Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4) by Emma Hamm (scary books to read .TXT) 📕

Giant lifted a young Gryphon into the air. It would learn to fly easier that way. A little wind under its wings would help breed the adventure that Gryphons naturally desired.

A Hippocamp snorted, its large tail rooting in the ground where a spring had sprung up from the ground. It would create a pool for itself to wallow in while the others figured out their plan.

Lydia purposefully kept her mind in the Present. She didn’t want to know what would befall these beautiful creatures. Her heart swelled at the sight of them. Their beauty was overwhelming, their magic pure and untainted.

Flexing her power, she launched into the air. Her golden light melded with the sun and rained down upon them in glittering sparks. Wings made of magic and love lifted her into the air as exhilaration exploded from her in bubbling laughter.

She was free. She was with them. Of all the things she had thought to experience today, Lydia had never guessed this. After all this time, she was finally here.

A hot draft of wind pushed her downwards, but she refused. Everything laid out like a dollhouse underneath her. The log cabin house with its green shingles. The tent site with ant-like men and women carried wood and food. Even a garden where bubbling water streamed down into the forest.

“I do not recognize you,” a deep voice said. “And I did not think there were any creatures capable of light magic and flight here.”

Lydia glanced up. Fire covered the sky above her, arching out in individual feathers that ruffled with the wind.

“Ignes,” she said. “It is good to finally meet you.”

“You know my name?”

“I know all of your names.” She looked down again. “I have known all of you since the beginning.”

“The taste of your magic is familiar. Like a song I heard in a dream, long ago.”

“Not so long ago. Although the passage of Time frequently escapes me these days.”

“The white light,” he murmured. “You were the bells that rang through my pain and torment.”

“One and the same.”

A flash of bright purple hair caught her eye. Wren walked out of the cabin, carefully closing the door and sneaking to the railing. There was a man leaning against it although Lydia was too high to see who it was. Wren jumped out, wrapped her arms around his neck, and laughter echoed all the way up to Ignes and Lydia.

“They’re happy,” she said.

“They’re surviving. Happiness is a state of mind, even though evil hunts them.”

“How? How do they stay so positive?”

She felt Ignes’s wings beat against her back, the sway of his magic warm and comforting. “They just do. It’s a requirement of life, to be happy. Otherwise, what is the point of living?”

“I suppose you’re right.” Her heart beat fast. They were happy. They were living their lives to fullest no matter that the world was falling down around them.

She had succeeded. If they were happy, if they were living, then she had done something right. There were good memories for them to relive over and over. The worst had yet to come, but they had experienced happiness.

“Is it some great secret what you are?” Ignes drifted below her, its Phoenix eyes squinting. “I have never seen something like you before.”

“It’s a well-kept secret.”

“Will you tell me?”

“No.”

“Why not? I can keep a secret, I promise.”

“You will find out soon,” she said impulsively. “I have to make a few plans, but I promise that you will know very soon.”

“But then it’s not a secret if you’re going to tell all of us.”

Lydia swore there was a pout marring his birdlike features. She grinned at him, and a few moths made of golden magic flew out of her mouth. “Wouldn’t it be more entertaining to see everyone shocked?”

“It’s more entertaining if I knew before them and I get to be smug while they're shocked.”

He had a point. If she was in his position, Lydia would likely have wanted to know the same. Curiosity had always been Ignes’s greatest strength, she remembered that from sneaking a peek at Mercy in her prison.

She expanded, wrapping him in her embrace. “Don’t tell anyone that a Goddess has been watching over them since the beginning.”

“You aren’t one of the Five.”

“No, I’m not. And I’m not one of the dark Five either.”

Lydia brushed ghostly lips against his beak and let herself fade back into her physical body.

The door to her room opened, its creak a tell tale sign who it was. Louis would have wrapped his knuckles on the door and called out. Liam, when he visited, would wait for her downstairs.

Pitch never waited for her response.

“Everything is in order,” he said as he strode to her. “I’m glad we hired the boy. I think he’s going to do very well.”

“There wasn’t really any doubt of that. He comes from a good bloodline.”

“And I like investing in that bloodline.” Pitch pulled a footstool behind her, settling himself on the seat and reaching out to grab her brush. “You know I like to do this.”

“I thought I’d save you the trouble this morning.”

“It’s no trouble, my love.”

He was gentle as he untangled her hair from around her horns and down the length of her spine. It had grown so long in the many years she slept.

Lydia leaned back into him, sighing with pleasure. “Well, you are good at it.”

“I know. Of all my many talents, I am most accomplished in hair brushing.”

She rolled her eyes. “Pitch.”

“I’m being serious. It’s a talent that is sincerely underrated, most people don’t know how many years of training is required.”

“Pitch!”

“Are you one of them? You haven’t noticed me practicing day in and day out?”

Laughing, she smacked at his hands. “Stop it. You do not.”

“No, I don’t.” He dropped the brush onto the floor and yanked her backward. His arms wrapped around her waist. The heat of his body sank into hers until she was melting. He pressed his lips against her ear, “Have you had a good morning?”

“I’ve been doing a lot