Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
I picture the dragon, lying there in the sand, the color gone out of its scales, those boys taunting its pain and beating at its head with sticks.
“People don’t tell you ‘no’ very often, do they,” I hear myself say.
This seems to pull him up short. “Indeed, they do not. But then I am not in the habit of asking things of senseless women very often.”
“So if I do not acquiesce to your request, I am to be relegated to stupidity?”
“I am offering you so much more than you have!” Now he walks around in a tight little circle, as if he’s on a lead that’s staked to the ground. “In return for a work of … compassion and grace in the midst of a cruel and unfair fate. Yet you fight against me—”
“Do you remember the crowd last night?” Anger sharpens my voice. “That mob is what I have been waiting for—and fearing—every moment since I can remember. If I actually possessed the power you say—and I deny having any such thing—and I were to use it to bring anyone in your court back from the grave that awaits them—however unfair that grave is—that violent crowd would absolutely come after you, too. They’d just be wearing your army’s uniforms, instead of the tattered clothes of villagers, and their weapons would be so much more than torches and rakes.”
He stops dead. “No, they would not.”
“You’re so sure of yourself.”
“You do not know who I am.”
“Your ilk is more common than you think.” As he tosses his head back and looks at the sky with annoyance, I study his profile in a way I’ve not been able to do—and recognize him in all his grandeur. The wealthy and beautiful, be they men or women, are a tribe, far apart from the likes of me. “You’re a well-bred man of means, who gallivants through his mortal time on Anathos, doing what he wishes, going where he pleases, and bidding others to his whims because he was born to nobility and the court. And he’s so certain of his position that what was merely the luck of his birth he ascribes to his own intelligence and doing.”
“And you’re a commoner with no prospects who’s being offered the kind of security a woman of your station cannot even hope to marry.”
“Wrong,” I snap back at him. “But you’re close. I’m a commoner with no prospects who’s turning your arrogant offer down—and you should thank me for it. You can’t handle what comes with my aid.”
After what happened to Mare? I am never, ever drawing on that power again. Ever.
“I thought you said you have no special gift,” he drawls. Then he says in a very low tone, “I can force you, if I have to.”
That uncharacteristic fury within me kindles and I nearly look him in the eye as I start to unbutton his coat: “Try it and see how that goes. Wouldn’t beating a woman sit badly upon your spotless conscience.”
Abruptly, he covers his eyes and turns away. “What are you doing?”
My fingers attack the fasteners. “I’m giving you your clothes back—”
The high-pitched whinny of a horse cuts through the forest, and we both jerk toward the sound.
“Fates,” Julion says bitterly, “your helpful friend better not be stealing my stallion and leaving us both in the lurch.”
We take off running. He’s in front, cutting through the branches without holding any to the side for the person drafting in his wake. I don’t care. I’m shorter than him, and easily duck to keep from getting smacked in the face with the orange and red leaves.
In a clearing not far from where we were, his fine white stallion is tethered to a tree, and Merc is indeed standing before the magnificent warhorse. As he eyes the steed while it throws its head and whips its tail, he does look as if he’s sizing up a leap into the saddle, and I wonder if Julion’s opinion of the man I’ve so blindly put my faith in may be closer to the truth than I can bear to admit.
“Off hand thee!” Julion shouts as he breaks out into the knoll.
Merc’s head twists in the aristocrat’s direction. Then he raises his palms. “I’m not touching anything.” After which he assumes a smirk as he measures me. “More than I can say for you, evidently.”
I pull the coat back together and hastily redo the buttons. Meanwhile, the stallion keeps mincing in place, those finely shod hooves prancing divots into the ground like it’s warming up for a full-out bolt. Julion strides over to the horse and soothes it with a calm stroke on the snorting muzzle and soft words quietly spoken—
With eerie clarity, I see a beautiful young woman with deep brown skin and long, flowing black hair, reclining against silken sheets, fading away.