Breath of Innocence Read Online Free Page A

the master bedroom was. It was impossible to ignore the combination of emotions welling up from beneath him. His connection to the pair was strong. Everything they felt, he received a concentrated taste of. Camille’s worry for Eben. Eben’s desperate need for her love. They were sharing something now that he didn’t think he could compete with, nor did he believe he should.
    “But…” Rafe raised his eyebrows expectantly.
    “But they are mine .” Roka’s teeth clenched and he pounded the heavy table with one fist for emphasis. The wood creaked under the strain. “His connection to me may not be very deep yet, but we are both lost without her.”
    “You understand my predicament, then,” Rafe said.
    “Yes. I understand well. You should rest now. There’s a spare cabin below. We will fly at dusk.”
    Rafe nodded and stood.
    “Rafe, if she offers again…” Roka began.
    “I will decline, for his sake, and for yours.”
    Roka nodded and watched his friend descend to the lower deck. He sat in silence for a moment, then stood and left the shelter of the interior to stand at the railing facing the bow. Dawn was creeping over the horizon ahead of him, chasing the night across the sky. There was nothing like being out in the middle of nowhere, being able witness these moments. Shifts in the universe, another cycle beginning while the prior ended. The continuous flow of it, persisting uninterrupted, for eons.
    In some ways he regretted his own interruption. The enforced hibernation. Time had stood still for him and his brethren for five hundred years. Their own cycles arrested for reasons most of them had forgotten, yet took for granted as necessary. After Rafe’s visit tonight he agreed that their laws needed to change, but also felt a little guilty. Had it not been for those laws, he never would have been the Guardian that night in the temple. Never would have been the object of Camille’s innocent affection. Perhaps it didn’t matter, though. Perhaps fate would have brought them together no matter what. He had to believe that, if he were going to help Rafe with his quest.
    The sun finally peeked its shining head over the horizon. The surface of the water became a vast ocean of pure gold that made him long yet again for a child with similar qualities. He didn’t wish for a White like himself. Only the Virgin’s Guardian ever rose above the rank of servant and protector. He wished for a child as full of wide-eyed eagerness and wonder at every new experience that Camille possessed, and one with the same fearless curiosity as Eben. Sweet Mother help him, but he loved them both so much. It pained him to know that one of them might ever be unhappy.
    The flood of emotions he’d channeled from them all morning subsided as the sun’s full glory finally birthed itself from beyond the edge of the Earth. It hung there in proud challenge to the shadows that fast retreated to the other side of the world. With a silent greeting, Roka turned and went back inside.
    He let them sleep for a little while longer, finding comfort in his own thoughts. There was something to be said for true solitude like this, and he hadn’t had it since being frozen in jade in the temple. He didn’t miss it, but being presented with it now, he relished it. The other two were a constant presence in his life, his thoughts, his bed. He was truly happy, a feeling he never imagined he would feel during all those centuries of guarding his race’s treasures. Camille had chosen him, and everything else had followed.
    His bond with Eben, though solid, but felt tenuous at the moment, when the man’s desperate craving for Camille was too apparent to deny and drowned out all else. Roka had considered taking one or both of them along on this quest he was embarking on with Rafe to find the lost purebred his friend loved. He had second thoughts now. As much as it would hurt to leave them behind, it seemed that was the best choice. He knew the perils of where