Heart Secret Read Online Free Page B

no more Smallages.
    Garrett stood where he was. He didn’t want to be sucked back into that dark time. But words came from his mouth. “People from the estate got sick, a group went to a research HealingHall on the edge of Gael City for help. By that time, they were sick, too,” he began in a monotone.
    Rushing air pounded in his ears, matching an inward, rumbling shudder. Even if he left this office, memories would slice him. He might fall apart in bits before he left the HealingHall.
    Someone made a soft noise of concern. Not someone. He knew who, the SecondLevel Healer. She was there, standing beside him, her fingers light on him near his elbow, nudging him back to the chair. He picked up his feet carefully, let the pressure on his arm guide him since he was having trouble seeing. Seeing outside. Inside, his mind flashed vision after vision of those terrible days.
    He bumped the edge of the chair, sat back down. His face felt cold. But the memories were fever hot. Like the sickness he’d survived.
    Heather said, “The research HealingHall determined the sickness was unknown and virulent. They took samples and wanted the infected moved to a quarantine clinic in the hills. You were called in to guide the off-road quarantine vehicle.”
    â€œMe and the driver of that bus, Old Grisc,” Garrett said. Old Grisc had been tough, but not tough enough. “We both knew the rough back trail to the clinic.” Little used, and since one part of the shelf road had crumbled behind the heavy vehicle, never to be used again. The trip had been hazardous. More from the sickness than the rugged terrain.
    â€œThere were twenty-three who left on the journey. It was supposed to take six septhours?” Lark Holly asked in her calm voice. Not as pleasing to his ears as the younger woman’s, who he didn’t want to name.
    Pain razored through him as he was back again in the Gael City HealingHall. He saw the fearful expression of Dinni, his childhood friend. They’d been each other’s first lover. But Dinni was the girl who’d rejected him because he’d had a HeartMate somewhere and Dinni believed in that kind of love. She hadn’t wanted to take a chance on him and the love between them.
    Dinni had cradled her fretful and sick baby. Her son, no more than two months old, his father already dead of the sickness. She had begged Garrett to take the job, to go with them. Had the utmost faith he would save them.
    His Dinni. More memories—sweet, laughing, as sunny in nature as her blonde hair, as a child, a girl. He’d have done anything for her. So he’d agreed.
    â€œGentleSir Primross?” Healer Lark Holly prompted with an underlying command that greatly Flaired and greatly Noble people used to get results.
    Something warm brushed against the back of one of his fists and he saw it was a steaming mug of caff. Strong and dark. He took the cup and drank and the bitterness of the caff was lost in that of his mouth.
    He cast his mind back to what the woman had asked him. His voice came out like something old and rusty with edges flaking off, gone forever. “Yeah, the trip was supposed to take six septhours. Took eleven.” Hideous trip. “Not many of us made it.”
    â€œFive,” Ura Heather snapped.
    As if he didn’t recall every individual. Garrett couldn’t prevent the shudder from showing this time, ripping through his body. Hot caff slopped on his thigh. He barely noticed.
    More words spewed. “But your HealingHall in Gael City wasn’t as good as you all thought it was. The sickness got out from there, didn’t it? Despite all your warnings and all your sterilization procedures and everything.” He didn’t care if he sounded harsh.
No one
knew what had happened on that trip. “One of your own Healers spread it.”
    Heather’s nostrils pinched. “A ThirdLevel Healer.” A sneer from a woman who’d been born a