Hunted Sorcery (Jon Oklar Book 2) by B.T. Narro (chapter books to read to 5 year olds .txt) 📕

after Pearson because only archers had any hope of shooting him dead. I had not spoken with his majesty. I almost didn’t want to. He was grief stricken, with long looks at the ground as if he’d lost a child. I had heard, however, that his family was safe. It was his loss of coin that he mourned.

Luther had been brought through the courtyard in chains. He had denied any involvement with Cason when he was arrested, and he was still spouting the same message as he was escorted into the keep.

There was one person who wouldn’t stop staring at him, though I couldn’t read her expression. Aliana never took her eyes off her father until he was far enough into the keep where we couldn’t hear his complaints any longer. The door was still broken off its hinges.

I was in a daze. I knew I needed food, but I felt that eating wasn’t going to help me process everything that had happened. The worst of all was the news Eden had given me hours ago, soon after I had begun healing.

With tears in her eyes, she’d told me that Cason had killed Calvin. Cason had thrown Calvin against the wall of the keep. There was a blood stain about five yards up were Calvin’s head had struck stone.

I knew I would grieve later, but all I could think about, now that I was finally done healing and sitting down in front of my supper, was Pearson Robinson. It wasn’t his sorcery that scared me the most. It wasn’t even that he’d somehow carried an enormous chest as heavy as a grown man down three flights of stairs. It was that he had broken the door to the keep off its hinges, an impossible act that many of the king’s guards had witnessed. He hadn’t done it with dteria but with a simple kick of his boot.

What was even more strange was how a woman was later seen watching us take care of the injured from her perch on the roof of the keep, a woman no one recognized, including the king and his staff. It was soon after he’d sent men up to detain her for questioning that she’d jumped off the back end of the keep and wasn’t seen again.

I ate quickly while listening to my peers, who seemed to be in a slightly better mood than I was. It was probably because they hadn’t lost a friend. Right now, it felt as if a cloud would be blocking out the sun for the rest of my life, never a bright day again.

I knew this would pass. This feeling would diminish, as had the pain of losing my father. But this time it was pity that I felt the strongest. Calvin had been robbed of his life. He was one of the good men. In no way did he deserve this, and in no way was it his fault.

At least I perked up a little when I heard Michael compliment Charlie.

“If you hadn’t melted those swords when you did, a lot more people than Leon would have been stabbed, maybe even killed. You did well, Charlie.”

“Aye,” Reuben agreed.

“Thank you.”

“Jon, are you going to be all right?” Michael asked. “At least we got Cason,” he said, most likely to cheer me up.

It was true. Cason was now in a cell in the dungeon, and no amount of magic could break him out of a stone and metal cage.

“I’ll be fine tomorrow.” I hoped so, anyway. “After some rest.”

I could feel Kataleya’s gaze on me from across the dining hall. I didn’t want to worry my peers, but I just couldn’t bring myself to lift my head up.

There were still so many unanswered questions. Why was Luther lying about his involvement? Could he be so stupid as to think that we would actually believe he was innocent after everything that had happened? Perhaps he just needed some time to realize this, and then he would help us figure out where Pearson had taken the king’s coin. But time was not a luxury we had. Right now, Pearson could be passing out the coin to his loyal sorcerers, who would soon be on their way to Rohaer.

The alternative to this scenario was that Luther really was innocent, which meant that Aliana and her mother were working with Cason and had framed Luther. I didn’t care to even entertain this idea. Aliana was innocent in my eyes. In fact, all of my peers might be innocent.

After seeing what Pearson was capable of, it was clear that he could’ve been the one who put the callring in Kataleya’s room at some point. It could’ve been an attempt to make the king suspect the wrong family, to keep Luther from being arrested.

I still didn’t know what Luther had to gain from this. He was already wealthy and powerful. I doubted that Pearson could entice Luther with something that he didn’t already have. Perhaps it had been a threat that had turned Luther against the king, forcing him to plot a theft of the king’s tax collections.

This seemed unlikely, especially after Aliana’s own mother had testified about what kind of man Luther really was. It was probably greed, the only explanation for the despicable actions of a man who already had everything an average man might dream about.

The king walked over to the girls’ side of the table and gestured for us boys to come to him. We picked up our plates and walked over.

I didn’t know what had gotten into me, but this brush with death seemed to dig out my heart from wherever I’d buried it. I sat beside Kataleya and was completely smitten when she put her hand on my arm, looked right into my eyes, and asked me in a caring voice, “Are you all right?”

I nodded. “You?”

She took back her hand. “Yeah, thanks to your healing.”

I had healed all of the sorcerers. Most only had cuts and welts that would