Blood Prophecy Read Online Free PDF Page A

Yours.”
    “Why mine?” I asked, frustrated. “Forget I asked. She’s a vampire. She wanted to be queen or whatever, right?”
    “No, Solange. She wants so much more than that.”
    “What is there left that she can take from me?” I asked dejectedly.
    “Whatever it is, she’ll find it. She’s been waiting and waiting for this chance.” Gwyneth narrowed her eyes. “You must have worked powerful magic to let her in.”
    “I don’t even know how to do magic,” I said. Except for that undoing spell Isabeau had taught me. I’d had to go out in the middle of the night and pee on Montmartre’s love spell. Not pretty. And I’d totally do it again. But that was months ago. “She didn’t gain full control until the crown was on my head,” I said, thinking back. “Before that it was just whispers.”
    “Magic always finds a way in. Viola should know.” Gwyneth shook her head. “Vampires and magic. They just don’t mix.”
    I was sure Isabeau would disagree, but then the Hounds knew all sorts of things the rest of us didn’t. My family hadn’t even believed in magic before this year. Madame Veronique had encouraged our ignorance for her own mysterious purposes.
    “So you can’t use magic to set us free?” I asked.
    “Won’t,” she corrected. “Not again. And she doesn’t know I’m here. Her knights don’t come into the woods.”
    “Ever?” Come to think of it, for knights bent on killing me, they’d given up fairly easily once I’d entered the forest. “Not even to kill me?”
    “She doesn’t want to kill you. She needs your connection to your body. She needs someone strong enough to survive the possession.” She shook her head, stirring her cook pot again. “And if she catches you, she’ll do worse than kill you.”
    “There’s worse?”
    “She needs you alive here. She doesn’t need you comfortable. Believe me, you wouldn’t like spending centuries in an oubliette.” I knew that word. Oubliettes were dank holes in the dungeons of castles where prisoners were kept in the dark, without room to even stand up in. I shuddered. “After a while, you’d be lost. Nothing would be real, not even this place.”
    “What, like a ghost?”
    “Worse.” She laughed and it was a hollow sound.
    “Why don’t you leave? She’s not possessing you.”
    “I don’t have power here, not that kind.”
    “But . . .”
    “Leave it, Solange. I’m not your princess in the tower to be rescued.” Having uttered those very same words more times than I could count, I nearly snorted at her. But her expression was odd, tortured. Whatever it was she was feeling was physically painful. Blood oozed down her arms, soaked into the hem of her dress. Thescar across her throat started to bleed as well. Her cheekbones poked through her mangled cheek.
    “You’re hurt!” I took a step toward her but stopped when she snarled wordlessly at me. I glanced away to give her a moment of privacy.
    I forced myself to remember the training my parents had given me, the bits and pieces of strategy I’d witnessed, the long boring political intrigues that fascinated my father, the vicious fighting arts that made my mother glow.
    “She’s protecting something,” I realized slowly. When I turned back to Gwyneth she seemed fine, and even the blood had faded from her skirt. “Viola’s got something in that castle.” I felt certain of it. Mom would point out that no one spent that much energy protecting something unless it was precious, unless it did one of two things: made you weak or made you strong. And at the end of the day, that was the same thing.
    Which meant Viola was vulnerable.
    If I could just figure out what it was she was safeguarding, I could use it to fight my way free. I stood up, finally feeling like a Drake again: determined, reckless, and just a little bit eager to kick some serious ass.
    Gwyneth tilted her head. “The last girl Viola possessed spent ten years weeping in the back of my cave. It was