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Once Korvel squeezed past the back end of the trailer, he saw the road branch off in two directions, one toward the distant blur of Garbia and the other curving around into the heavily wooded hills Sns that read Propriété Privée had been nailed to the trunks of the outermost trees By the time he had walked half a kiloht, obscured by , riotous branches that formed an effective natural barrier
Korvel sed with the sweet-tea scent of sycamore, but the leafy canopy barred his view of the sky, so he couldn’t see from which direction it came He stopped and listened for severalthe source of the s out of the ordinary The local farmers would have lit their fireplaces, he decided, to dispense soh price of heating oil and coal, and France’s perpetually dismal economy, it made sense that they would burn wood
He knehy every little thing was setting hie He had entered territory unfae he always atteer actively occupied southern France, centuries of respecting the boundaries between iholds had becoe lands made every Kyn warrior uneasy That, and without his sword Korvel felt almost naked But he knew he could bespell any mortal who saw him before they could expose his presence--
The s hihts, and he realized a faint opaque haze was now visible in the air A lightning strike ht have set some of the woods ablaze, but then the birds and the other creatures inhabiting it would beand the flutter of leaves in a breeze
A breeze that felt a few degrees warmer than it had by thethe width of its branches before he went to it and juh He boosted hian to cliround the branches began to thin, and another ten feet higher a gap fro hills
Frost had begun to kill the grazing grasses, leaving behind wide, irregular brown patches on the gentle slopes like soiant’s muddy, erratic footprints Fro up to a high stone wall and iron gates; beyond thee structure with a tiered roof of gray slate shingles Steady streams of white smoke poured from the slate roof’s three chie It seemed Helada’s s
Feeling once more like a fool, Korvel stepped off the branch and dropped to the ground Once he had the scroll, he would go to the nearest city and take his rest there until nightfall Then, when he rose, he would find a willing female and feed Perhaps he would fuck her, too, and relieve his other, long-denied needs Sex had never been a particular pleasure for hi it, but he had let too er remember the last time he’d taken a female to his bed
He knew he had not touched any female in an intimate fashion since his master had abducted Alexandra Keller and put the American doctor in Korvel’s care Another painful indicator that it was high tis of his idiotic adolescent obsession
Korvel picked up his pace and in a few uardhouse stood eates had been opened Fresh tireon the concrete slab of the drive
The unmistakable reek of ed air A trace of the wet-scarlet blooer source wasit drop to the ground as he spun around to face whatever had crept up behind hiues and black clothhim Both held combat blades in their hands and carried handheld radios The auto over their shoulders had not been fired, but the dark red spatter on their unifor sensation as ed fro him Their efficientand experience; this a, ainst his ears as the only avenue of escape they had left hian to close
"This one has hair like a little girl," one of the mortals said
"He smells like one, too," another muttered "We should slice off his cock and put hied the bulge in the front of his trousers "You save the head for utter Italian with Napoli accents, so Korvel would have to ponder later The easy certainty hich they spoke of desecrating his reave him pause; they already assuain, and saw that their con to hi the rosy glow of copper, the only metal on earth that could inflict injury and death on him