Child of the mist pdf

In the harsh Scottish highlands of , superstition and treachery threaten a truce between rival clans. It's a weak truce at first, bound only by an arranged engagement between Anne MacGregor and Niall Campbell-the heirs of the feuding families.

While Niall wrestles with his suspicions about a traitor in his clan, Anne's actions do not go unnoticed. And as accusations of witchcraft abound, the strong and sometimes callous Campbell heir must fight for Anne's safety among disconcerted clan members.

Meanwhile his own safety in threatened with the ever-present threat of someone who wants him dead. Will Niall discover the traitor's identity in time?

Can Anne find a way to fit into her new surroundings? Will the two learn to love each other despite the conflict? With a perfect mix of a burgeoning romance and thrilling suspense, this book is historical fiction at its best. The book that New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman considers "one of the finest [fantasy novels] in the English language.

No Luddite ever had any truck with fairies or Fairyland. Bad business, those fairies. The people of Dorimare had run them out generations ago--and the Duke of Dorimare along with them. But as he grew, Ranulph was more and more fond of talking nonsense about golden cups, and snow-white ladies milking azure cows, and the sound of tinkling bridles at midnight. And when Ranulph was twelve, he got caught up with the fairies, and Nathaniel's life would never be the same.

For he will surely be killed when he arrives in the Imperial City. But he decides if his life is the cost of love, it may not be too high a price after all. In the wake of a summer storm, terror descends David Drayton, his son Billy, and their neighbor Brent Norton join dozens of others and head to the local grocery store to replenish supplies following a freak storm.

Back from her lunchbreak, she's chatting with a co-worker before saying goodbye and entering her office. She hasn't taken the time to straighten it up recently, but it's not as bad as it could have gotten, given her past records on the matter. She gets to her desk and sits down on the padded chair. Sakura grabs the seat to move herself closer and her chest knocks her inkwell over, the black liquid spilling over all her documents.

She stares, nauseous, at the disaster in front of her. With barely a thought for what she's doing, she shunshins out of the room and the whirl of leaves she trades for her presence only adds to the mess of ink staining her work papers. Shikamaru is behind her, his hands on her stomach, his mouth on her neck. She can feel his erection growing in the small of her back. She shifts, presses herself against him more firmly.

His fingers draw a map of patience on her navel, going lower, brushing against her hipbone. She sighs, and the sound echoes against his breathy laughter, the one she feels vibrating against her throat. A thrill goes down her arms. She shivers. The air is cool, their body heat, shared but not enough, is leaving them tense, on the edge, ready to break.

He moves his hips, rolls his pelvis against her back once, twice, a murmur of love shared on the skin of her collarbone. His right hand finds her cheek, moulds itself against it like a glove and she breathes her starving love for him against his knuckles.

His free hand abandons her hip and dips between her legs, playful fingers brushing— the wrinkled sheets on the futon, the air still crackling with the energy from her sunshin. Shikamaru's fingers close around a dead leaf. It cracks under the pressure and the sound seems to echo in the room like a sentence. He rises slowly, his erection dead, and sits cross-legged on their bed. Sakura is curled up in the corner they put the laundry they need to carry to the washing room in the morning.

Her eyes aren't meeting his. They're not meeting anything; they're frantic, and they're glazed over, and the last time he saw her like this she was so full of poison they had to bind her to a bed for six days and let her sweat the toxins while she screamed her heart out.

Make any sound or movement and I'll stop and come back to bed. She's frozen, so he moves, and because she stays silent, he stops the promised two steps and asks for two more. Then once again, until he's sitting at her three, about an arm away from her. He's painfully aware of his naked skin, of her naked skin, of the drying sweat under his armpits and the drying everything on parts he doesn't want to think about right now.

He doesn't want to think about anything but the woman frozen in front of him, the woman he married in a forest embraced by the shadows of the Nara spirits, of the Great Deer and the Rinkan gods. In his heart, he's terrified. There's something terribly wrong with Sakura, something that has been horribly hurting her for weeks as he stayed silent, observing. Oh, what a great observer he does. How he observes now, on the lukewarm tatami of his room, his naked ass sticking to it uncomfortably.

