Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Prince Read Free Page A

she said and stamped on one of the men’s feet. He
snarled and tightened his grip on her, his fingers digging into her
flesh.

    “ You offered
payment for your brother’s life,” a familiar deep voice said and
she looked up to see the man who had opened the door to the
bridge.

    In the bright light of the
cargo bay, his eyes met hers, sending a sickening chill through
her.

    What should have been the
white of his eyes was black. His irises were golden, bright and
sharp like a hawk’s. They studied her and held her at the same
time. She couldn’t look away no matter how much she wanted to. He
stepped out of the ship and she barely held the gasp inside when
she saw he had black leathery wings tightly furled against his
back. She looked over at the doctors that were taking Rezic away
and then at the soldiers in the area. Wings. Black
wings.

    Her heart beat painfully
hard and her gaze slowly came back to the man who had addressed
her.

    She had never seen one
before, but she had been educated well enough to be able to
recognise one when she saw one.

    “ Vegan!” she
growled the word with all the hatred of her species.

    The man grinned, an ugly
smile that only made his rough countenance more horrifying. He
seemed pleased by her reaction.

    “ Lyran,” he
said as his hand came to rest against her cheek. He licked his
lips. “Wait, even sweeter, a half breed Terran.”

    Her heart felt as though
it had stopped.

    His smile widened and she
knew what he was going to say.

    “ Welcome,
Princess.”

    Fighting the men holding
her, Renie tried to get free. She needed to get to Rezic and escape
the hellish place she had brought them to.

    “ Rezic!” she
shouted after him, desperate.

    There was a growl of
annoyance and then pain black and sharp split her skull. She faded
into the darkness, drifting away.

    This was a warm
place.

    Renie liked how free of
hurt she was here, how free of everything. The darkness surrounded
her but slowly began to brighten, as though the sun was rising. She
watched it, fascinated but numb. Gradually, the dark turned to
light and she fluttered her eyes open.

    “ Rezic?” she
muttered, her head splitting, and tried to remember what had
happened.

    She shot into a sitting
position when she remembered that Rezic was hurt and that she was
on a Vegan ship and they knew she was Lyran royalty.

    She screwed her eyes shut
when her head ached even worse, blinding her. Perhaps sudden
movements weren’t wise after someone had tried to knock your head
off. She clutched it and groaned when she slowly opened her eyes to
see that she was in a cell. The pale grey wall behind her was
solid, a bench running along it that she supposed was a bed. The
other three walls of her cell were blue light bars—rows of highly
charged vertical energy beams. Lyran vessels had cells that used
them but she had never seen them before.

    Dreamily and without
thinking, she reached out and touched them. They crackled and she
snapped her hand back as they burnt her fingertips. Clutching her
hand to her chest, she tried to make sense of where she was. The
other cells were empty and it was quiet. She didn’t know where she
was in the ship or where her brother was, or even if he was alive.
She didn’t know what they wanted with her or what they were going
to do to her.

    Curling up against the
bench, Renie hugged her knees to her chest and checked her hand.
She frowned when she saw her communicator band was still there and
pressed the button four times, the number she had agreed with Rezic
would be their emergency signal.

    Nothing but static came
back.

    “ It will not
work in here,” a male voice said and she jumped, looking around
her.

    She wasn’t
alone.

    There was someone in the
cell beside hers. Renie shuffled over to the bars and tried to get
his attention. He was lying on the bench, his back to her and a
dark grey blanket covering him completely so she could only see the
shape of him.

    “ Excuse me,”
she said