Only the Worthy Read Free

dainty
chain. She felt something cold and light being placed into her palm, and she
glanced over, confused.
    She squinted in
the rain and was stunned to see he had placed a gold necklace in her hand, a
pendant at its end, two snakes, wrapped around a moon, a dagger between them.
    Finally, he
spoke his first words.
    “When he is
born,” came the dark, mysterious voice, a voice of authority, “give this to
him. And send him to me.”
    She heard the
knight mounting his horse, and became dimly aware of the sound of his riding
away.
    Rea’s eyes grew
heavy. She was too exhausted to move as she lay there in the rain. Her heart
shattered, she felt sweet sleep coming on and she allowed it to embrace her.
Maybe now, at least, the nightmares would stop.
    Before she let
them close, she stared out at the necklace, the emblem. She squeezed it,
feeling it in her hand, the gold so thick, thick enough to feed her entire
village for a lifetime.
    Why had he given
it to her? Why hadn’t he killed her?
    Him , he had said.
Not her. He knew she would be pregnant. And he knew it would be a boy.
    How?
    Suddenly, before
sweet sleep took her, it all came rushing back to her. The last piece of her
dream.
    A boy. She had
given birth to a boy. One born of fury. Of violence.
    A boy destined
to be king.

CHAPTER TWO
     
    Three Moons Later
     
    Rea stood alone
in the forest clearing, in a daze, lost in her own world. She did not hear the
stream trickling beneath her feet, did not hear the chirping of the birds in
the thick wood around her, did not notice the sunlight shining through the
branches, or the pack of deer that watched her close by. The entire world
melted away as she stared at only one thing: the veins of the Ukanda leaf that
she held in her trembling fingers. She removed her palm from the broad, green
leaf, and slowly, to her horror, the color of its veins changed from green to
white.
    Watching it
change was like a knife in her heart.
    The Ukanda did
not change colors unless the person who touched it was with child.
    Rea’s world
reeled. She lost all sense of time and space as she stood there, her heart
pounding in her ears, her hands trembling, and thought back to that fateful
night three moons ago when her village had been pillaged, too many of her
people killed to count. When he had taken her. She reached down and ran
her hand over her stomach, feeling the slightest bump, feeling another wave of
nausea, and finally, she understood why. She reached down and fingered the gold
necklace she’d been hiding around her neck, deep beneath her clothes, of
course, so that the others would not see it, and she wondered, for the
millionth time, who that knight was.
    Try as she did
to block them out, his final words rang again and again in her head.
    Send him to me.
    There came a
sudden rustling behind her and Rea turned, startled, to see the beady eyes of
Prudence, her neighbor, staring back at her. A fourteen-year-old girl who lost
her family in the attack, a busybody who had always been too eager to tattle on
anyone, Prudence was the last person Rea wanted to see know her news. Rea
watched with horror as Prudence’s eyes drifted from Rea’s hand to the changing
leaf, then widened in recognition.
    With a glare of
disapproval, Prudence dropped her basket of sheets and turned and ran. Rea knew
her running off could only mean one thing: she was going to inform the
villagers.
    Rea’s heart sank,
and she felt her first wave of fear. The villagers would demand she kill her
baby, of course. They wanted no reminder of the nobles’ attack. But why did
that scare her? Did she really want to keep this child, the byproduct of that
monster?
    Rea’s fear surprised
her, and as she dwelled on it, she realized it was a fear to keep her baby
safe. That floored her. Intellectually, she did not want to have it; to do so
would be a betrayal to her village and herself. It would only embolden the
nobles who had raided. And it would be so easy to lose the baby; she