The Blessed Curse (The Elder Blood Chronicles, #4)(92)

Shade looked between the two of them, silently noting the leather armor the man wore as opposed to the linen shirt and breeches the woman had. He was larger built, too, with a powerful frame. When you combined the physical differences and the fact that he was older and likely better trained, the odds were definitely in the man’s favor. Apparently, Kella had come to the same conclusion and Shade watched as she nodded reluctantly.

“The goblin is mine, Granger,” Kella declared stubbornly. “No, it isn’t,” Granger corrected her with a smile.

“You expect me to go hungry tonight?” Kella snarled, her anger rising once more.

“No,” Granger said with a shake of his head and waved a hand toward the campfire. “There is a pot of stew right there, Kella, ” he informed her as he turned back to Shade. The smile faded from his lips as he regarded his captive with distaste. “Follow or I leave you to her mercy,” he ordered as he turned to stalk off toward the woods.

“Is Onvalla a place or a person?” Shade asked quickly as he grabbed his pack and followed after the man. The goblin scampered after him, trilling with alarm as it clutched his pant leg. “It will be OK,” he whispered to it, although he was sure the goblin realized he was feeding it false hope. It was pretty obvious that things were not likely to be OK anytime soon.

“She is our leader and she will most likely be your executioner. Don’t misunderstand your situation Morcaillo. I didn’t save your life. I postponed your death,” Granger said coldly. “If you try to run, I promise you a very painful death. I’m already in a bad enough mood just from your presence here.”

“I have no intention of running, but if it’s a long walk you may end up dragging me the rest of the way. You might not have noticed, but I wasn’t exactly winning the fight back there,” Shade informed him dryly. “So if you want me to reach your leader in order to be questioned you may have to let me rest so that I can heal once the Tevrae has worn off.”

Granger snorted with amusement and shook his head slowly. “So it was sheer stupidity that led you here. I thought perhaps you might have actually known where you were going considering.”

“Considering what?” Shade grumbled.

“Considering you camped less than half a mile from our hive,” Granger replied with a smirk. “I think you will survive that far and I see no point in allowing you to heal before Onvalla kills you. You might actually get away if you weren’t so wounded. I’ve hunted your kind before, and I know how difficult you can be.”

“Why not just question me yourself and kill me now, then, if you are so sure she is going to kill me anyway? It would save me the walk which I’m not looking forward to at all anyway,” Shade snapped. Things were not going in a good direction at all and his wounds had pushed him well past irritable. The eye was the worst of it. He could ignore the wounds on his back and legs, but the eye was impossible to ignore. With each beat of his pulse it throbbed with pain and his remaining eye was blurring with tears making him nearly blind.

“Because she will have her own questions for you, Morcaillo, and a quick death would be too good for your kind. If not for your people, we might have found a place in this world. Instead you used us against your enemies and forced us to perform atrocities. We will be hunted down for our crimes, but we will kill as many Changelings as we can before they kill us off,” Granger replied without a hint of mercy in his voice.

“I didn’t even know my kind controlled the Blights,” Shade muttered as he followed along. “I thought it was just my father that had control over your people, and I would have gladly helped you kill him,” he added with a sigh.

“Save your lies for Onvalla,” Granger snarled.

“I think I’ll try the truth instead. I’m a lousy liar,” Shade mumbled and rubbed his good eye in a vain attempt to regain some of his vision. It would be nice to be able to see who was going to kill him when the time came. “I f*cking hate Tevrae,” he grumbled to the goblin that was still clinging to him. It gibbered to him sympathetically and Shade smiled faintly. “Well, at least I won’t die alone. I’ll have one friend with me, even if I can’t understand a single bloody word you are saying.”





Chapter 15





The Darklands





“Try the next one,” Seth’s voice was calm as he flicked another mage stone toward her. Zoelyn eyed it with irritation and dropped the one she was holding. When Neph or Jala made the stones for her they were colored depending on what magic they held. Seth’s were all dark grey with no indication of what kind of magic was held inside. “Try the next one,” Seth repeated in a firmer voice.

“I’ve already tried three and it’s no use. I can’t sense anything from them,” Zoelyn objected as she leaned heavily back in her chair. “I’m sick of failure,” she added in a softer voice and turned her attention from Seth and the stone covered table. The throne room was empty aside from the two of them and Legacy who was playing in the floor beside his father’s vacant throne. She had no idea where Finn was. It was the first time she had been in the throne room when he wasn’t present.

“Are you really going to give up so easily?” Seth asked with a heavy sigh.

“Easily?” Zoelyn snapped. She shook her head in frustration, but refused to look at him. She didn’t want to see what expression he had. “I’ve been working for three weeks with Jala, and another week with you and I still can’t sense anything about the magic or control my abilities at all. I don’t have the talent for it.”