Fool's Errand Read Free Page A

now. It matters not that his face is handsome and that he is powerful and rich. When even the lowest lowborn slattern in the kingdom looks at him, I promise you that all she can see are his narrow, crooked back, his skinny, twisted legs, his limp, useless—”
    â€œSilence!” screamed the Regent. Savagely wiping spittle off his chin with the back of his shaking hand, he panted audibly and stared down at Azriel as though trying to decide what piece of him to slice off first.
    Seeming bizarrely gratified by Mordecai’s reaction—and looking so fearless that Persephone decided he was not reckless but utterly insane—Azriel leaned forward and whispered, “Let us go and I can change all that, Your Grace. Let us go and I can change everything .”
    With an animal noise somewhere between a howl and a snarl, Mordecai slashed with the dagger.
    Azriel jerked his head to the side so quickly that the point of the dagger missed him entirely and instead sliced open the cheek of the soldier who held him. As it did so, Persephone lunged against the hold of her own captor. When he did not let go, she flung her head back as hard as she could and was savagely gratified to hear the sound of his nose breaking.
    Unfortunately, Azriel did not use the moment of distraction to try to escape. Even more unfortunately, he resumed speaking.
    â€œYour Grace, I can see to it that you are made well and whole,” he murmured in a voice so seductive that Persephone found herself responding to it in spite of the rather distracting moans of pain issuing from the freshly injured soldiers. “Imagine—your back strengthened, your legs straightened, your chest broadened. Feel the raw power of your fists and the fleetness of your feet. See yourself leading the hunt astride the fiercest beast in the royal stables, bringing down a ten-point stag at full gallop with one arrow shot from your mighty bow. Envision yourself striding briskly through the halls of the imperial palace with your head held high with ease, setting every noblewoman in sight panting with desire, ready to claw out her sister’s eyes that she might lie with you next—not for gifts or wealth or position but for the sensual pleasure of knowing you as the man you were ever meant to be. Imagine it all, Your Grace, and know that I—and I alone!—can make it happen.”
    For a long moment after Azriel stopped speaking, Mordecai smiled down at the handsome Gypsy but did not seem to see him, so lost was he in the breathtaking vision of what could be.
    Then his smile faded, and his dark eyes refocused and hardened.
    â€œDo not play with me, cockroach,” he snarled, “for I know your Gypsy tricks will not cure injuries as old and as great as mine. Not even your blood will cure them—not even the blood of the very youngest of your tribesmen will cure them!”
    Persephone saw Azriel flinch at the Regent’s offhand reference to the monstrous crimes he’d committed upon Gypsy infants, but his voice was steady when he said, “I do not speak of tricks or blood, Your Grace. I speak of the healing Pool of Genezing.”
    Pressing her lips together to keep from groaning aloud at the folly of attempting to tantalize the Regent with that old Gypsy myth, Persephone waited for the crippled man to scoff or stab or scream. To her surprise, however, he froze as though with shock.
    Then, in a careful voice, he said, “Since the day Balthazar stumbled into his own funeral babbling about having found the healing pool, General Murdock has searched endlessly and never found a trace of it. Moreover, I personally interviewed all of the tribal savages in whom Balthazar might have confided, and I did so using the most persuasive interview techniques at my disposal. Indeed, I interviewed many of them to death! I even interviewed Balthazar himself to death—him, who could have stopped the slaughter of his people simply by naming its