How he observes his wife falling apart because he kept his mouth shut and never asked. Do you want to come back to bed? I don't mind sleeping at Ino's, it would really be no problem. You choose. I promise you either way is fine. Her head turns, like a puppet, a slow motion that sends chills down his arms. He has to force himself not to look away. Her eyes are dry. She doesn't look like Sakura. He doesn't know what she looks like. He doesn't know how it makes him feels.

Shikamaru has to swallow down arousal and nausea at the same time. That's the voice he'd have gotten out of her if things had been alright. That's the voice she gets after he's made her come three times in a row and his cock is interested all over again.

That is where the nausea comes from. She snorts. But it's not the one who looked like he was about to gut her a minute ago either. He's counting it as a win, because at this point everything would. Her hands find his ribs and her mouth his mouth and his cock a renewed motivation. His mind, not so much. Let me give it to you. He grabs her by the shoulders, god damn happy for the war and the chakra she put into her stupid teammates. God damn happy for the debt Kurama felt he owed her in return for her saving his host's life, and the entire ocean of chakra he poured into the three new seals lining up on her forehead and the two more going down her nose, to store all the extra she couldn't contain in her own body when he made the transfer.

Because that chakra went into her muscles, into her blood, her lungs, made her faster, stronger, gave her more stamina and a good twenty centimetres that put her just above Shikamaru now.

So he can look her right in the eyes when he sends her the most disappointed look of his life. He's not even making it sound like a question at this point. The coldness inside his chest is spreading too fast for control and that loss of control is bleeding over his tone, his words, and the look on his face. Her own blanches so fast he fears for a second she's about to faint.

But she doesn't, and instead she wrenches herself out of his grip. If it weren't for how true his previous words were, he'd be beating himself up for it.

Truthfully, he still is. He hates it. How did it come to this? How did they went from pre-sex cuddles to accusations and broken apologies? His guilt tastes like shame, like regrets, like weeks too late to ask questions. Her head is hung low in the same shame he tastes between his teeth. Her broad frame, normally larger than life, larger than her own legend, is hunched over. He wants to wrap himself around her and protect her, like he vowed to do when he took his oath before the gods his clan believe in.

Instead he lets her go when she puts on uniform pants and a shirt she borrowed from Sasuke, her bra abandoned on the floor next to the words he keeps quiet, mouth shut as she quietly slides the door shut and leaves the room, then the house. It's not your regular B-rank, the ones she's usually sent on nowadays. There aren't that many A-ranks to do anymore, now that the Alliance is signed and actually working.

The villages can't pay for missions against each others, so when their civilians have issues inter-villages, they have to bring it up to the new Alliance commission and it's sorted out in sessions. The shinobi force isn't ready to be ran out business yet, though.

A surprisingly organized mafia is spinning its web all over the Land of Wind and the Land of Earth. The Kazekage and the Tsuchikage asked by name for Team 7 to come and take care of it. Kakashi, who resigned the Hokage position at the end of the war to take care of a disabled Gai and semi-amnesic and traumatized Obito, made sure to leave his recommendation for a new Hokage. With the obvious choice, Shikaku, dead, Kakashi had gone with his personal second favourite, Tsume.

The Clan Head had taken the news with maturity and left the leadership of the Inuzuka to Hana. Tsume has a very clear understanding of Team 7's skillset. She knows that it doesn't include master-level espionage and undercover work. Sai is an exception, so she has him come back from his travels to brief his teammates for a full week before sending all four of them deep into Iwa territory.

It's not enough. Of course it's not. Shinobi live risky lives, it's a fact they're comfortable with, and those shinobi did face a god. There's a reason the two Kage asked for Team 7 and no other. If they ever get caught, they're the one team that will take the punches the best. They do get punched. Because they get caught. It's not that they're bad, it's that they're not good enough. Naruto smiles just a little too wide, Sasuke sounds just a little too rich. Sai, actually, is perfect.

