Betrayed Read Online Free PDF Page A

plaid that had been a second skin for the last four days and sat down in the steaming water.
    Within minutes he was fast asleep.
     
    Amber couldn’t breathe. The walls were closing in, suffocating her. The blackness was thick and putrid, clogging her lungs. Dear Lord, she was going to die down here. She thought of Mary. Timid, cowering Mary.  
    I didn’t know.
    I laughed in the face of fear because I did not understand.
    Amber had flaunted her reckless courage like a banner of pride. She’d loved nothing more than to dare to the edge of danger and over, eluding her nannies to secretly tame her father’s wildest stallion, challenging the local boys to swim a flooded stream and, as she grew up, flirting mercilessly with the fiercest lords. She’d bravely held back tears when her mother applied a herbal paste to her latest bruise, giggled atrociously after she’d narrowly escaped Matthew Harden’s amorous kisses, and thought herself invincible. Was it any wonder, when all she’d known was her gentle bear of a father and the comforting embraces of her sweet mother? Even William Jardin could not touch her, for she’d quickly learned to play to his weakness and fear of her.
    For that arrogance, she now paid. She’d kicked Duncan in the groin as a last attempt to flee, and he’d kept good on his oath to toss her into the deepest pit Wamphray Castle had to offer.
    She shuddered as the fingers of darkness reached for her. She couldn’t see a thing, but she could hear the scuffling sounds of miniature claws advancing through the few rushes covering the cold, damp stone. She could hear them sniffing, sharpening their claws, gnashing their teeth… Rats. Only rats.
    “Hell’s fury,” she hissed determinedly. “If I’m to die in this place, so be it, but devils and angels will duel for my soul before I die of fear!”
    Breathe. The walls cannot move…cannot close in on you. This black hole cannot crush you. She started to draw a shallow breath, but it ended in a choked scream as something nibbled at her slipper.
    Rats. Harmless rats. Her body froze at the prick on her toe as the tiny sharp teeth reached skin.
    Stamp on it.
    Squash it.
    She couldn’t move. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t be this strong. Another prick and Amber spun about, kicking her foot hard into the wall. The rat fell off with a high-pitched screech, or maybe that was her. She sank into a heap on the floor and applied pressure to the throbbing pain in her stubbed toe. Tears streamed from her eyes and, after wiping angrily a few times, she gave up.
    Her terror and pain combined with an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. An oppressive pit stood between her and rescuing Stivin from her uncle and, for the first time in her life, Amber didn’t have a plan. She couldn’t think. Since when had she become so pathetically weak?
    She was crying, but not from the self-inflicted pain in her toe.
    She was shivering, but not from the rank cold.
    Fear had finally come to claim her, and she hadn’t the power to fight it.
     
    Krayne awoke with a start. The water was long cold and he stood up abruptly to rub his prickled skin with a linen cloth. Once dry, he strode through the wide opening that led from his chamber to the battlement, wrapping a clean plaid about his hips and shoulders, and using an emerald-studded silver pin to secure it. The day was nearly done, the sun hovering above the distant mountains like a fat orange about to drop.
    “I’ve slept the day away,” he muttered in disgust, returning inside to drag a brush through his hair and bind it back with a leather thong. His stomach growled, another reminder of how much time he’d squandered. He quaffed down the entire tankard of ale brought up earlier with his bath, then started on the hard bread and chunks of white cheese beside it. The bite gone from his hunger, his body refreshed and his mind alert, Krayne stopped worrying at the sleep his body had demanded.
    Duncan was in the great