**BOOK II OF THE FOUR REALMS SERIES**
When war came for Azura, Fara of Calate lost everything. Her husband, her new home, her freedom. When her captor - the formidable commander of the Leoth army - saves her life, she begins to see the enemy as som...
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In a blink of panic, he fell to his knees and reached out to grab hold of her with his other hand. Then he strengthened his grip by covering it with his other and hauled her up and over the ledge.
He'd not meant to drop her, had only wanted to frighten her. To force her to reveal whatever treacherous plan she'd been harbouring, but the rain had slicked his hold, weakening it.
Pulling her up and over, he took a few steps back before his boot slid in the softened ground and sent him tumbling backwards into the mud. Ismene, in his arms, fell on top of him.
She panted quick, panicked breaths and as they landed, she scrambled off and away from him. Not trusting that he wouldn't try to drag her over the edge again.
He sat up and stared at her, hard. The damp thick hair of deepest black, the eyes which he'd often seen shimmer with a silvery hue, the finely drawn shape of her mouth. He looked for his mother first, then his father, then himself.
'My sister is dead,' he told her.
She lifted her head slightly to meet his eye. 'And I tell you I am she. You have it within you to know the truth of it. You only have to look.'
'The succession,' he scoffed. 'Well, Ismene, you know how thoroughly I enjoy disappointing you. I am more than pleased to say that the Visier's gift has left me unchanged. In fact, I know less than I knew before she gave it.'
'Then you have not yet accepted it.'
'I accepted it!' he snapped.
'With words, perhaps,' she said. 'But not with the mind, the heart or the soul. Only when all three are accepting will The Gift be truly received.'
'You speak as vaguely as the Visier did,' he scowled. 'She trained you well for what she has now foisted upon me. Did she also train you for this lie? Well, I tell you, I have no kin and my sister did not leave my mother's womb alive.'
'Think you I wanted this?!' She asked, angrily. 'I curse that I share even a single drop of blood with you and had resolved to ensure you never found out. But you took that from me too!'
Guilt skulked over him.
'But it is no lie,' she said, quieter.
'And I tell you it is. All who saw her slip from my mother's body said that she was... Unformed.' You are destruction. We are destroyed.
'Then they lied.'
He frowned. 'Who? Who are they?'
'All of them. The nurses who brought us forth from her, your father.' She corrected herself. 'Our father.'
The notion was preposterous. 'You are aware she threw herself from her chamber over the grief of losing her daughter. Why would anyone tell her such a lie as that?'
