Dark Lord's Wedding Read Online Free PDF

Feaster as well and looked a pitiful thing in the daylight. She teetered as she carried an urn. The flawed woman’s right foot was so misshapen that its sole pointed to the side. She landed on her ankle with each step, and the cartilage would have worn away to an agony of bone scraping bone.
    A chirping bark came from inside the urn. Then nothing else mattered.
    Hiresha breezed forward. The netting lid parted at her touch. She reached in and pulled out a pair of fuzzy ears followed by an afterthought of a fox.
    “Fennec!” Hiresha spun into the air, her pet held overhead. His gaze was like the darkest of tiger-eye gems. They closed as he coughed, a squeaking gurgle. “Oh, but you’re languishing.”
    “The fox hasn’t tried to escape for a few nights,” the flawed woman said, “so it must be dead sick.”
    Hiresha closed her jeweled hands around the fox’s chest. “He’s drowning in this humidity.”
    The ears of the fox fluttered and rotated toward her voice. He could do no more than droop across her arm. The former luster of his golden fur had dulled to bronze. Curing him would take too much time and put her at risk. Yet she must. She couldn’t leave her fox wheezing another moment.
    “Here, my desert prince.” Hiresha Attracted the mucus from his lungs and tossed away the vileness. “That was the opposite of pleasant. I know. I know. Now breathe.”
    The fox panted, whiskers moving forward and back. An infected fox, an infected god, and an infected world, all converged on the day of her betrothal. The fennec tried to stand on her arm but ended up defecating instead. That hardly mattered. The enchantments in her jeweled dress whisked the excrement away.
    He wasn’t well. She would save him. She had her fennec. In this facet, he lived. To hold him, to see him, it was almost as if he had come back from the dead.
    Her tears gleamed in the corners of her eyes. “Thank you, Tethiel, for this early wedding present.”
    “Don’t thank me. The gifts I give for free are neither,” he said. “Luckily, this one is from Jerani and Celaise.”
    “You masterminded the rescue, I am certain.” Hiresha turned from Tethiel to the other two. “You both returned my furry treasure. My gratitude will come in due time in the form of enchantments. I know just what to prepare for each of you.”
    The flawed woman smiled with onyx. Her teeth had been replaced with black gemstone. The real ones must have fallen out as a side effect of her magic.
    The young man pointed to the amethyst bound to his chest. “You already gave me one.”
    She tsked and cradled the fennec. “You even reacquired his jewelry. How thorough.”
    The purple garnets in his collar matched the one in his ear stub. Hiresha shouldn’t take the time to enchant them now. She still would, and she would have to do more than keep the dampness from his chest. Mold had spread so far through him that his nose had whitened.
    “Had it on him,” the young man said. He had meant the jewelry, not the infection of rot.
    “That is unexpected.” Apprehension condensed over Hiresha in a second layer of oily morning mist. She ran her finger over the fennec’s gemstones. Indeed, they were enchanted already and not with anything beneficial. It was a gravitational focal point. A corresponding pendulum would be able to track her pet and thus find Hiresha. The person trained to use it would be a spellsword. He would serve as an assassin.
    She was a continent away from her past. It might not be far enough.
    Dispelling the magic would proclaim she still was alive. Instead she unlatched the collar. “These are only garnets. The fennec deserves purple sapphires.”
    She tossed the jewelry into the sinkhole. Let her assassin think what he will. If he found her, he would be the prey.
    He would only pose a danger if he found her asleep: all the more reason for her to return to the safety of her reliquary before noon. She had but one furry reason to stay.
    She would not be unhappy