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

They didn’t teleport. Instead, he seemed to only want to hold her. Relaxation sank into her tense muscles as she listened to his heartbeat. The soothing thuds stilled her mind and soul.

“Ready now?” His deep voice vibrated against her.

“I’m just so tired.”

He ran his hands up her arms. “And cold.”

“I can’t get warm.”

“It’s making me worried. We’ll get you inside and near a fire.”

She shook her head against the heat of his skin. “Inside the fire.”

“Is it that bad?”

She didn’t respond. Mercy didn’t know how to tell him that it was worse than he imagined. That he was somehow hot against her fingers, and no one had ever seemed warmer than her before. Fear made the words stick in her throat, and there was no flaming shield between herself and the foreign emotion.

“How do you do it?” she asked. “Be afraid without knowing you can protect yourself.”

“You survive it. You use the fear to be stronger.”

“I don’t feel stronger.” Even Mercy could hear the dull tones in her voice. “I don’t feel right at all.”

He hooked his hand around her waist and turned the both of them towards a cracked wall. “Then let’s not waste time.”

He reached forward and ran his palm along the crumbling stone. It reacted to his touch, shimmered, and disappeared. A ward, she realized, created from pure magic, untouched by any earthen creature. It had been a long time since she had seen something like this in practice.

They passed through the magical barrier as though they were stepping through a bubble. She felt it pull her backwards until it suddenly snapped back in place, and she was standing in a well lit, golden hallway. Bright marble floors met delicate wallpaper that shone with glimmering fleur-de-lis. Floating candles cast away the darkness from their glow.

Jasper squeezed her. “Welcome to Haven.”

As they walked forward, she turned to see the wall had vanished. “Portal?”

“Portal and hidden doorway. Probably a few other tricks thrown in there as well. The Five are well protected.”

She still wasn’t certain they were going to meet gods. What woman would have been convinced of that? The gods had no reason to be interested in her. They certainly hadn’t been there for her when she had been locked away in a prison and losing her mind.

An itch tickled the back of her neck as they wandered through corridor after corridor. This place was as much a maze as the World Tree’s challenges. Ignes had shown her many travellers lost in their attempt to find her.

“This feels familiar,” she told Jasper.

“Why’s that?”

“It’s like the labyrinth that people tried to get through to find me.”

He opened a door and gestured for her to walk through it. Yet another hallway stretched before them. “I suppose so. But at least this doesn’t have the tempting traps and monsters made of light.”

“You mean Ignes?” She managed a weak smile as even more energy drained out of her.

“That was Ignes?”

“A man made out of light. Who else did you think it was? The Wisp had no right getting so close to me. The World Tree did not like it.”

Jasper guided her hand to his arm. It seemed on the surface as though he just wanted to touch her, but it was more likely because he saw how quickly she was tiring. She leaned against him, silently grateful.

He snorted. “The World Tree, huh? I thought that thing was more plant than thinking creature.”

“Don’t let it hear you say that. It’s very much a talking, thinking creature, and it has a lot to say. Its roots stretch farther than our minds could even comprehend. And it gets ornery.”

“Of course it does,” he murmured as he paused in front of another door, exactly the same as the others. Mercy didn’t know how he could manage to find his way. “Are you ready?”

“For what?”

“To meet my family and the Five.”

No. She wanted to say no a thousand times over and run back to her Tree. She wanted to hide her head under her arm and sleep for a thousand years. Even better, she wanted to throw herself over the edge of a volcano and accept what fate had in store for her.

But she did not say any of the things exhaustion begged her to say. Instead, she nodded.

Jasper leaned around her, placed his thick hand against the dark wood, and pushed.

There had been conversation. Mercy managed to catch the tail end of words before they were silenced. Now, a room full of people all standing around a center island in a bright kitchen stared at the two of them.

They were all very different. Tall, small, strong, lean, startling, unusual. She couldn’t really make heads or tails of the people, not while her head was spinning.

Only one detail stood out above all others. They were all very obviously human.

“Jasper?” The whispered sob wrenched out of the smallest woman in the bunch.

She was dark like the night and quick like a river. Mercy watched her vault over the island, a feat she would have said impossible for such a small thing, and sprint towards Jasper.

There was hardly enough time for Mercy to step out of the way before the tiny woman wrapped her arms and legs around Jasper’s torso.

“Jasper, I knew you weren’t dead. I could feel you out there! How did you get back? Are you okay? What happened? I cannot imagine what you’ve been through. We’ve been looking for you! Please tell me you’re okay. Why aren’t you talking—”

She was silenced by Jasper’s hand, which he wedged between the two of them and placed over her rapidly running mouth. He laughed at her bugged-out eyes. Mercy hadn’t seen joy like that on his face before.

She realized with startling clarity just how far she had to go before she truly was one of Ignes’s kind. A Phoenix did not experience jealousy, but Mercy felt it now. A dull ache clenched her stomach as she watched them. The ease in which they