Sea of Sighs (Empath Book 2) by Dawn Peers Page B

planned.
Everyone doubts him so much that even I’m starting to believe he’ll
lose his throne soon. He was made king after the wars, though that
was mainly because everyone was scared of Shiver’s bloodlust more
than any belief in Vance as a ruler. He was the easy choice, but
you don’t stay in control of a kingdom by being a walkover. I
believe he does have a plan,
and I wouldn’t want to be in either Sammah or Shiver’s place right
now.”
    “I’ m exiled ,
though, so those plans don’t involve me anymore. You’re saying so
yourself. Vance has let me go. What do you think I should do
next?”
    “You’ve got your whole life in front of you
now, Quinn. Like I said, I shouldn’t be the one to decide. What do you want to do? I can take you to somewhere where no one
asks who you are. You have control of your powers, so you don’t
need to tell anyone what you are, and you can just live your
life out. You have plenty of experience at being a maid; just go
back to doing that.”
    Ross's mocking sarcasm wasn’t lost on Quinn,
who snorted in response. “ I don ’t think
so.”
    “Perhaps you can mock up a sign then, saying
you’re an empath for hire?”
    Quinn blushed. “That sounds quite arrogant
doesn’t it?”
    “More than.” Ross folded his arms
contemplating how to broach the topic with Quinn. Before going on,
he waved towards the fire that Maertn had started. “You need to put
some more logs on that, lad, it’ll be going out before long.”
    “Blast! I’ll get some straight away.”
    “ Maertn! You never
curse! ”
    “I think he can say what he likes now,
Quinn. He’s not exactly offending anyone, unless you’ve become his
mother in my absence? Now sit down, I need to talk to you. Have you
at least got something ready to eat, or were you both planning to
survive on excitement until you reached an inn?”
    “We had some roots. I was going to make us a
soup.”
    Ross nodded thoughtfully. “That’ s a good start ; what about tomorrow?”
    “We’ve got enough for a couple of days,”
Quinn said, defiantly.
    “And what about meat? You can’t just survive
on vegetables, no matter what some of those healers say.”
    “Maertn was going to fish for us.”
    Maertn wandered back over to them, a couple
of long branches in his arms. “Well, I was going to give it a try,
I went a few times with Torran and it didn’t seem too hard.”
    “Did you actually ever catch anything?”
    “Not so much, but I saw how they did
it…”
    “And let me guess. It didn’ t look too hard? ”
    Maertn poked one of his branches into the
fire. They were both being thoroughly chastised by Ross. “You’ve
had enough fun making us sound like idiots. Please, stop treating
us like children and tell us what we should have done. Baiting us
into sarcastic little corners isn’t going to help anyone.”
    “You want serious? We can definitely do
serious. But we’ll do it after you’ve both eaten.”

8
     
    Ross had to give them one
concession: Quinn could make a good soup. Lack of meat aside, they
probably wouldn’t have starved on the road, although their diet
would have been distinctly dull. Night was drawing in now, and the
fire wasn’t overworked, keeping them nice and warm without lighting
up the camp for the entire plains to see.
    Quinn had hunkered down into a bedroll,
frustrated that Ross wouldn’t talk about Eden and overcome with
weariness. Maertn stuck close by both of them, and Ross thought the
lad wanted to say something, but didn’t have the courage. Instead,
they sat in a tense silence, listening to the crackle of the fire.
Quinn had her back to them and she wasn’t asleep.
    He was making them feel safe, if only for a
short time. It reminded Ross of some of the fires he used to share
with friends before battles, though this wasn’t nearly as edgy, and
the songs nowhere near as rude.
    “So Quinn, are you going to make some
decisions about your future before we talk about what you’ve left
in the