Daughters of Lyra: Heart of an Emperor Read Online Free PDF

the
window again, she smiled when she saw her father walking the square
alone.

    He would answer
her.

    She took the quickest
route down through the palace, unable to leap from windows like
Regis. She had read Lyran Imperial Army reports that stated Varkans
had strange abilities—a strength like no other species, bones that
wouldn’t break when they leapt from great heights, and an urge for
violence that made them natural soldiers. She wouldn’t have
believed it if she hadn’t witnessed it herself.

    Coming out in the square,
she looked around for her father and spotted him walking towards
the garden.

    “ Father!” She
ran after him, lifting the skirt of her deep blue dress so she
didn’t trip. He turned and gave her a smile.

    “ I see you are
feeling better,” he said and placed his arm around her shoulders.
The sleeve of his loose pale blue shirt tickled her neck. She
looked up into his near-black eyes and smiled at the concern in
them. Her father had always made her feel better. “Although you are
a little flushed.”

    Sophia touched her burning
cheeks. It was Regis’s kiss that made them blaze, not her phoney
illness.

    “ Father, can we
walk a while?”

    He nodded and they headed
in the direction of the garden. Sophia struggled for a while,
trying to find the courage to ask her question. It was difficult
enough to ask her father this. It would have been impossible to ask
Regis.

    “ What are
Varkans?” she said, voice trembling.

    Her father sat down on one
of the benches in a shady corner of the garden, ran his fingers
through the strands of his black hair and then patted the spot
beside him. He crossed his legs and adjusted his dark blue
trousers. Normally her father didn’t dress so informally but it was
hot out today. A smile touched her heart when she remembered how
they normally passed hot sunny days swimming in the crystal clear
palace lake. Sophia sat sideways, facing him. His pensive
expression unsettled her.

    “ You seem
troubled by them.” He cupped her cheek and his brow furrowed with
concern. His dark eyes searched hers. “Is it the
emperor?”

    She shook her head, nerves
churning her stomach.

    “ The Count of
Sagres?”

    Her eyes
widened.

    Her father laughed. “Your
mother was right. The moment they arrived she knew that it would
not be the emperor who captured your heart.”

    Sophia placed her hand
against her chest and looked at it. “My heart? How can someone who
cannot love capture my heart?”

    She sighed when her father
placed his arm back around her shoulders and pulled her close. It
was comforting to feel the weight of it against her and his firm
grip on her shoulder. It had been a long time since she had been a
child, and since she had turned mating age, but it still made her
believe that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her.

    “ You must have
noticed that it is difficult to sense their emotions.”

    She nodded.

    “ Varkans
control their emotions to control their bloodlust. The species do
not feed in the same manner that we do. Intense feelings bring out
their bloodlust.”

    Her hands fell into her
lap. Bloodlust. Was her father suggesting what she had feared,
insinuating that Varkans drank blood for sustenance and that it
affected them? When she had been close to Regis, she had been able
to sense his feelings, but after she had cut her tongue and he had
tasted her blood, his feelings had been so intense that she had
felt them.

    Everything he had felt,
she had felt too.

    She had never experienced
another’s emotions before, not like that. It had been
overwhelming.

    She opened her mouth to
speak but her father raised his hand, silencing her.

    “ I do not think
it is I who you should be posing these questions to. I will detain
the emperor again so you may ask the right man for the job.” He
smiled at her when she gave him an unimpressed look and then rose
and walked away.

    The right man for the job.
Her eyes scanned along the palace and stopped on