King’s Wrath Read Free

with a hard gaze. ‘This is the land where you were born. Your real name is Genevieve. You are a Valisar. And King Brennus is your father.’
    She rocked back against the tree, stunned. Then in the silence that followed, which Reg clearly wasn’t going to fill, she hauled herself upright. She felt momentarily dizzy but the drug was wearing off and the water had helped. ‘Reg, this is not going any further. In fact —’
    ‘Look around you, Evie. Does anything look familiar? Smell familiar? Taste or sound familiar?’
    She could feel pinpricks of perspiration and the hairs standing up at the back of her neck. She’d been trying to shut out all of the foreignness of where she was, hoping that as the drug wore off, so would the sense of dislocation. And while she couldn’t understand how they had not been splattered across concrete, her logical mindtold her that there had to be a rational explanation, no matter what insanity had taken over her friend. But it was true, nothing felt familiar. This didn’t feel like scenery from a world she knew; the air was cleaner, fresher and the land around them looked virgin.
    Ignoring her silence, he continued, ‘None of it is familiar because we are no longer where you think we are. We have travelled through time and lands.’
    ‘You’re beginning to scare me, like you scared all the other people I used to defend you against.’
    ‘I never needed your defence.’
    ‘But still I gave it, because I loved you.’
    He flinched as though slapped. ‘Evie, you’re going to have to trust me. Nothing you see from here on is going to be familiar to you. Hospitals don’t exist here, neither does any of the technology you have taken for granted. I know you think I’m crazy but I am all you have. And I promise you that I am sane.’
    ‘Why am I here?’ she demanded, her confusion mounting to the stirrings of panic.
    ‘I just told you. You were born here. I had to return you to your home.’
    ‘Return me? So you’d already taken me from it once … is that what you mean?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said, shocking her. ‘I took you from this world when you were a newborn.’
    ‘Twenty years ago?’
    He shrugged. ‘Yes, but perhaps time passes differently in the world I took you to. How old do I appear to you?’
    It was her turn to shrug. ‘I don’t know. I suppose beneath all that terrible beard and unruly hair you are in your late thirties, early forties. Why? How old did you hope to be?’
    He nodded sadly. ‘I was just eighteen when I was given the task of taking you to safety.’
    She needed to keep him talking while her mind tried to make some sense of what was going on. ‘So my father — the king,’ she said carefully, nodding at him to show that she was trying, ‘asked you, a young noble, to rush me away to safety from this Loethar fellow who was killing all the royals.’
    ‘Thank you for paying attention.’
    ‘So that makes me a princess.’
    ‘Yes. That’s why we had to protect you.’
    She couldn’t help herself. As much as it galled her to humour this ridiculous story any further, she was intrigued as to where he’d take the tale next. ‘Do I have siblings? Fellow young royals?’
    ‘Two brothers, one of whom is adopted.’
    ‘Ah, so they were whisked off to other places, were they?’
    He shook his head. ‘No, only you. You had to be hidden. The Valisar dynasty has never had a surviving daughter. In centuries of rule, all girls — until you — have either died in the womb or soon after birth.’
    She hadn’t expected that and felt a fresh wave of panic. He really looked like he believed all this. ‘So I’m the first surviving female heir of the Valisars and they had to get me away. Why? Isn’t a male heir more important, or do they do it differently in the Denova Set?’ Even she could hear the sarcasm biting and hated herself as she watched those words batter against someone she loved.
    ‘Your brother, Leonel, is the primary heir. But Leonel is not