Ivy's Choice (The Fey Quartet Book 3) Read Online Free Page B

capable of something like this. I trust him as I trust my brother.” He closed his eyes. He looked utterly exhausted.
    “You need to sleep.” Ivy reached for her crutch and stood. “We’ve four beds.”
    Hugh pushed slowly to his feet—she thought she almost heard his bones creak with weariness—and walked to the bedchamber, each step a half-lurch, and hesitated in the doorway.
    She saw the room through his eyes for a moment—a small, cramped, dark space with four narrow straw mattresses side by side on the floor, and a wooden chest crammed into the corner.
    “I can’t sleep in here with you,” Hugh said quietly.
    “Well, I can’t shift those mattresses, and neither can you right now; you can barely stand!”
    Hugh turned away from the door. “I’ll sleep by the fire.”
    “Hugh . . .” But there was nothing Ivy could do to halt him. All she could do was watch helplessly as he walked back to the fire and slowly lurched to his knees in front of the hearth.
    “Go to bed, Ivy. I promise I won’t disturb you.”
     
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    IVY JERKED AWAKE . The bedchamber was dark. The echo of a scream seemed to ring in her ears. Dream? Or reality?
    She sat up, disquieted, groping for her crutch.
    The scream came again, raw with pain—and very real.
    “Hugh? Hugh!” Ivy scrambled from the bed and lunged for the door, moving as fast as the crutch allowed her. “Hugh!”
    Hugh lay in front of the fire, his body jerking in helpless agony. His back bowed, he screamed again—and a roebuck lay on the rushes, flailing its legs.
    “No!” Ivy cried. She hobbled across the room.
    The buck convulsed, writhed, screamed an animal scream.
    “No!” Ivy cried again. She threw herself down beside the roebuck and flung her arms around him.
    The buck’s thrashing stilled. Deep tremors racked his body. His breathing was labored.
    “Hugh . . .” Ivy hugged him. “Hugh . . . please come back!” But words had no power to alter what had happened. Light crept through the cracks in the shutters. Day broke. And Hugh remained a roebuck.
     
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    IVY PICKED HER way slowly through the forest, leaning on her crutch, a basket of food hooked over her left arm. Beside her, very subdued, walked the roebuck. “Mother saved the life of a Faerie child. In return, she was granted wishes, and one of them was that we—Hazel and Larkspur and I—would each receive a Faerie wish on our next birthdays. Your father knows. He swore us to secrecy.” Ivy bit her lip, and glanced at the roebuck. “Did he tell you? Do you remember?”
    Hugh dipped his head in a nod.
    Ivy released her breath in a sigh and ducked under a low-reaching branch. “For her wish, Hazel chose to be able to find people and things, and Larkspur . . . Larkspur is wary of marriage. Mother was crippled because Father beat her, and it was Father who broke my leg, and Larkspur’s afraid she’ll make the same mistake Mother did and choose the wrong husband. She wished for a Faerie gift that would let her know her suitors’ true natures, and the Faerie . . . the Faerie tricked her, gave her the ability to hear people’s thoughts, and it’s driving Larkspur mad —” Ivy made herself pause, made herself take a deep breath and continue calmly. “The gift came in slowly. Larkspur was all right the first day, but the second day it grew stronger, as if it needed to take root before it could flower properly, and since then . . .
    “She hears everyone’s thoughts, whatever they’re thinking about, memories, emotions, everything. She can’t shut it out. It drove her half-mad, before we thought to take her into the woods. She’s been living in an abandoned woodcutter’s cottage the past week. Hazel and I visit her each day. It’s where we found you. Larkspur heard your thoughts. She knew you were a man.”
    The roebuck glanced at her with dark, liquid eyes. What was Hugh thinking, trapped inside that body?
    “Only Hazel and I know about