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

skin with a bone-deep sting that made him stumble backwards.

Her laughter would have made him smile if his lip didn’t hurt so much. He rubbed at it. “If you burned the beard—”

“Oh hush,” she interrupted. “It’s your own fault for leaning too close to the fire. If you need to ice it, there’s water at the bottom of the ravine.”

She took off again. He shook his head and ran after her. Forget the chase, forget the rebellion of the Five, when he caught up with her, he was going to teleport her directly to Haven.

Then he would clean himself and show her what he knew about fanning flames.

Or something like that. His head just wasn’t working right anymore.

Suddenly, the lush greenery gave way to rocky terrain. Bare granite and stone jutted up from the ground ahead. They were cresting the top of a mountain.

This wasn’t what Jasper had expected. He had only a few moments to pause and consider the abrupt change before Mercy clambered over the stones. A sinking feeling in his gut warned him they were traveling towards a dead end.

“Mercy!” he called after her. She did not pause, nor did she even look back at him.

Her long legs carried her farther away. Frustrated, he rushed after her. He followed her bloody steps when she slid down the edge of a rise and disappeared from his sight. The stones bit into his flesh.

In that moment, he realized how much he relied on her. They needed each other. Or, at least, he needed her. She was guiding him away from his cell and away from dark thoughts.

The Unicorn’s horn dug into his thigh as he moved. It was a comforting reminder why he was still here. Why he was taking the chance to trust a woman he did not know.

He crested the stone rise, sparse shrubs rustling around him, and stared down at Mercy. She stood at the edge of nothing. The white shirt wrapped around her fluttered as she stared down the edge of a cliff. Her toes hung over open air. Her red hair streamed in the wind like a banner of war.

There was no blue sky before her. Only gray clouds obscuring their future like a shield.

He slowed.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Where we are supposed to be.”

“They’re still chasing us.”

“Let them.”

He inched towards her and looked down into the mist swirling below them. There was no escape from here. They were trapped. Anger tore at his mind, red and powerful.

“You led us to a dead end,” he said. “We’ll be captured for certain.”

Bluebell whimpered. “We can’t go back there.”

Mercy’s burning gaze settled on him, but she did not speak. Her hair burned and cracked like a whip around her. One long strand lashed out against his cheek. He knew he would bear that mark for a while.

She was everything he had never thought to want. Wind. Fire. Fury. Uncontrollable elements that would never make sense to him. She was destruction.

“Well?” He called out. “We’re done now. You’re going back to that little cell with me.”

“Oh Jasper,” she murmured. “Have you no faith in me at all?”

The wind carried great billows of mist over them, muting their surroundings. Dark forms gathered on the crest of the hill; Malachi’s soldiers, all large, powerful creatures. And here Jasper stood, with a mad woman. Teleporting was an option, but his mind was moving so quickly he could not not remember any part of the forest with enough detail to reach it.

Mercy reached out, trailing her fingertips along his jaw and forcing him to look at her. Even her smallest touches burned.

“Trust me,” she said. “You have to learn to trust me.”

She gently nudged him backwards. He stepped away from the edge and towards Malachi’s men. Trusting her was not easy, for she was not predictable. He had no idea what she had up her sleeve.

He had a feeling that it would involve a significant amount of death.

Her hands glowed, brighter and brighter until the light burned. She threw her head back, and the flames grew, until she was a pillar of light. A figure — tall, broad, and strong — stepped out of the fire. Jasper shielded his eyes with a hand as the human-shaped sun hovered in front of Mercy.

He winced as Malachi’s men shouted. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he was certain it was a warning. They would kill her.

The clarity of the thought lanced through him. They would remove her from this world even if she was useful to Malachi. His plan moved forward whether she was alive or dead.

“Mercy!” Jasper shouted. He did not know if he was saying her name or begging.

The skin of his raised arm blistered, and the stench of burning hair filled his nostrils. His flesh tingled with heat. But Jasper would not move farther away from Mercy, fearful that a bolt of magic would push her over the edge.

Then he heard it. A great, groaning sound that rolled across them and made the earth shudder and shake.

The mist stirred.

From the grey swirls, a large shape emerged. Jasper’s eyes widened as he watched the figure walk towards them and then realized it wasn’t a figure at all. It was a head. And the closer it came, the larger it appeared.

Attached to the head was a body unlike anything Jasper had ever seen. It was a man but larger than a man. It was four of him, no five, impossibly tall. Impossibly large. And each step it took made the earth quake.

Laughter erupted from Mercy’s chest, and she opened her arms wide as though she welcomed the Giant.

Jasper felt sick. This was a Giant. Not a man possessed by the soul of a Giant but a real life creature. Jasper distantly heard the clattering of metal as Malachi’s men dropped their weapons and ran.

The Giant reached the edge of the cliff and leaned down to look at Mercy. Her hair and the man of flames stirred in his breath.