[THIS STORY WILL BECOME FREE ON THE 5th OCTOBER 2023]
Fara's husband, the Prince of Azura, is murdered and she's enslaved by his killer, Theodan, a warrior fighting a war he doesn't believe in - until her.
...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Daylight crept into the chamber little by little as he watched her sleep. Peaceful and deep against his own restlessness. He'd been unable to return to sleep after the dream of Galyn of Azura. The image he was sure would never leave him; heirs ring glinting in the sunlight, strong fingers gripping her thighs, his knife bejewelled and malicious next to her. Instead, he'd sat by the fire instead and finished his wine. It had not helped calm his raging thoughts.
As as the sun rose he examined his promise under its glare as he should have done under the moon.
Could he really kill Torrik as he had sworn to her he would do? Could he take his sword to the throat of his brute of an heir, and Vala's intended? Could he take the life of that soft fair-haired princess who'd sat pale and silent in every war council? Whose heart had already been broken by Galyn of Azura?
There had been a time when his honour would not have allowed it. When his word and honour as a soldier was a constant and immovable thing. He had pledged his sword to Zybar not so long ago. And now he sat in the dawn light debating how best to slaughter their king.
He no longer recognised himself. And he knew the cause of it. He lifted his gaze from his cup to the sleeping form atop his bed. He could still scent her pleasure on his fingers each time he raised the cup to his mouth and his need for her had long awoken too.
He had tasted her blood but once, barely, and yet it felt as though she swam through his veins. Her blood and bone so intimate to him now that it was as though he had been born with the knowledge of it.
She moaned softly and turned her body onto its side, reaching her hand across the sheets, almost as though she might be looking for him. Which of course he knew she was not. It was likely she looked for her dead husband in her sleep. Her tormentor.
When a soft whisper left her lips, he stood, crossing the chamber toward the bed. The scars of her back shone brightly under the birth of the day, reminding him again of the twisted image visited upon him in his sleep.
He could heal them. In a single gesture, a single offering, he could wipe Galyn of Azura's marks from her body as though they had never been there at all. Just as he had longed to wipe him from her mind.
Except she would refuse this too.
The pain is all I have left.
She had ever been a puzzle to him, and he sensed much more lay beneath that perfect surface of her. Facets she would never show him and that he would never see, and somewhere inside of him, he felt that like a loss. He mourned for it.
Reaching down, he thread his fingers through the lengths of hair which fanned out behind her on the pillow. Spun bronze silk which he knew smelled of Azurian sunshine. Lowering his head, he lifted it to his nose and breathed deep. Righting himself he let his mind wander, to what it might have been had she truly been a servant from The Golden Palace whom he had claimed as his own.
