Daughters of Lyra: Heart of an Assassin Read Free

a trace of emotion showed in his
eyes.

    “ I have noticed
you leaving the palace at night for several months.” He faced
forwards again and a frown married his eyebrows. “It is dangerous
at night in the city right now.”

    Was it? It didn’t seem any
different to usual but he would know better than her. The only city
matters that she was involved in were balls, openings and
festivals, and any other ceremonies. Her father kept her and her
siblings away from news that he thought might upset them. Was
something going to happen? If it did, the palace was well
protected. The bridges over the wide moat would rise and the shield
would activate to cover the entire area in a dome. If something
happened, she would be safe, but it still frightened her when she
thought about it.

    Her city had always been
peaceful. The only violence she had ever witnessed was drunken
fights outside the club.

    “ So you came
for me?” she said in a quiet voice, distracted by her thoughts and
the idea that Ixion had feared for her safety. He nodded. “Thank
you.”

    His purple gaze slid to
her. “It is my duty to protect you and your family.”

    She stopped and turned to
face him. “It is also your duty to tell my family what I have done,
is it not?”

    Ixion came to a halt and
slowly moved to face her.

    “ Are you going
to tell my father?” Natalia’s heart clenched at the thought. Her
father would be so angry with her for going out into the city after
dark and singing somewhere so public without any guards. She bit
her lip and stared into Ixion’s eyes, waiting to hear her
sentence.

    She would do anything to
keep him silent.

    A frown creased her brow
when a voice at the back of her mind asked exactly how far she
would go to silence Ixion.

    The pale light of the
streetlamp shone down on his face. His gaze held hers, steady and
intent, his stunning purple irises stirring something deep inside
her. She pressed a hand to her stomach as it warmed. Her heart
fluttered against her ribs like a butterfly, trembling in its
attempt to break free and fly to him.

    He was so mysterious and
handsome, and she had never experienced anything like the pull she
felt to him. It was deep, making her chest and stomach hot, and
tingles dance along her nerve endings whenever his eyes met
hers.

    “ We must keep
moving,” he said at last.

    Natalia shook her head.
“No. Not until you promise not to tell my parents.”

    His eyes darkened as he
frowned. He looked as though he was going to refuse and then slowly
nodded.

    “ But you must
promise me something in return.” Those words held a sense of
foreboding and she knew what he was going to say. She didn’t move,
didn’t want to agree to his terms, even though it would mean
trouble if she didn’t. “You must stop leaving the palace to
sing.”

    It hurt to agree to that,
to sacrifice the one thing that made her truly happy and feel free,
but she nodded nonetheless. She had no other choice. She was asking
a lot of him by making him promise to keep her habit secret and go
against his duty to inform her parents of any danger to the family.
The least she could do was promise that she wouldn’t put herself at
risk anymore.

    With a heavy heart,
Natalia followed him over the bridge that led to the palace grounds
and through a side gate. No one was on the other side and it wasn’t
a gate that she was familiar with. Was it one that the assassins
used? She hadn’t been paying attention to whether Ixion had a key
for it.

    Looking up at the palace
towering above her, she tightened her grip on her sack of clothes
and sighed. So much for freedom. She was reduced to singing in her
room again and living the life of a princess.

    They walked up through the
gardens and she followed Ixion when he branched away from her
normal path and took a barely visible one through the low flowering
shrubs. It twisted and snaked its way through the garden and she
was surprised when it came out right by the door to