The Stolen Brides 02 -His Forbidden Touch Read Free

the palace.
    “God be with you, Christophe.” She watched
with her heart in her throat as he circled along the inside of the
curtain wall, trying to stay beyond the reach of the arrows.
    Then suddenly the ground shook again. And
this time a whole section of wall gave way.
    With Christophe beneath it.
    She stared in mute horror, seeing it happen
by the unearthly light of the fire that painted the night bloodred.
Rock and mortar rained down on him. It was over in the span of a
heartbeat. One moment her brother was there, the next he was gone.
Simply gone.
    Buried beneath a crushing mass of shattered
stone.
    “Christophe!” she screamed, leaving her
place of safety, running across the bailey, crying out his name
again and again.
    She was halfway across the open ground when
Prince Daemon’s mercenaries came swarming through the breach.

Chapter 1
    A lone in her
father’s solar, Ciara huddled deep in a corner of the stone window
seat, an open book in her lap, a single tallow candle flickering
beside her. Bright winter moonlight gleamed through the stained
glass, spilling a pattern of blues and reds and greens across her
velvet skirts and the rush-strewn floor.
    Slipping off her jeweled coronet, she rested
her forehead against the window, her breath fogging the frosted
panes. Through one of the clear triangles of glass, she could see
the mountainside stretching away into the darkness, the stars
sparkling on a fresh blanket of snow … and the newly repaired
curtain wall.
    The stonemasons had finished it only days
ago, after four months of work. They had affixed a small brass
cross to mark where Christophe …
    A sob escaped her, welling up from a place
so deep, it seemed to come from the very center of her heart. Or
what was left of her heart.
    Looking at the bailey as it was now, she
could almost believe that the castle had never been touched by war.
That she and her father had not been captured by the enemy, had
never spent a month as prisoners in their own palace.
    That no lives had been lost here.
    She rubbed at her eyes, letting her
garnet-studded crown slip from her fingers. She had no tears left
to cry. The grounds below looked so peaceful now, every stone
restored to the way it had once been. Every drop of blood scoured
clean.
    But there was no way to change what had
happened. No denying the truth of what her father had shouted at
her when told of his only son’s death: she was in part to
blame for what had happened.
    And she had no escape from the destiny that
had been decided for her.
    A knock sounded at the door. Startled, she
glanced toward the thick oak portal that separated the spacious
meeting chamber from the great hall. Then she turned her back and
remained silent, deciding to ignore the summons. No one could know
she was here. She had not lit the torches that flanked the door, or
the fire in the hearth. And she had locked the door behind her,
wanting to be alone this night.
    For this was the last night she would spend
here, in the only home she had ever known.
    “Princess?” a soft feminine voice called.
The knock sounded again, as insistent as the woman’s tone.
“Princess? Are you in there?”
    Ciara sighed, recognizing that voice.
Normally, she would not respond to an intrusion by a servant, but
she knew that any hope of solitude was finished now that her lady’s
maid had set out to find her. Miriam knew all her favorite hiding
places. And she would be as relentless as a mother hen rounding up
a lost chick.
    Setting her book down beside the flickering
candle, leaving her crown in the rushes, Ciara rose and crossed the
vast chamber. She threw the bolt and pulled on the heavy iron ring,
opening the door just a crack. Just enough to admit a slice of
light and music and mingled spicy aromas that poured in from the
great hall—gingered rabbit and steamed cinnamon custard and
pheasant roasted with violets. The sounds and scents of a grand
feast.
    Of her betrothal party.
    “Good eventide, Miriam.” Ciara