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

She wasn’t anything more than an ancient who should not exist. There were times when Mercy believed that a human mind was never meant to experience her many long years of life.

Her thoughts were bitter. Her mind twisted to darkness, anger… Madness. She did not know how to control herself, though she should have been better at it. She was so old compared to everyone else.

She had slept for centuries, but had watched the world change through Ignes’s flames. At first, she had seen it through rose-colored glasses. The evolution of animal and man had been fascinating. Beautiful. Wonderful. But then she watched them disappear.

Mercy had grown up in these woods. Back in the days when the trees were much smaller and more forgiving. She could not imagine anyone wanting to live in a city over this magical place.

She had watched the people run. The farther they went, the less of a chance she had of ever being saved. The years passed. Her tomb grew over her body, branches tangling in her hair. Still, no one had come.

That was why it was hard for her to trust, why she had embraced madness rather than understanding. She had been alone. They had left her to rot.

Her feet stomped twigs and the crunching noise echoed in her thoughts. Until there was no more sound, cool squishy moss startling her out of dark thoughts. She paused to look around them, and a humorless smile spread across her face.

“We’ll stay here tonight,” she declared.

“Why here?”

Mercy arched a brow. “Do you not know your own home?”

They stood within a wide circle of stones. A Fairy Ring. Moss covered the ground within the ring, offering a soft place to rest for the night.

Jasper looked around with a furrowed brow, likely listening to the creature in his head. Mercy found it sad that he was so withdrawn from his own lineage. Fairy was in his blood just as much as in his head. He should have known this was here long before Mercy noticed it.

Shaking her head, she stepped outside the ring and gathered as much wood as she could. Bark bit at her sensitive palms as it never would have years before. She had been imprisoned for too long. Her body had become soft, a side effect of Ignes healing too often for callouses to remain.

Arms laden with enough firewood to last them the night, she returned to see Jasper had not budged.

“Are you done talking?” Mercy snapped. “Or would you like me to continue playing housewife?”

She dropped the wood, and it hit the ground with a rumble. When he didn’t reply, she shook her head.

Muttering about the uselessness of men, Mercy built the wood into a pyramid at the center of the Fairy ring. She set aside a small stack for later fuel.

Only then did she reach for Ignes. The lizard crawled onto her hand and patiently held her thumb as she placed him at the base of the pyramid.

“Have fun,” she told him.

He began to glow white hot and set the fire ablaze.

Mercy leaned back on the moss and watched the fire dance. She hadn’t always found beauty in the yellow and gold flickers. But now, they were as important to her as breathing.

Jasper sat down hesitantly on the other side of the campfire. “Aren’t you going to get him?”

“What?”

“You left him in the fire.”

Mercy lifted a shoulder. “He’ll be happier there than on me. The flames will do him some good. Hopefully he’ll leave enough of it for a good bed of coals.”

A long strand of flame leapt towards her, curling around her ankle as though the fire had licked her. She smiled. Ignes was always so sweet.

She didn’t need to look at him to know Jasper was unnerved. He wasn’t the first. Long ago, people had the same reaction when they saw Ignes wasn’t limited by her mind. He was as tied to her as most creatures were to their humans, but their existence was a little bit different than the rest.

She didn’t have the patience to see the look of awe mixed with disgust on Jasper’s face. Not tonight. “Go to sleep, Fae. We have a long day tomorrow.”

“But who’s going to—”

“I’ll keep watch.”

“You must be tired, too. We’ve traveled so far. Wake me halfway through the night.”

She shook her head. “I’ve slept enough in the past years. I don’t wish to again. Rest.”

Instead of arguing, Jasper lay down on the moss and pillowed his head on his arms. She watched his chest rise and fall for a few moments before she stared back into the flames.

There was a certain serenity to a forest. Every sound around her was clear — the rustle of leaves, the soft flap of wings — and none of it frightened her. This place was meant to house a woman with a soul like hers.

It was a shame she would end up burning it down. Mercy’s dreams always turned dark, she always burned everything around her. Even now, after two hundred years of practice, controlling Ignes was like controlling a wildfire.

He was old enough to know that burning harmed others. But without the training of his parents, he had proven to be less than reliable. Pheonix required extensive schooling so they didn’t bend to a fire’s willful ways. It wanted to feast, to devour, to consume. It had no sense of right or wrong, that was the Pheonix’s job to determine.

There were days when she had awoken to discover they had hurt someone, or that they had destroyed homes and families. These were old memories, times she tried not to remember. But that didn’t dull the true fact that she had hurt people. After her long sleep, she didn’t think she could handle that again.

“Did you really mean it when you said you weren’t afraid of the gods?” Jasper’s voice pierced through her musing.

Her lips quirked up at the sides. “It was not a god who locked me up. Nor was it a god who spread