Summerkin Read Online Free

in a side wall, tunnels, no doubt, that led outside. No puck would let himself be caught in a place without a back exit.
    â€œLook who I brought!” Tatter was announcing, and then, as Rook climbed to his feet, he heard Brother! Puppy! It’s our Rook! echoing from the cave walls, and a few cheerful yips from the other pucks lounging around the fire. All of them jumped up and gathered around Rook, hugging him and tousling his hair. A younger puck toddled over and grabbed Rook’s knees, grinning up at him. He found himself laughing and returning hugs, and buzzing with sudden happiness.
    Then another puck pushed through the crowd and seized Rook in a fierce hug. Asher was lithe and tall, had skin tinged ashy gray, and wore gleaming crystals woven into his many long black braids. His eyes burned with a redder flame than most yellow-eyed pucks.
    He gripped Rook’s shoulders and looked him over, his eyes narrowing when he saw the scars from the wolf bites. “Ah, it’s our young Rook, come home at last,” Asher said. “How we’ve missed you!”
    He’d missed them, too. Being bound to the Mór, being away from his brother-pucks—it had been like having a hollow, empty place inside him. Seeing them again filled it up, to overflowing.
    He bent down and picked up the baby, Scrap, and hugged him. “Hello, little one,” he whispered. Rook himself had found the abandoned baby-puck and brought him to his brothers when Scrap had been tiny. As the next-youngest of the pucks, Rook had spent many long nights feeding the baby with stolen milk and rocking him to sleep. “And here you are, walking on your own legs like a grown-up lad,” Rook said, giving the baby a kiss. Scrap squirmed and laughed, his yellow eyes alight, and Rook set him on the stone floor. Scrap staggered away, and another puck caught him before he could fall and took him away to the warm fire that blazed at the center of the cave.
    â€œCome on,” Asher said. “We want to talk to you.” The other pucks faded away, went back to sit by the fire. Asher put an arm around Rook’s bare shoulders and pulled him to a darker corner of the cave. Tatter came too.
    Another puck was waiting for them, crouched in shadow. Rip, it was, sharp-faced and wearing nothing at all except for swirls of red and black paint on his skin. He gave Rook a narrow-eyed nod.
    Rook shivered and nodded back.
    â€œYou’re cold, Rook-pup,” Tatter said, settling on a pile of blankets. “Have a shirt.” He dug into a bag at his feet and pulled out a wad of stained green cloth, which he tossed to Rook.
    â€œThanks,” Rook said, and pulled the shirt over his head. It must’ve come from somebody even bigger than Fer’s wolf-guards, because its ragged hem hung almost to his knees and the sleeves were too long.
    Asher went to lean against the smooth cave wall, where he looked Rook up and down. “Been out wandering?”
    Rook nodded, then busied himself with rolling up the sleeves of his new shirt.
    â€œFrom the looks of those scars, you’ve been fighting.” Asher glanced aside at Rip. “Wouldn’t you say, Brother?”
    â€œWolves, at a guess,” Rip answered from the shadows.
    â€œShould’ve asked your brothers for help dealing with them,” Asher said, testing.
    Rook shrugged. It’d happened too fast to ask for help with the wolves or with anything else. Rook had been on his way to see his puck-brother Finn and had arrived just as the Mór was about to kill him in one of her bloody hunts. The only thing she would take in return for sparing Finn’s life was Rook’s thrice-sworn oath, and that had bound him to her more tightly than iron chains.
    â€œDidn’t you miss us?” Asher went on.
    â€œI did, yes,” Rook answered.
    â€œBut you didn’t ask us for help.” Asher’s voice had turned cold. “And you were gone such a long