Lynn Viehl - [Darkyn 08 - Lords of the Darkyn 01] by Nightborn (mobi) Page A

more accustomed to having mortals serve us. ”
    “We must both do things unfamiliar to us,” she agreed. “But we can take comfort in that we serve the same purpose.”
    They both lapsed into silence. She had clipped short the nails on her long fingers, Korvel noted, and more of the faint, odd scars covered both hands from knuckles to wrists. Despite the evidence of the wounds she had suffered in the past, her hands looked strong and capable, as they had felt when she had touched him. He dragged his thoughts away from those moments and instead wondered why her fingers were bare. She should have been wearing the traditional plain gold band presented to a novice when she took her vows and became a bride of Christ.
    Perhaps she left it behind at the convent, with her habit and her rosary. Why had the council permitted her to become a nun in the first place? Because no one would suspect her.
    She did not look at all like a nun now, however. Korvel eyed the boy’s cap on her head, wishing she would take it off. No mortal female he had ever known, not even Alexandra Keller, had possessed such long, beautiful hair.
    “Why do you never cut your hair?” he heard himself ask.
    “It is a personal vanity,” she said. “My father always kept it short when I was a child. Why was yours so long?”
    “I kept forgetting to attend to it.” Korvel decided her father was an idiot. He wanted to unpin her braids and unravel them, one by one, so that he might comb his fingers through the fiery golden strands and feel their silkiness against his skin once more.
    Stop thinking about her damn hair.
    She turned off the road from Garbia to take a ramp onto a wider, busier roadway. “Do you know Marseilles?”
    “I have not been here since the monarchy fell,” he said, glad for the distraction, “and then came only to smuggle my kind across the channel.”
    She frowned. “That was a terrible time to visit.”
    “It was.” He didn’t want to think about the mortal madness and mass murder he had witnessed during the French Revolution. “How did you come to be so familiar with the city?”
    “My father frequently traveled there on business.” She pulled into the next lane to pass a slower-moving van and just as deftly changed the subject. “I have never been to England. Is it as miserable as my countrymen say?”
    Korvel felt amused. The poor opinion the French held of his homeland was one that had been perpetuated since the time of William the Conqueror, and still showed no signs of ever changing. “Most of our cities are as old and crowded as yours, and the people equally self-absorbed. Our weather is not as fair as yours, but the countryside is not so different. Garbia reminds me of the village where I was born.”
    “Never tell anyone in Garbia that,” she advised. “Do you ever go back to visit your people?”
    “No.” Korvel’s eyelids drooped as he thought of the night he had been dragged from his bed by the old baron, who had informed him of his mother’s death simply by tossing him out into the snow before bolting the doors against him. “The last of my mortal kin died many centuries ago.”
    “I forget how long you have lived.” She glanced at him. “I don’t mean to offend you, Captain. I know that I should speak only when spoken to in your presence; I have simply never met one of you in person.”
    “I do not mind your talking to me.” Something about what she said vexed him, but he didn’t know why. Nor did he want to talk about the Kyn. “What is it like living in a convent filled with blind women?”
    “I’m never scolded for getting a sunburned nose when I forget to wear my hat in the garden,” she said, her voice wry. “Nor does anyone complain about the stains I can’t get out of their aprons, or the poor quality of my mending. Well, except for the time when Sister Paulette forgot to close a gate, and Saint Paul decided to pay a visit to the laundry.”
    “You had a visitation from a