Read Fire and Shadows (Ashes and Ice #2) for Free Online

mossy patches of earth so that I could see him without him noticing. I paused for only a brief moment to consider if it would be wrong to invade his privacy. I caught the huff that I almost released when I considered he sat up watching me nearly every night. My foot shifted and there was a stark snap in the darkness. I winced at the sound, knowing there was no chance it would have blended in with the fire crackling.
    Strong arms yanked me back and my own arms were crossed in front of me, immobilizing me. Giovanni’s heat warmed my back and his breath nearly felt like steam against my cheek. “Why are you following me?”
    I shifted and tried to loosen his hold on me. “I wasn’t.”
    “ Yes, you were.”
    I kept my face blank for a moment and then exhaled loudly. “Okay, fine. I was following you.” I clawed at his hands around me. “Let go.”
    “ Why?”
    “ Because you are going to squeeze me to death or burn off my ass.”
    His arms remained firmly around me. “No. Why were you following me?”
    “ Why did you just march off?”
    He let go of me then and stepped back. “I had nothing to say. I didn’t think I needed permission from you to take a walk.”
    “ No, but have you ever heard the term ‘rude’ because you are practically its poster child.”
    “ I know what rude is,” he retorted harshly.
    “ Then you know that it is rude to just grab hold of someone and then stomp off,” I said, practically hissing at him while still wriggling within his arms.
    He lowered his cheek to mine so that I could feel the roughness of it. “What? Did you want me to keep holding you?”
    Color flooded my cheeks and I stopped moving, shocked. “No, I didn’t want you to keep holding me,” I said, the words spilling out of me. “But I would appreciate not being tossed aside and ignored.”
    “ Listen, girl...”
    “ You know my name,” I said. “Why don’t you use my name?”
    He looked ready to explode, lash out in fury and I wasn’t sure why. “Jade,” he spat the word out as if it left a sour taste in his mouth, “I am here to do a job. I need to train you and we need to bring Lynx back to Heaven. Everything else is irrelevant. That includes your feelings. That includes...” His voice broke off.
    “ But aren’t you—”
    Giovanni pressed his hand to my mouth, silencing me. His alert eyes jerked upright and stared up into the sky. In a swift motion, he ducked into the shadows and dragged me with him. “Be very quiet,” he breathed.
    My eyes searched the sky as I held my breath. I could hear the whoosh of something in the sky. I stared. Massive wings, several pairs of them, flapped against the stars sending a wave of air towards us. I couldn’t make out their bodies. I looked at Giovanni and mouthed “Demons?”
    His lips went into a rigid, thin line. He didn ’t look back at me; his eyes stayed trained on the sky. When the wing-beats were far away, he loosened his grip on me. It was then that I realized that the flames of the fire pit were snuffed out. “Did you do that?”
    “ Do what?”
    “ Turn off the fire.”
    “ Of course.”
    I forgot how powerful he was over his element of fire and lightning. Sometimes when we fought and he would get especially frustrated, a bolt of lightning would flash out of the sky and scorch the ground.
    “ We have to get going.”
    “ What? But we just stopped to rest an hour ago.”
    “ Listen, princess—”
    “ Don’t ever call me that.” My body went rigid. Weeks ago, Dominic had had his spell on me and would call me princess affectionately. The word only reminded me that part of me was from Hell, and that in some cruel twist of fate, I was its heir.
    Giovanni almost rolled his eyes at me, but the expression on my face must have caught him off guard because he simply nodded and said a flat, “Fine.”
    I rolled up my blanket and stuffed it into my bag. As Giovanni knelt down to get one of my things, I saw a glimmer of something in his