Author: Krista Wolf
Category: Fantasy
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/42738_20
Isn’t that your own fault though? the little voice asked.
In truth it was. Every romance she’d been through started out the same: excitement, lust, love… all puppy dogs and unicorns and rainbows. Melody would usually glide through the honeymoon phase of the relationship, enjoying the ride for what it was, but knowing in the back of her mind the inevitable fall would always come. ‘The disappointment of truth’ she once called it. The sorrow of knowing.
By the time she’d been hurt a half dozen times, Melody swore a solemn vow not to let her powers interfere with her personal life. And yet, that never happened. Just as they’d ruined her prom, her inane abilities also ruined whatever she usually had going with her significant other.
Examples were everywhere. Bobby was perfect in every way, until in ‘reading’ him one morning she found out he was suppressing a huge, even violent anger problem. Breaking up with him had been difficult, especially because she couldn’t tell him why she was ending things, but she was strong enough to do it anyway.
Leaving him drove her into the arms of Andy, who made her very happy for almost a year. Thinking it was okay to pry a little, Melody had peeked into his mind only to see that more than half his thoughts centered constantly around comparing her against his ex girlfriend.
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Reading her boyfriends was always a problem. Every time she vowed not to do it, she broke down and did it anyway. It was always the same: just a touch, just a hint, just a tiny little glimpse… something to tell her that this was the one. That this particular guy was the good one, the right one, the one without an irreconcilable past or a troubled future.
Anthony had the hots for a girl in his apartment building — he’d be actively cheating on her in a matter of weeks. James was attentive, and a true gentleman, but he secretly liked men a little more than women. And Scott…
Scott’s mind held a secret so dark, so disturbing, she deleted his number and never took another call from him. Ever again.
Melody had given up on dating more than a year ago now. And she hadn’t looked back.
All of these things threaded their way through her mind as she searched the rest of the fancy, wood-paneled room. Aside from the piano being gone, half the stuff in the trophy case had been swapped out. She saw new things, old things, even a few things she couldn’t recognize. But nothing even remotely resembling the jeweled egg she’d been tasked by the Order to bring back.
Maybe I should wake Eric…
It would make looking faster, that’s for sure. At the same time, something told her not to do it. A sense of independence. A desire to accomplish the task all on her own. And yet, on the flip side of the coin, Xiomara’s voice urging her to hurry up. Reminding her that when it came down to it, this might be their final chance…
A breeze flowed in somewhere off to her right. Melody followed it, stepping out through a pair of glass-paned side doors and onto a small patio on the side of the house.
The air smelled fresh, but with an underlying heaviness to it. Almost like a moisture, but without the dampness. She looked up, out over the road. Beyond the road, into the fields…
The mist was still there.
Somehow, the strange grey mist was
still shifting and churning. Only now it was closer. Much closer.
It’s taken over half the field. Or pretty close to that.
Sure enough, the fog that had enveloped the silver gate yesterday was now halfway across the lush green field she’d managed to cross. All evidence of the treeline beyond was now obliterated. There was only the mist, heavy and thick.
Melody turned left and right. The fog stretched in a huge oval too, all the way around. The road she’d come up yesterday disappeared straight into it.
So much for finding my way back…
The thought worried her, but only for the briefest of moments. She didn’t even have the egg yet. And she wasn’t leaving without it.
“Focus, Mel,” she said, pinching herself on the arm. “Focus!”
It was one of her biggest weaknesses, getting distracted. She’d tried all sorts of meditation techniques to keep herself honed in on certain things, but no matter what she did, Melody always found herself thinking about — and often working on — ten things at once.
She scanned the small patio, then looked beyond it for anything interesting. She was on the same side of the manor as the carriage house. It was a little ways away, but she could see the blacksmith out there again, bent over and working on something. It was the same man she’d waved to on the way in.
Maybe he knows something, Melody figured. She could talk to him, maybe even get something helpful out of the conversation. And it was still very early. The man might speak more freely if there was no one else around.
It made sense to at least try.
She started off barefoot through the wet grass, enjoying the feel of it between her toes. She was in her element. This was the reason they’d sent her. Melody raised her head, a smile of grim determination curling across her lips.
Whether he wanted to or not, the man was certainly going to tell her something.
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