Season of Sacrifice (Blood of Azure Book 1) Jonathan Michael (red novels .txt) 📖

then my choices are limited. It makes sense. I never feel aggressive toward him when I’m around him. His teachings aggravate me but not to the extent I want to murder him. I feel it now, the hate. I could swing Life Bringer down upon his neck and not feel any remorse after what he’s put my family through. But when I’m within a certain proximity, the emotions flee. It’s true. He’s been controlling my emotions. But Astor… My eyes narrow in on her. She sits patiently, watching me with intensity. “Okay.”

“Okay?” She asks as though the question will send us plummeting through a thin sheet of ice.

“I’m unsure how I feel about it, but my feelings won’t change the matter. You were protecting your family. I would have done the same. And I’m going to need your help to save my own.”

“Thank you, Stone!” A wan smile appears on her face.

“What’s the plan? How do we get them out?”

“I still want to teach Survival Sciences at the Academy. I suppose that dream can be washed out unless we usurp Harris.” Her eyes widen. “Oh dear, forget I said that. We can’t go down that path. I’m not a murderer. I don’t know, Stone. I don’t know what the plan is. I can’t deny him. I can’t. It’s too risky. Stone…” she pauses. There are more secrets she’s withholding.

Astor slips her blouse down below her shoulder just enough for me to see it. “Stone…” she says compassionately, “I too have a mark. He can sense me. It’s too risky.” Her mark is darker and more defined, just the same as the day it burned into her skin, I presume.

I move around the table and brush my fingertips over it as if I can relieve the phantom pain. I know I can’t. Her warmth returns to me, causing me to linger. The scent of lavender and honey overwhelming me. She places her hand over top of mine and looks up to me. Her eyes the color of a cloudless, cool winter’s sky reflected in a glacier. They are beautiful. I let all resistance fall away, and I lean in to kiss her. She doesn’t flinch. Not this time. She kisses back. A great weight falls away alongside the resistance I’ve been holding onto. She’s beautiful, courageous, a leader, irresistible. A woman worth kissing.

She rises to her feet, and the kiss advances into more. I press my hands firmly against the small of her back, drawing her closer. She runs curious fingers along the contours of my shoulders and down around my back. She allows me to pull her in tighter. My hands meander lower around her waist.

“I’m a lady!” she bursts. I hope I didn’t offend her. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Not like this.”

“Y-yes. Of course. My apologies. I didn’t mean…” I take a step back and straighten out my tunic.

“No, no, don’t apologize. It’s not you. I just… My father raised me to be a lady, and I will honor that.” She pauses, making the awkward moment stretch.

“Your sister. My sister. We should get back on topic.”

My lack of truths has caused an uproar in the religion. The Advocates and their disciples are changing their tune. I must find a way to communicate the importance of my actions. It will take too long to invent a new deity before… before we extinguish our own light.

38 Goose

T he Redcliffe Guardian ignores Zoie’s outcries—or it’s quite possible he cannot hear her over his own massive bellowing.

“Coloss! He’s not dead, Coloss! Your kin, he’s not dead.”

He disregards her, snarling, howling, and banging his hairy meat cleavers upon the ground in a fit of territorial rage. He stops abruptly as if it were a delayed reaction to her outcries. The beast turns toward Zoie, whose glare impales the ape. Coloss grunts and grievously dismisses her before turning his attention back on me. I’m not sure what was just communicated there, but it didn’t calm the beast.

How many times I’ve thought it would be quite convenient to speak to an animal. Like when the lazy tiger, Helios, won’t move his ass to get off my bed mat. And a few stray dogs may have been spared the boot, too, from time to time could I have just told them to piss off. I’ve been so hesitant to believe it, but now when the time is most dire, and I know the truth of it, I fall short with my ability. I don’t know how to tame this beast.

A voracious chill sweeps through me. Emotions are being communicated, and I can’t translate them. Though, we may be too far along for talking, whether with my tongue or these Instincts I haven’t figured out. Hand on my kukri, I ready myself for his attack.

Zoie rushes the giant ape. In his frenzy of madness, without beholding her, his hairy trunk swipes across her body to rid himself of the distraction. She flies and cracks through several branches of the fig tree before hitting the ground with a disturbing thud. His eyes are focused solely on me with death igniting inside them.

“Zoie!” Coloss and his kin flee my thoughts as I give him a wide berth and hurry to check on her.

Her body is broken with two branches protruding from her chest. But she remains alive. “Don’t kill him,” she rasps and coughs up blood.

I cradle an arm around her head. “Coloss?” I ask, baffled by her question.

“Not you,” she spits back, still fiery in her moment of pain.

“Huh?”

“Don’t do it. We need him.” Her lips aren’t moving. She’s looking through me. Not at me. “Coloss…I need him.”

She uses her Instincts. It doesn’t come through as words I can hear or anything I would be able to explain without sounding like a lunatic. It’s more like an emotion perfectly