Page 10 of The Truth-Teller's Bargain
The second man stepped in closer and swore.
“What’s wrong?” her rescuer asked the newcomer. Fear pricked the back of her neck.
A long silence passed.
“You are never going to believe who that is.” The second man moved closer, and she could see he was wearing dark brown clothing and had even darker umber skin. She was sure she had never met either of these men in her life.
I’m just a servant, she wanted to cry, but her curse preventedher. If she weren’t so terrified, she might have thought of something clever to say to get herself out of this—but the second man’s tone told her he knewexactlywho she was.
“No,” was all she could say, trying to back away from them until she discovered her back was directly to the cliffside.
“Whoa,” the first one cautioned, holding out his hands for her but clearly not wanting to frighten her into going over the edge. “Hey—easy there. We’re not here to harm you.” He turned to the second man. “What are we dealing with here, Bal?”
He didn’t answer immediately, shifting his weight in the darkness in front of her. Was that hesitation she sensed...?
“That, my friend, is Princess Alethea Onasis.”
Silence stretched, pulling the air tight and threatening to snap.
For a second, Alethea considered her two options. She was alone, at night, in a pitch-black forest, with two strange men who knew who she was. Her mother had spent her entire life instilling in her a fear of what would happen if she wasn’t under the Crimson Queen’s protection; if anyone managed to find her or steal her away. The gods only knew what these men had in store for her.
Or...
The cliffs dropped steeply behind her into more forest. Alethea had no way of knowing if she would survive such a drop. Fear gripped her tightly as she shifted, a bit of the rocky cliffside sloughing off the edge.
“Nakir,” the man called Bal growled: a warning, like a rumbling thunderstorm.
At once, that rough hand wrapped around her wrist and hauled her away from the cliff’s edge, right back into the hard body of the man who initially saved her. “I know I’m not currently proving my point,” he told her, his voice infuriatingly close to her ear, “but I swear, I mean you no harm,Your Highness.”
A third figure approached. “Found a horse, saddled, no rider. Tied it up at the campsite?—”
Alethea nearly cried with relief to hear another feminine voice.
This woman carried fire in the palm of her hand. Her face was immediately illuminated, and Alethea could see the distinctive red hair... There was no mistaking she was anyone other than Kerrigan Arranil, Goran Arranil’s daughter.
“What the hell is going on over here?”
The fire illuminated the faces of the two men. The large man was unfamiliar to her, with distinctive dark umber skin and white-blond locs drawn back behind his head. Alethea would have remembered meeting someone like that.
The other—the man who had wrenched her from the ledge twice now—was devastatingly beautiful. His features were sharp, with black hair pulled back behind his ears to reveal a pair of horns protruding from the crown of his head. With golden-brown skin and heavy brows, he was the picture of savage masculinity in the warm light of Kerrigan’s fire. Alethea tried to wrest herself away, but he held her firmly. She swallowed hard, deciding the best course of action was to keep her mouth shut as she stared directly into the haunted eyes of Nakir Hasan.
Kerrigan Arranil looked between the two men, and then her gaze landed directly on Alethea. She was struck by how much Kerrigan resembled the man whose blood now stained the executioner’s block.
Goran would still be alive if it weren’t for me.
When the mage realized who she was looking at, her mouth dropped open.
“Fuck.”
“Many great stories begin with a taking. Some lead to ruin, some to rebirth. When a child of the crown is taken across a threshold, the Realm holds its breath, and even the Weave itself watches closely.”
—LENOREAN THRESHOLD MYTHS, TRANSCRIBED
CHAPTER THREE
Hunter’s Moon, Day 17.
Alethea tried to push away from Nakir, but his grip was unbreakable. His demeanor shifted to suspicion.