His only fault is that he hangs out with the suspicious ones. Sakura is not good enough, because her part is the vaguely slutty, shuriken-trigger-happy Suna traitor who was raised on the country side and got bit by just enough scorpions that she knows her way around poisons. So when a guy puts one hand on her thigh, one hand on her breast, and his mouth on her neck, she puts one hand through his sternum.

She doesn't even realize she's done it until she's three men into the fight and ripping the spine out of the back of the fourth one. The war left her with weird habits, ones that aren't for shinobi but for soldiers, attacks meant for an open battlefield that have no place in dark corners and assassination plots. Her eyes only see blood and her whole body screams with the feeling of his hands on her skin, of the reminder of how people see her.

How they'll always see. What they'll always see. Sasuke is yelling her name, the closest to her so he's reaching like he wants to grab her.

Obviously they know her, they noticed something was wrong. She clears her throat and slits the one of a man who had the bad luck of being in the same room as Team 7 that day. It's the only thing that matters right now. They do manage to take down the underground ring, and the Tsuchikage makes a joke about their lack of stealth. The four teammates go equally white knowing exactly what truly happened but for once, their reputation saves them.

People know they're powerhouses, and they expect that kind of stuff from them. They go home with pays too big, an even bigger one for the village though this one is sorely needed and they don't talk about it. And that's exactly why Team 7 fell apart the first time around. Cloth in hand, she sits on the little stool and she's vigorously scrubbing herself. In the bowl next to her, there's only some ghassoul left, because most of it is caking on her face or on her skin.

If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed. Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to romance, historical lovers. Your Rating:. Your Comment:. On one hand, it was very enjoyable.

I wasn't expecting anything super original, as I am familiar with the plot's formula: Feuding clans are united through a forced marraige where the daughter is sent away. The couple hates each other but learn to love.

Some conflict occurs in the middle that almost kills the woman but she is saved. And happily ever after. That said, it's not a crappy rendition of the formula. The story was enjoyable and well paced, and an easy read I went through it in two days! It wasn't super heavy, which I enjoyed, I just got to read and enjoy the ride!

Morgan's pacing and choice of segment breaks was also done very well, it created a lot of suspense.

However, some things I disliked were the dialogue, the characterizations, and the God aspects. The dialogue was written in a Scottish accent, which was very awkward to me.

I could excuse the "ye"s and "yer"s but past that, "dinna," "och," "braw," etc really threw me. Often it just took me right out of the scene because the meaning wouldn't be apparent.

The characterizations were pretty weak. The characters just seemed to fill roles fitting to their role in the formula with no other aspects of the character outside of the plot. This wasn't a huge deal breaker for me though, just sometimes it was jarring. Slight spoiler Niall's sister's sudden transformation was one weird personality transition.

Suddenly her and Anne were BFFs with no warning?? No reason to change it to his dead wife's name! The God aspect is the last thing that bothered me. I could normally overlook the constant God and Jesus references, but it was paired with such a bad relationship! I mean, it's borderline abusive, Niall was constantly hurting her and Anne knew that, choosing to be his punching bag. Stockholm syndrome nuch? I could look beyond that though because, hey, it's a part of the formula and I liked the drama it added tbh.

But pairing that with the belief that it was God's will kind of sends a bad message about the nature of relationships, right? So, looking at that big blob of text, you may be wondering why I gave it a highish rating. Mainly because the pros outweighed the cons for me.

As well, I've read a lot, A LOT of books like this in my 20years and the formula always wins me over. I do suggest, if you want to look into more stories like this with some fantasy, check out Juliet Marillier and her Sevenwaters trilogy, it was my intro to the genre and it was highly enjoyable! I raced through this book mainly because it was a beautiful day, I had nothing to do and I was able to sit outside and just read.

I was amazed by how enraptured I was by this book, but if the truth be told it then started to grate on me. I originally bought the book because I didn't realise it was mainly romance but I did think it was about magic.

Magic - really. The only "magic" in this book was the ability to use herbs to treat ailments so that the un-intelligent considered this to be witchcraft. So ultimately I was duped and I shall be checking out my purchases more careful in future.