Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) Read Free Page A

don’t have me,” he hissed. Three steps forward and he threw her back into the door with a rattling thud. He surged inward until the tip of his nose touched hers. Her proud, golden eyes did not widen, her body did not flinch, but remained stiff and indifferent to his abuse. “I have you. I own you, and don’t you ever forget it.”
    He watched as her nostrils flared, her full, coral-traced lips twitching beneath her nose until the edges rose into defiant grin. “Ninvariin owns me.” She tilted her head, a thoughtful inspection as her cold eyes darted across his face. “I am on loan from Her, and don’t you ever forget it.”
    And then she kissed him, the prince moaning softly in his throat as she shoved him backward through the room until he felt the mattress edge the backs of his knees. Taking a step away from him, Deallora brought up her hand in a fluid gesture, a surge of pale blue light dancing across the tips of her fingers before it passed between them with a playful force that sprawled him onto his back in the bed behind him.
    She lingered at the edge of the bed, magic’s pale essence still flickering across the palm of her hand. “You must heed Her wisdom, Highness.” Lifting one knee onto the bed, she passed the other across the tops of his thighs and lowered herself onto his lap. “Everything is changing. There are events in the offing you cannot even begin to understand.”
    The sorceress leaned forward, resting her hand on his shoulder as she descended until they were face to face. Even through the leather of his armor, he could feel her magic, the electric tingle of it invoking a series of delightful chills that raised the hairs on his arms, along the back of his neck. The energy trickled down his spine, but he did not shiver. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
    “Going after the U’lfer will not serve you,” she went on. “In time they will come to you. Lorelei herself will march into this castle and demand you give her back her sister.”
    “I wait for no one.” He lifted his hands to her shoulders, fingertips squeezing so hard her olive skin would boast tiny, circular bruises later where his fingers pushed into her. “I send Aelfric’s men south to finish a job he should have finished long ago. The U’lfer will burn, Dea. Every last one of them.”
    He surged upward, shifting her onto her back in a bold, deft maneuver and then rolling in to perch above her like a predator. Her long, exotic eyes did not waver from his face, the molten gold irises flashing with defiance. “It is a mistake, Your Highness. Let me show you what I’ve seen.”
    “The only thing I want you to show me now is a little love.” He dipped his head inward, brushed lips across her chin. “Show your prince a little kindness in a world that’s been so very, very cruel to him.”
    When she opened her mouth to speak again, Trystay silenced her with kisses, her protests eventually lost in a mingling of gasps and sighs. By the time he’d finished with her, she protested no more, having remembered her rightful place beneath him.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER ONE
     
     
    It was still dark when she gasped awake. The aches in her body, mingled with the grogginess of her mind, made it hard to remember where she was. On instinct she reached into the space beside her for comfort from her sister. Her fingertips brushed the cold, wooden panels of the wall, and with uncertainty she turned head over shoulder to search the empty room around her.
    Lorelei sat up, blinking the sleep from her eyes before lifting balled fists to rub it away. She was in the spare bedroom of her brother’s house, she remembered, sleeping alone on the long night before she was meant to embark on a journey the gods planned for her before she’d ever been born.
    The weight of it pressed down hard on her shoulders until no amount of stretching her arms and back alleviated its pressures. She supposed she’d have to get used to that