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

Jasper dropped his eyes to the Hag. “I never said I didn’t like her. We just—” he paused, wording his next statement as carefully as possible “—don’t get along.”

“I’m not so sure about that. It’s in your body. The way you hold yourself perfectly still when she is near you. I have seen such behavior from young men like yourself.”

“I’m getting old,” he told the Hag. “I’m not the young man I used to be.”

“You have many years ahead of you, especially if that Fairy stays with you.” She grinned, the wrinkles crinkling as her beak snapped. “I will tell you a story. In exchange, you will give me a gift.”

“I have no gifts to give.”

“And yet, you will listen. Your presence is gift enough.”

He shouldn’t argue. He was in their home, and they hadn’t complained about him staying. Not to mention that the Hag could probably curse him into his next life.

Bluebell stirred. “She seems nice.”

An arched brow was the only response Jasper gave her.

“Really. I trust her. You should listen to her story. I like stories.”

That was the best he was going to get out of the Fairy tonight. Her voice was sleepy, and every time he felt her move, it was as though she was curling up inside the warmth of his own mind. She wished to rest. As did he, if he could sleep in a camp full of creatures.

“What would you tell me then, Hag?”

The beak snapped open and shut. “When I was but a little girl, I was shunned for my looks. No one had seen a child emerge from the womb as though she were ancient. My body was weak. My beak had not yet hardened. But my magic was strong.

“There were few who would linger near me. All were ancient women. Hags as well, but not as strong as I. It was they who told me there was a hidden place within fallen leaves for people like me. I would be hidden by Mother Nature’s arms. And inside the hollow parts of the earth, a kingdom of misfits I would find.”

The others gathered around them. The Centaur folded his legs beneath him and eased to the side. The Thunderbird sat gracefully in repose while Tiny picked Mercy up and deposited her far too close to the flames.

Jasper half rose from his seat before he remembered she wouldn’t be harmed by the fire. He sat back down slowly, hoping no one would notice he had moved.

The Hag continued, “It was here I found them. Tiny was the first, living among the animals in the woods. He was frightening when I first saw him. Larger than life, but infinitely more gentle than any I had ever met before.”

Tiny blushed tomato red and ducked his head.

“It was he and I for a very long time. We had difficulties staying warm in the winter, until one fateful night. We couldn’t get a stack of logs to light, as the snow had made everything damp. And then they simply…ignited. With no explanation at first. There was just fire. Hot and merry and everything we desired.

“Out of the fire came a voice. We had not expected to hear someone speak, let alone a man. Yet it was a man’s voice. I will never forget the words it said—”

The Hag was interrupted by a voice bursting out of the fire before them. “Chase away the winter storms and banish your shivers by my light.”

Jasper stared into the flames, trying to see Ignes. He could not make out the creature’s form, but he knew the Pheonix was there.

From across the campfire, he caught Mercy’s red gaze.

“I thought it was an Elemental.” The Hag chuckled. “Tiny thought he recognized the voice, but I didn’t think that was possible. Ignes was all too proud to announce he was the last of his kind. We happened to be very close to the maze Mercy had been imprisoned within. He told us of her. The lost woman, the one who was capable of ruin and rebirth.

“We tried many times to find you, dear girl. We did not succeed. The maze had bigger plans for you. Instead, we were forced to stay in touch through the fire and your dreams. But I can say I am pleased to see you released in my lifetime.”

Jasper could hardly believe his ears. He leaned forward while blurting, “Are you saying you all knew her? Or knew of her?”

“Most in this forest knew of Mercy and her plight. Ignes is quite the storyteller. She was something of a myth.”

He was tongue-tied. He couldn’t imagine ever hearing about a woman buried deep in a maze and not thinking it was an elaborate story. There couldn’t be any truth in it. Surely something like that would never happen nowadays.

Mercy tsked. “You all knew I was real. And you knew I was very far from some locked up fairy tale princess.”

“You were a legend,” the Hag corrected her. “I remember being very young and wondering what you would really look like.”

“I sent messages as myself.”

“What you would look like outside of the flames, we did not know.”

Jasper licked his lips and spoke up. “How long have you all known about her?”

The strange creatures exchanged questioning glances before Tiny finally answered.

“We first found out about Mercy sixty-five years ago.”

“Sixty-five years,” Jasper repeated. He slumped backwards. “Good lord, that’s a lifetime.”

His brain stuttered. Mercy had told him her slumber had lasted two hundred years. But how could anyone truly fathom that? So much had happened in that time, and he had no way of understanding what she had gone through.

And now he knew. Or at least could put a number it to. Six of his lifetimes, and she still stayed sane. Now he had an inkling of how much strength lingered underneath her skin.

He looked at her through Ignes’s flames, watching her face as she studied him. He did not know what the look meant. She was always so stern. Even now, when she