Morganna (The Brocade Collection, Book 4) by Jackie Ivie

sleeping.
     
    Morgan was awakened this time by having two dirks thrust into the dirt beside her nose. Her eyes flew open a moment before she was on her feet, both dirks in her hands and ready. Zander had already leapt back, expecting it. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the pre-dawn clearing, where fingers of mist were still hanging in the air.
    “We’ve some work to do today. I wanted you awake before the others,” he whispered.
    “Why?” she whispered back.
    He pulled in a breath, filling the chest in front of her. Then, he shrugged. “You’re different,” he said, finally.
    She didn’t reply and waited for him to explain.
    He didn’t. He just blew out his inhaled breath and gestured with his head. “Come with me. I want you to show me how you toss your knives.”
    He already had a target etched on a tree, although she could barely see it. Morgan looked at it in surprise. She hadn’t heard him move. Some guardian of virtue she had turned out to be, she thought.
    “I’ve seen knives tossed, and I’ve seen some hit a spot, but I’ve never seen anyone place them so perfectly, nor from any finger. Show me how you do such.”
    “My knives are perfectly balanced. That’s the first trick.”
    “Balanced?” he asked.
    “P ull your own out.”
    He did.
    “ Lay it flat in your hand. Can you feel a difference in weight, one side to the other? Top to bottom?”
    “The hilt is heavier.”
    “Not in the hilt. In the blade. Can you feel it?”
    He shook his head.
    She snorted the frustration. “Hold out your other hand.”
    He did, putting it parallel to the one he had out already.
    “Now, close your eyes.”
    “What? ”
    “Trust me. Use something besides your poor vision. Use touch. Feel the weight. Close your eyes.”
    He did. Morgan lowered one of her prize dirks onto his palm. The instant spark when her fingers touched the pad of his palm frightened and appalled her as she snapped her hand back. So did the frown line across his forehead.
    “What did you do? ” he asked. “Make lightning with your blade?”
    He felt it, too? Morgan swallowed the increased moisture in her mouth. It always happened when she was close to him, and it wasn’t pleasant. Well, maybe it was, but it was dangerous.
    “I did naught. It was the blade, ” she whispered.
    “Your blade has the touch of a blacksmith’s hammer to it, then. How did you do that?”
    ‘Will you hush, and feel like I’ve asked?”
    “What am I feeling for now?”
    Morgan rolled her eyes. “The weight! Feel the difference? My blade is of an exact weight all along the shaft. No end is heavier, no end lighter. You feel it?”
    “The shaft?” His fingers were rolling the blade between th em, keeping it flat to avoid slicing, and his voice had lowered.
    Morgan lowered her chin waited for him to open his eyes. When he did, she kept her gaze steady. “Are you finished playing with me?” she asked.
    “Playing?”
    “You turn everything into a discussion of lust, and it’s nothing but play. You need to be serious if you wish to learn this.”
    “Not lust,” he answered, and his voice got so soft, she could barely hear it, “…but love.”
    Morgan picked up the blade before he could gain another breath, spun around and put both knives into the dead center of his target, where they quivered, making a clicking sound of blade against blade. She turned back to him. “I can put all twelve of my dirks any place I want them. I didn’t learn that by playing at lust...or at love.”
    “You make it sound a filthy word.”
    “It is,” she retorted.
    “ Who could have hurt you so, Morgan lad?”
    The most horrible thing in the world was happening, and Morgan turned before Zander spotted it. His talk of love brought tears so close to the surface, she was caught up in an agony of stifling them so severe, she could hear the blood pumping through her body. Tears were for women to cry; they certainly weren’t for Morganna KilCreggar. They never had been.