Blue Blood (Series of Blood Book 3) by Emma Hamm (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

the lizard. Strange. He hadn’t expected her to be coherent upon waking. Fear or panic were reactions he expected. But this? She was stone cold and stoic.

He furrowed his brows. A dark undertone raced through his thoughts — flashes of his past burning painful and angry. Repressing any sort of emotion rarely ended well for a magical creature.

Jasper cleared his throat. “Are you frightened? We are safe for the time being.”

She stopped talking abruptly and cocked her head ever so slowly to stare at him. Her ombre eyes burned. “I am not frightened.”

“I would be,” he said honestly. “You woke up in a prison. Twice now.”

A small wrinkle formed between her brows. “Am I supposed to be frightened by that?”

“Most people would be.”

She waved a hand in the air. “A prison is like any other room. It can be destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” He shook his head. “How can you destroy something like this?”

She raised her hand, watching as it burst into flames. Heated colors blazed up her wrist and licked the air. “I have never seen anything survive the fire’s hunger.”

“Stone? Water? There are many things that can stop fire.”

She shook her head, and the flames disappeared. “Water will boil. Stone will crack. I do not expect you to understand.”

“I’d like to.” He placed a hand against his chest. “My name is Jasper. What’s yours?”

Fine wrinkles appeared at the corners of her eyes. Her rosy lips moved, but no sound escaped. She turned to the lizard, which bumped its head against her cheek.

“Mercy,” she whispered.

“I am sorry I—”

“My name is Mercy.”

A contradictory name, he supposed. He had expected her to beg for mercy, to plead for someone to help her. He had expected that. But this woman was plotting destruction without even standing from the ground. She certainly wasn’t what he had expected.

Jasper couldn’t help himself. He had to speak again. “Mercy is a lovely name. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

She did not respond.

“Where are you from?”

No response.

“Why were you locked away in the World Tree?”

She looked away from him.

“Then how did you survive this long?”

She shrugged one shoulder, so he tried one more time.

“How did you survive this long?”

She curled in on herself. He saw the lizard’s head peek out of her shirt. Its back caused the fabric to sizzle and turn black as it settled itself against her neck.

Mercy started speaking again. He couldn’t make out the words, only the quiet lull of her raspy voice.

Perhaps she was not ready to face what had happened to her. He could understand that, but she was his responsibility since it was his fault she had been dragged into this nightmare. Eventually, she seemed to relax.

Jasper guessed she was an Elemental. They were a strange lot, too emotional and easily angered. They usually died young because their human body could not handle the amount of magic that came directly from the earth itself.

So maybe she wasn’t an Elemental. Whatever she was, it was likely her mind had been lost in the tangled roots of the World Tree.

He lay down to rest only once the flames began to dance upon her body again. He did not know the meaning behind the fire, but he could guess it meant she was asleep. There were worse things than using your powers whilst dreaming.

Mercy dreamt of flames.

Powerful, burning, aching, destroying; they devoured her body and soul. She was not human. She was not creature. She was not even the fire coursing in her veins and turning her mind to ash.

Mercy was something else entirely.

She licked her lips in the dream, hoping it might ease her discomfort. It did not. She was always thirsty, always drifting on a wave of heat.

The worst part was how aware she was of walking in a dream. Even free from the World Tree, she had not escaped the prison of her nightmares. This was only another journey to endure.

Any other might have gone mad. She remembered clearly from school that REM sleep was important — without dreams, the brain would not be able to process new information.

It, like many things, needed to rest. Her mind was never given that opportunity. But then, she didn’t need it.

Mercy sat in the midst of hellfire and brimstone while her body slept, elbow propped on her knee and chin resting on her fist. She stared into the bright flames and they burned their images into the back of her retinas.

The most important thing in the dream was not herself or the fire, but the creature that lived alongside them.

“Ignes?” she asked. “Are you quite done yet?”

The flames twisted and warped as though in a tornado. From the funnel a shape formed. Vaguely humanoid and masculine, it stood long and tall before her.

“You want to speak while you should be resting?” Ignes’s gravelly voice echoed from the flames.

“Who is he?” Mercy asked.

“I do not know.”

She huffed out a breath, and a few tails of fire escaped her mouth. “How do you not know who he is?”

“I am not an Oracle.”

“You know more than I.”

The shape grew taller until it nearly touched the heavens. “I have been allowed to wander, but not to know all.”

“He is dangerous.”

“You do not know that.”

She stood and paced. “I feel it. I feel that he is dangerous, and I worry about what he is capable of.”

“Nothing. He is Fae.”

“That means very little. You know this as well as I.”

Her heart pounded against her ribs. She neither liked this feeling nor understood what it meant. She had been alone and silent for two hundred years. And now? This Fairy had held her with gentle hands and stared down at her with green eyes. Green like the forests falling beneath her flames. Green like emeralds melting beneath her fingers. Green like beetle wings screaming as they burned.

Ignes shuddered and warped, taking the form he preferred above all. His flames rearranged themselves into a massive Firedrake. His huge scales shimmered, and his long wings of fire spread their great length.