection.” Jax ducked inside, darkness against the light. Even at the quarter-moon, it was lighter outside than in. He moved across the tight space to the cot where she still sat.
    â€œTake my hand,” he said. “I haven’t done this spell in so long, I don’t trust myself to get it right. I don’t know if I have the magic for it. But you do.”
    Amanusa groped in midair for his hand and it closed, warm and callused, around her fingers.
    â€œCome.” He tugged gently and she followed him outside the tent, pausing only to grab a blanket from her cot for a cloak.
    The moon’s light bathed the world in a faint silver gleam, deepening the shadows under the nearby trees. It lit up Jax’s face enough that Amanusa knew her pale blond hair had to be almost glowing. She pulled the gray blanket up over her head to hide it. Jax led her around the tent to a tangle of briars a few paces away and thrust his hand deep into their midst.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Amanusa grabbed his arm, pulled back his hand, now bleeding from a half-dozen scratches.
    â€œMagic. My blood is enough for this. We don’t need to bleed you. Walk with me. Gather in the magic.” He raked the deepest scratch over a branch of the briars, smearing his blood along it. “East.”
    He led her in a circle around the tent, pausing at the south, the west, the north, to wipe his bloody hand on the grass, or a tree trunk, or a stone. Amanusa tried to gather magic, but had no idea what she was doing.
    Finally he led her back to the entrance where he wiped away the last of the blood with a handkerchief and washed his hands in the basin Szabo always had set up outside her tent. One of the little amenities, like the cot, he kept hoping might tempt her to return. The deliberately ignorant fool.
    â€œDo you feel the magic?” Jax murmured, urging her back into the tent.
    Amanusa wasn’t sure. She felt . . . something. Something she’d felt before, when she made the charms. Something
right.
Real, true, like the night itself had come to life. “I-I think so.”
    â€œGood. A smear of blood at the four directions, or in the four corners of a room, can be used for protection. I probably used more than necessary, but it’s hard to control the amount when using briars to part the skin.” He took both her hands in his. “Now, these are the words—”
    â€œWait.” Amanusa squeezed his fingers. “I don’t want Yvaine again. It’s too hard on you. I want you conscious.”
    â€œThis is magic I know.” Jax squeezed gently back. “There was a time I cast this all on my own, without the sorceress to help. I only ask help now because it has been so long. These are the words.” He wouldn’t let her delay any longer. “By the mark of my body, I bind—”
    â€œBut it’s not my body,” Amanusa interrupted again, not ready yet for
real
blood magic. It felt