It wasn’t contentment, though that was present and distinctly unusual, but he could account for that. Yvaine’s command to find her apprentice no longer harried him. He’d found her, and the new sorceress was a much gentler mistress than Yvaine had ever been, even before the magic began to eat her. No, this peculiarity was something other. Jax crept carefully out of the tent, putting on his “stupid” face, and rushed through his ablutions in the morning’s chill, still pondering what felt so odd. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant, he thought, as he carried the big kettle to the stream and filled it, Crow flying along to keep him company. The feeling hummed along his veins, whispering through his blood— The blood. That was it. He carried Miss Whitcomb’s blood in his veins. No—she’d called her blood back. This was her magic he still carried. He hauled the kettle back to camp and hung it on the hook over the fire he’d stirred up and rebuilt, then he stood over it, guarding it.
