Blood Curse (Branded Trilogy Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

him.”
    Galius took her hand.
    “I have asked for counsel with him, and…you are to be there.”
    She hung her head.
    “I cannot.”
    “Sister, you must. Tsura needs you.”
    She couldn’t see his face past the tears gathering in her eyes. “He hates me. I am the reason Alexandra is gone.”
    “Look past your nose, and see that he is your brother. He is mourning his daughter. He will come around. I have faith in that.”
    She nodded, but deep in her soul she knew that hate had consumed Milosh, that he’d stop at nothing to see her in the same anguish as he.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Jamestown, Virginia
     
    Silas Monroe stood outside the bedroom door, listening to the frantic cries of his wife while in labor. Soon he’d know if the blood curse had been broken.
    “It is a girl.” The midwife’s words floated toward him, and hope sprung in his chest, kicking his heart into spasms. He went for the knob and was stopped by Beth’s harrowing scream. He pressed his fingers into the handle until his knuckles went white. Anger seeped into the crevices of his soul, taking up residence, and his sorrowful eyes slanted. He placed his forehead against the wall.
    The girl was still alive. The damn gypsy child still existed. He gnashed his back teeth together, clenching his jaw until the muscle ached. Beth’s low wail slammed into him, and he swayed. He could not go in there. He could not see the anguish upon his wife’s frail face. He could not explain that they’d try again to find the girl, that maybe next time she’d have a boy. He’d promised her over and over that it’d be done, the blood curse would be broken and three times he’d failed. Three times he’d buried his daughters. THREE. And now he’d bury the fourth.
    Silas pulled back his arm and punched the wall as hard as he could. The horse-hair wig he wore fell into his eyes, and he reset it, just as the pain shot up his hand. It wasn’t enough. He needed to hurt, to expel the anger within him. He hit the wall again, and again and again. Blood smeared the flowered wallpaper and ran down his forearm. His fingers and knuckles throbbed, but he didn’t care. Nothing compared to the agony he felt right now.
    He pushed from the wall and went in search of his brothers. The dark hallways of the Monroe mansion were quiet at the late hour. The servants were all asleep, except the ones tending to his wife. His chest tightened. Beth would not want to see him. She’d shut him out like all the other times. He feared for her sanity, saw the circles under her eyes, heard the quiver in her voice and knew she’d changed.
    He didn’t light a candle, for he could walk the halls with his eyes closed and not get lost. The darkness allowed him the privacy to release two teardrops. He let them remain on his cheeks, feeling the cool air as it dried them.
    What would he do now? Who could he send to kill a child? He thought of the slave, Elijah. The man hadn’t returned after they’d received the letter telling them it was done. He’d sent Jude to kill him. His wife and child asked for him on a regular basis. He couldn’t even pretend to care about their loss when his was so much more intense.
    He found his brothers in the library, both with a glass of scotch accompanying solemn looks. Hate boiled within him, and he swallowed past the fire in his throat. Hiram turned. Every time Silas looked at him he saw weakness, and he wanted to slap it from his face.
    The brothers didn’t need to ask him, the slant of his eyes told them that soon they’d bury another niece.
    “We killed the wrong one,” Jude growled and kicked the ottoman out from under his feet.
    Hiram glanced away, silent.
    “The damn slave killed the wrong girl.” Silas picked up the bottle of scotch and threw it across the room. Glass shattered onto the floor, and no one moved. “The wrong bloody child!”
    “He said she had the mark—she was branded.”
    Silas remembered the mark behind Vadoma’s left ear. The