Destined for a King Read Online Free PDF

of the corner towers, she turned her attention to her surroundings. Except for her father’s imprisonment and the families who mourned their dead, life at Blackbriar Keep had renewed itself.
    A handful of mail-clad men traded blows with blunted blades, sweating beneath their helms. A flock of maids tittered in one corner, sneaking glances and exchanging whispers. An overflowing basket of damp sheets lay neglected in their midst. Nan, the fat old cook, marched out from the kitchens, wooden spoon in hand. At her shout, the giggling girls dispersed to their duties, leaving only the clank of metal and the distant throb of pounding hammers.
    From the steward to the stable boys, Torch had set all the menservants who could be spared to work at repairing their broken gates, for time pressed. Magnus would not long stand for Torch’s insolence.
    Calista tore her eyes away from the scene and hurried to the herb garden. Torch and the other wounded had depleted her supplies. At her feet stretched neat rows of green plants—brambles of dragon’s bane, the green garlic spears, rosemary needles, fresh-scented thyme coming into its clustered spikes of purple blooms.
    At the far end, a riot of deep pink marked the plant that gave the keep both its name and fame. Blackbriar roses. Fine soap-makers and perfumers demanded the blooms for their delicate scent, yet their beauty masked treacherous thorns stronger than steel. Had the fletchers run out of arrowheads, they might well have been tempted to raid the gardens for the plant. But its true use was the swollen haws that grew once the flowers faded. Their healing qualities were many, and she needed them now, for Torch’s injury still plagued him.
    Two days ago, she’d thrust a hot poker into the puncture left by her quarrel. He’d bit down on a rag, Kestrel pressing him to the mattress while his back bowed and the cords stuck out in his neck. Despite his efforts to contain his scream, he’d ended up succumbing to the pain.
    Even now, her heart pounded at the memory of that agonized cry. The scent of burnt flesh rose sharp in her mind, overpowering the gentle fragrance of the gardens. She’d given him an extra dose of elixir of poppy and prayed to the All-Mother to heal him.
    The fever had overtaken him in the night. She’d woken on her mean little pallet in the corner, the place Tamsin usually slept, to deranged mutters. Torch’s head turned on the pillow, his arms thrashed, and his skin burned unnaturally hot beneath her fingers.
    “It’s all to be expected,” she said to herself for the hundredth if not the thousandth time. She’d cleaned that wound as best she could, changed the poultices faithfully, but the fever had still taken him. “Part of the healing.”
    She had to believe it, because her father was still imprisoned. Kestrel refused to release him until Torch rose from the sickbed under his own power and unlocked the man himself.
    Donning a pair of elbow-length leather gloves, she set to work, carefully nudging the roses aside to look for the swelling beneath where the flowers had already spent themselves. Gathering the deep purple haws without impaling herself on the spikes was painstaking work, but thankfully her mother had shown her years ago how to harvest them.
    “How fares our lord today?” At the lightly accented words, Calista turned to find her mother behind her, basket in hand.
    “Still insensible, still uttering nonsense.”
    Twin furrows above the bridge of Mother’s downturned nose deepened. “If the fever does not break soon on its own, you will have to break it yourself.”
    Calista knew this. She’d come to the garden in hopes that another dose of Blackbriar tea, spooned sip by painful sip through Torch’s burning lips, would help her avoid that very thing. “I’ll give it until this evening.”
    Perhaps by then she could work up the courage to strip the linens from him and sponge his entire body with cool water.
    “You may not have that much