Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Monroe Media
Type: Fiction
Pages: 494
Copyright: Aug 29, 2019
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
Book 5 in the Voice of the Wind: Shadows of Time series. Book 5 continues the story of Bethana Tourney and daughter Jonquil in Cardolan's southern city of San Bargel.
“There is another, Jonquil.” Flaric’s voice floated upon the wind as if his disembodied spirit surrounded and embraced her.
When tragedy strikes and Jonquil has lost everything and everyone, she seeks escape through oblivion. But a trick of fate ushers Rojah Fayerfield into her life. Rojah’s arrival in San Bargel brings her mother’s past full circle. No longer can Adria Gittel spare Jonquil the truth concerning her past.
After the manipulations of other people and their attempts to control her life, Jonquil has only one choice left — the promise she made to her mother, Adria Gittel, the woman once known as Bethana Tourney.
Fearing her arrest for treason, Jonquil flees San Bargel. She sets out on a journey to an unknown country in her quest to reclaim her mother’s home, the Cloisters. Along the way, Jonquil hopes to discover her father’s identity and set her mother’s soul to rest.
Upon Jonquil’s arrival in Fayerton, she discovers there are others who desire the coveted Cloisters, among them her mother’s kinsmen, as well as Anton Tourney’s legal heir and the present Master of the Cloisters, Chaeran Fayerfield-Drake, the son of Doriano Drake and Jarutia Fayerfield.
For Jonquil danger and betrayal lurks as well as love.
Excerpt
Rojah started awake. He had plummeted into sleep while stargazing and drifting among his memories of home and family.
The night was still, clear. Moonlight foamed on the surge of the incoming tide, yet a distinct noise had awakened him. Rojah sat up, straining to hear beyond the surf’s steady wash.
Yes, there! He scanned the retreating waves rolling away from the shore’s edge. There! He spotted a bedraggled body lying in a tangle of seaweed, foam, and sand that the incoming tide had washed ashore.
His strangled cry erupted. He lurched to his feet and ran, stumbling down the grassy sand dune toward the dark mass. He was not one prone to panic. He acted from sheer instinct, from whatever strength made him Rojah Fayerfield and no other man — not even his father, or his brother Zalan, or his cousin Chaeran. Heart pounding, he panted for air, lungs aching as he fell to his hands and knees beside the creature the sea had washed ashore.
He clasped a limp arm and carefully turned the drowned creature over in the wet sand. Seaweed clung to naked, honey gold skin. His heart wrenched. What desperate act had driven this poor soul to seek death in the sea?
A glimmer of moonlight revealed the face of a woman. He brushed the straggling seaweed from her face and throat.
How still she lay! He felt for a pulse. Pressing his cheek closer to her mouth and nostrils, he listened for a breath that was not drawn. Lifeless! Yet, touching her wet flesh, he could feel the lingering pulse of life.
Rojah tilted her head back. He parted her cold lips, pinched her nostrils closed, and pressed his mouth against her mouth. He forced his breath into her water clogged lungs.
“Breathe! Breathe, damn you! I will not have your death on my conscience!” Rojah shouted. “Breathe! I beg you. Breathe — by the Great Ones — breathe!”
He did what he had seen his father do the summer a child fell into the Sun River and was thought drowned. He breathed his breath into her lungs. He pulled her arms up and, rolling her over on her stomach, he pressed his hands downward along her spine, pulled her arms upward, and pushed down along her spine, repeating the motion countless times. Tirelessly he worked for what seemed an eternity. Then, a violent cough and sputter, she choked and seawater flushed from her lungs. She gasped for a living breath, groaned.
Alive!
Rojah scowled, angered and bewildered. She was too young and beautiful to crave the bitterness of an early death. Tears stung his eyes. He lifted his head and gazed toward San Bargel across the bay. What could have driven such a young life to seek her death in the sea?
Rojah caught his breath, calmed himself. He gazed down upon the sea drenched face and gently brushed aside the clinging tangles of wet hair and seaweed. Beneath his fingertips, the flutter of a pulse throbbed in her throat. His eyes traced the rising swell of her breasts. Yes, she breathed again.
Rojah removed his shirt and wrapped the homespun tunic around her nakedness. Not a shred of her clothing remained, nor jewelry, nor shoes. It was as if she was birthed upon the beach from the ocean’s watery depths, perhaps a mermaid in human form.
Rojah picked her up and carried her into his nearby cottage. He dried her, clothed her in one of his clean tunics, and laid her within the cool linen sheets of his bed. Then he settled into an armchair to keep a watchful vigil upon the sleeping sea nymph.
Who was she?
He glimpsed something familiar in the repose of her features. He had seen her before. Yes, of course! She was the young woman at the theater who had approached him, mistaking him for someone else. What was the name she had called him? He could not remember.
Within the bed, she stirred as if she dreamed.
What did she dream?
He leaned forward in his chair, elbows braced on his knees, his chin resting upon his clasped fingers. She riveted his attention. Each flinch of her eyebrows, each rapid movement beneath her eyelids, each breath she drew.
What did she dream?
He wished he possessed his mother’s gift of the Objishanda. His mother could read a sleeping person’s dreams, slipping into another’s stream of consciousness with the ease of flowing water.
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