Read Icebound (Legends of the Shifters Book 2) for Free Online Page B

willed myself to sleep, I simply couldn't.
    It
felt like hours before I heard the snores outside the tent. I sat upright and
tossed aside the covers, quietly lifting the tent flap to find both guards
sleeping as soundly as babes. I grinned at my luck, and tiptoed outside. Two
more guards were stationed near the fire, right outside the prince's tent. I
crouched behind a fallen log before they could spot me. They didn't notice a
thing.
    With
silent, bare feet on the cold grass, I hurried deeper into the woods, trying to
avoid twigs and rocks. When I was sure that I was too far away for anyone to
see the swirls of light, I changed into my half-form body, heightening my
already strong senses. I was rocked backward by the power that enveloped me.
I'd felt nothing like it before, but it worried me. Just how much would this
plant change me before it finally settled down?
    Worried
that the guards in the camp would be able to see me after all, I traveled even
deeper into the forest. I pulled the phantom stone out of my pocket and studied
it as I walked, turning it in my fingers. There was no inscription carved into
it, nothing that differentiated it from any other survival test necklace. I
slipped it over my head...
    And
my vision went dark. A dizzying sensation shivered through my body, and I
suddenly felt as if the sky had swallowed me whole and spat me back out again.
    Suddenly,
I was in a dark room that smelled of rot and mold, staring at a figure hunched
in the corner. I knew my heart should be beating hard in my chest, but the
strange thing was, I couldn't feel it. There was no glow from my limbs either,
because my entire body had turned into a translucent grayish blue.
    I
tried to speak. “Hello?” I said to the figure in the corner.
    The
figure flinched and turned its head in my direction. He didn't have time to say
anything before something clanged loudly. I pushed myself into a corner as a
heavyset guard walked by, lantern in one hand and the other pulling along a
cart of limp, bloodied bodies.
    Light
flashed over the room we were in as the man held the lantern up to the bars.
“Still alive, eh?” he grunted with a scowl, his breath puffing out in a white
cloud. “I guess the king would be mad if you weren't.”
    The
face of the prisoner was lit up for just a few seconds, but it was enough for
me to recognize the drawn face and dull green eyes. It was my brother, but an
emptier version of him.
    As
the man rolled the cart away, I whispered, “Kurt, it's Ivy.”
    “I
know,” he said, his voice cracking as he watched the light of the lantern creep
farther away.
    “How
is this working?” I asked.
    He
leaned forward and crawled to the stone slab in the corner, digging under it to
pull out a matching black gem. “Rowan made them,” he said in a rusty voice.
“They're connected together somehow. Whenever one is slipped on, it takes that
person wherever the other pendant is.” He coughed, and pulled his ragged
clothes tighter around him. It must've been cold here, but I couldn't feel
anything.
    “What
have they done to you?” If I were in my normal body, tears would spring to my
eyes, but in this strange spirit body, there weren't any.
    “They
want to keep me alive, but barely,” he rasped. “Every day they take me to the
room with dark red walls. It reeks of death and rot and the heat from the
torches only makes it worse. They want me to tell them about you. Your
weaknesses, your strengths, your location, anything... But I won't,” he
breathed. “No matter how much of my blood they use to paint those dark red
walls.”
    If
I were in my normal body, I would’ve felt sick. I struggled to find the words
to speak.
    Kurt
was hurting for me. Hurting so that they wouldn't know where I was. “You have
to tell them. If you died...” I didn't finish the sentence. He knew what would
happen if he died. “I can't have you die, too. Not after Roland. Not after
Mother and Father.”
    “Roland's
dead?” he said