Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Mercenary Read Online Free PDF Page B

flat against her head. It had to be a sign
of her fear. When she was happy, when her feelings were positive,
her hair floated. It was fascinating.

    “ Sasue,” he
muttered. “I won’t let him near you.”

    Silence.

    “ Did you come
back to make me eat?” she eventually said.

    Kosen frowned at her. He
had forgotten that she hadn’t eaten yet. Feeding her was the last
thing on his mind right now.

    Right now, he just wanted
to get his head straight. He needed to know what was different
about her and why he was acting this way after all these
years.

    “ No,” he said
and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling, at the dot of light
shining down on her. “I have a question though.”

    Did he really want to ask
her this? If he asked and she answered then there was no going
back. He would have overstepped the mark and broken the rules he
had laid down for himself when he had joined this venture. He had
to know though. He needed a name to go with her beautiful
face.

    “ What do they
call you?”

    At first, she frowned and
looked as though she wouldn’t answer. After long seconds of
silence, her frown disappeared and she sighed.

    “ Miali.”

    It brought a smile to his
lips. “Named after a princess, huh?”

    And then he looked closer
at her, at the way she bit her lip and turned her head away, at how
beautiful she was and how silver her hair shone.

    And it dawned on
him.

    “ My mother
named me Kosen. Do you know what that means in
Minervan?”

    She shook her head, still
looking away from him.

    “ Seer of
truth.” He frowned and stood. “And I do. I saw the truth back at
the Varkan steel mines that worked men’s fingers to the bone and
tore families apart. I saw the truth the day my father made a small
fortune by selling my two younger sisters into slavery. I saw the
truth the day he left... and I can see the truth now.”

    She looked at him, her
eyes enormous and full of fear.

    “ Not named for
a princess.” Kosen stepped up to her and caught her cheek in his
palm, forcing her eyes to remain locked with his. “You are the
princess.”

    He laughed at how cruel
fate was being with him and her. She would make the crew of this
ship a fortune, enough for each to live richly for the rest of
their days. Only no one here knew that she was a princess. The
contact hadn’t told them, which meant he couldn’t know either. She
had been offered to them as nothing more than a beautiful Lyran—a
specimen of perfection.

    What they had received was
a death sentence.

    “ Shh,” she
whispered and glanced past him to the door before her eyes met his
again. They pleaded him. “Don’t tell them. They don’t know, do
they? No one knows. To the world, I’m just an ambassador. If they
were to find out—”

    He pressed his finger
against her lips, silencing her. It was soft and warm under his
touch. “I won’t tell them.”

    The betrayal in those four
words didn’t bother him in the slightest. Since setting eyes on
her, he had been more loyal to her than to Nostra and the crew of
this ship. The moment he had found her in the cryo-sleep pod, he
had been thinking about her constantly. He even dreamed of her,
although she was muddled into his nightmares.

    A smile curved her lips
and set his heart racing. It had been too long since a female had
affected him so much with such a small gesture. The slightest tilt
of her lips or hint of tender emotion in her eyes and he was ready
to pledge his allegiance to her and her alone.

    He couldn’t.

    He stepped back,
distancing himself. She was beautiful but she was a means to an
end. He needed the money that she would bring him. He had to save
his sisters.

    He couldn’t save
her.

    “ If they find
out,” she said and then frowned, as though she couldn’t bring
herself to say anything more. She knew as well as he did how Nostra
would react if he discovered her lineage. They would drop into
sub-space again and would sell her tomorrow on the black market
rather than