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

my family and friends died. Then I was always meant to be lost and incapable of controlling myself, unable to do the things I want to do.”

He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I’ll help you learn control.”

“If you can do that, I shall name you a god.”

“Will you now?” He rolled her over onto her back. “I must not have paid enough attention to you then. You should have called me a god already.”

She laughed and spread her arms wide. “By all means, you can try. But I get to play with your wings again.”

“Why are women always so fascinated by them?”

“Because they’re pretty.”

He lurched backwards as he straddled her hips. “Excuse me? Mood. Killer. They aren’t pretty. They’re functional and dangerous.”

“They’re pink.” She patted one gently.

“Dangerous,” he growled while leaning down to kiss her.

“Delicate,” she said against his tongue.

Jasper was obviously going to have to show her how wrong she was. And he did just that amidst the ancient trees and babbling brooks of an enchanted forest.

He awoke to the smell of smoke. It stung his nostrils and filled his lungs until he coughed. His hand flexed against Mercy’s warm shoulder.

Curling around her, he muttered, “Mercy, stop burning things. It’s waking me up.”

“I’m not burning anything.” Her raspy voice was deeper than usual.

“Something’s smoking. Make it stop.”

He didn’t want to get up. He had been in the most lovely dream, in which he and Mercy had slept together on a bed of moss. Jasper’s mouth curved into a smile as he remembered it wasn’t a dream. They really had enjoyed themselves, perhaps too much, underneath the canopy of ancient trees.

Two hundred years certainly hadn’t made her any less creative.

He coughed again and released her to roll away. His entire body rocked forward with force before the fit subsided. The smoke was really becoming unbearable.

“Mercy.” He grabbed her shoulder, shaking hard. “Mercy, come on. What’s burning?”

“I don’t know.” She tucked her head underneath an arm. “Stop bothering me. Sleep time.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Learn how to be a little hardier, then. It’s just smoke.”

He looked around, trying to find the source of his distractions. But there was no fire around them. In fact, he couldn’t find anything that even sparked with light, only the haze of heavy smoke drifting around them.

Night had not yet released its hold upon the land. Shadows stretched all around them. They were not lightened by any source as the moon was sinking, and the sun had yet to raise its head. Strange that he could smell smoke when there wasn’t anything burning nearby.

“Did we light a campfire?” He asked, scratching his head.

“No,” she grumbled. “Go to sleep.”

“But there’s smoke.”

Mercy let out an angry huff of breath and sat up. Her hair stuck out in all directions. A twig was tangled above her left ear. Jasper couldn’t help but smile at her when she looked so rumpled. He raised a hand to gently pull the twig away.

She glowered at him. “Why do I care if there is smoke?”

“Because we don’t know where it’s coming from.”

“We rarely know where such things come from,” Mercy said. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. When he did not back down, she made another angry sound. “Fine. Fine, I’ll ask Ignes. Just hang on.”

“You can ask Ignes?”

“He’s not that far away. Besides, the fires should be dying down at camp by now. I should probably get back to him, so we don’t regret it later.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and went still as stone. Jasper tried to discern whether or not her chest was rising, but it appeared she wasn’t breathing. Perhaps she didn’t need to breathe. He’d have to ask her later.

This was taking a while. He stood to pull his clothing back together. His shirt had been stretched over the two of them to keep the night chill away. The borrowed pants had been haphazardly laced in an attempt at decency, but Mercy was another story.

The fiery dance had burned away all of her clothing. He shivered when he remembered the way the fire had revealed long, smooth limbs. But that left very little for him to offer her other than the shirt he had been wearing.

“Ah well,” he muttered as he reached for her. “I’m getting used to seeing you in nothing but a shirt.”

And he certainly wasn’t complaining.

While she attempted to contact Ignes, he lifted her limp arms and pulled the shirt onto her. The buttons were slightly harder, as she was holding her knees to her chest and didn’t seem to want to move her legs. But he reached boldly with deft fingers to button quite a few before he felt her jerk.

He looked up to see her eyes wide-open and unseeing.

“Mercy?”

She didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, those ombre eyes stared straight ahead. He could see her lips moving, but even when he pressed his ear close to her, he couldn’t make out what she was saying.

“Mercy?” Jasper waved a hand in front of her face. “Mercy, can you hear me?”

Perhaps it was a bad thing to interrupt her while she was talking to Ignes. He didn’t even know if she were talking or using the eyes of the Phoenix to see what he was seeing. Jasper knew very little of what she was capable of. He wished that she was a more open person, but prying information out of her was like opening individual clams. Each time he thought one would hold a pearl, it was a useless bit of generic information.

Then he saw a single tear roll down her face.

“Nope,” he told her. “That isn’t going to happen. Mercy, wake up!”

When she didn’t respond, he shook her gently. Even that didn’t seem to pull her out of the trance. He reached up to lightly smack her cheeks.

“Nothing,” he muttered. Leaning back onto his haunches, he looked around for something that might help.

“The moss,” Bluebell said quietly. “It has water in it.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“It’s something. I think there’s