Warrior's Lady Read Online Free Page B

pleading in his eyes, but she shook her head. “Please, do not ask it of me.”
    Jarrett nodded, understanding her need to hold something back, to hang on to some small part of herself that was hers and hers alone.
    “Jarrett…”
    “More bad news?”
    “I hesitate to tell thee, yet I feel thee should know all.”
    “Go on.”
    “The last Game will be…different.”
    Jarrett frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “They wish to experiment with thee. And with me.”
    “Experiment? How?”
    He was watching her intently, his eyes dark. She saw the muscles tense in his arms as his hands curled into tight fists.
    “They wish to know the full extent of my powers.”
    He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
    “They want to know if I can restore…if I can revitalize…”
    It was harder to say than she had imagined. Instinctively feeling the need to comfort him, she took his hand in hers, felt the slight tremor that pulsed through him as he waited for her to tell him the rest.
    “On the battlefield…if a man should lose an arm or a leg…they want to find out if I can restore a severed limb, or cause a new one to grow in its place.”
    He was going to be sick. He felt the bile rise in his throat as he realized what she was saying. They were going to amputate an arm or a leg and see if she had the power to make him whole again. Fear twisted in his gut, writhing like a snake biting its own tail.
    He fought down the urge to vomit, his gaze intent upon her face. “Can you do it?”
    “I do not know. I have never had the opportunity to try.”
    “But it can be done?”
    “Yes, if a Maje can be found before the victim bleeds to death.”
    “You mean you can’t raise the dead too?”
    Her face went white.
    “She?” He squeezed her hand, his breath trapped in his throat as he waited for her answer.
    She turned away, unable to face him. “I will be given the opportunity to find out.”
    He stared at her for a long while, his mind refusing to believe what he’d heard. He didn’t fear death so much. He had been a warrior. Death had ridden beside him at every battle. But dismemberment…to be deliberately cut apart…to discover if she could make him whole again. And then, if she were capable of restoring or replacing whatever limb they chose to amputate, they would hack it off again and he would be left to bleed to death so they could discover if she could restore life. And in the end, no matter what pain he endured, what miracles she worked upon his unwilling flesh, he was still fated to die at the hands of a man he had once called friend.
    “I will not do it.” She gazed down at the table to where their two hands were still joined together. “I promise thee that I will not.”
    “You must,” he retorted, his voice filled with bitterness. “The Maje cannot refuse to heal.”
    She looked up, meeting his gaze. “Have you never wondered why my people are so few in number?”
    Slowly he shook his head.
    “It is our fate to heal, though my people have many other gifts besides healing. My mother has the power to control the elements. My father has power over fire and water. Many of my people have been captured because of these gifts, but if our power is to be abused, as the Fen wish to abuse my power, then my people chose to die rather than be the instrument of causing destruction or prolonging pain. As I will die.”
    “No!”
    “It is our way.”
    “She, you must not! Promise me.”
    “Does thee understand fully what thee is asking? They will not be content to try it once. If they cut off thy hand and I heal thee, they will cut off thy arm, and then thy leg, until they have tested my powers to the fullest.” She took a deep breath. “It is not only thy pain I fear, but my own as well.”
    Selfish swine, he thought, to think only of the suffering that waited for him, completely forgetting that, in healing him, she would suffer the same anguish.
    He glanced at their joined hands—his large and dark, the