Empire of Dust Read Online Free PDF

people who raised me.” Kat grabs her stomach, rocking herself back and forth, wishing they were Sotiria’s arms rocking her back and forth, comforting her after she’d skinned a knee or missed Helen too much to sleep. “Olympias killed them all. She couldn’t find me, so she killed them.”
    Heph looks around the field in puzzlement. “Did a messenger just come—”
    Kat inhales sharply and rubs her eyes. “The gazelles saw it,” she says simply.
    Heph frowns, but understanding quickly comes to his eyes. Kat can almost see him come to accept again, as he had in battle, that she is something more than just an average potter’s daughter.
    â€œAfter what I saw on the battlefield, Kat, I would believe anything you say.”
    At the kind words, Kat begins to cry, her body shuddering. “I know she wants me dead—has always wanted me dead since the moment I was born,” she says between aching sobs. “I just don’t...know...why.”
    Heph’s arms tighten around her, and she leans against his hard chest. “Because of reasons known only to the queen and the gods,” Heph murmurs into her hair. He gives her another squeeze, and Kat stays there, tucked against him.
    How can she live with herself, knowing she shares the blood of that evil woman? She wants to take a knife and drain every drop of Olympias’s blood from inside her. She sees again the pitiful bodies of the children. She hears the queen’s cruel laughter and smells the acrid smoke. She needs to cry until she empties herself completely, until there is nothing left except a shell made of cold, hard revenge.
    Another sob tears through her body. Her thirst for vengeance—did she inherit that, too, from the queen, along with her green eyes?
    She aches for Jacob. For the sight of his wide grin, his broad, friendly face. For his goodness and undying belief in her. Jacob was always there for her when she was sad or lonely. He didn’t even need to say a word, just put a strong arm around her. But Jacob is lost forever now—an Aesarian Lord. Her brother’s enemy.
    And, if she believes Heph’s report from the battle, her own enemy now, too. Heph claims Jacob tried to kill her, but Kat doesn’t believe it. Can’t believe it. He doesn’t even know that the prince is Katerina’s brother. There’s so much Jacob doesn’t know. But he can’t hate her. If he did, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.
    Heph holds her tightly, and she feels his beating heart against her back, his chin stubble rubbing slightly against her cheek, and for a moment she pretends he’s Jacob. She inhales deeply and smells an expensive citrus cologne, a tunic fresh from the palace laundry, and a whiff of horse and leather. Jacob smelled like wood smoke and clay dust.
    It’s Hephaestion she’s clinging to now—the impolite, vain boy she disliked at first sight when he tried to have her arrested for cheating on bets at the Blood Tournament. The brave, clever boy who got her out of the deepest, foulest dungeon in the palace when she had been imprisoned on false charges.
    The boy whose kiss may have saved her life on the battlefield.
    Or was the kiss only a dream, and her miraculous recovery just an effect of Snake Blood? For a moment, the face hovering above hers seemed to belong to Jacob, but then it had morphed into Heph, and she passed out. She’s been trying to ask Hephaestion about it, but he has been busy after the battle, helping Alex with the refugees and rebuilding the library. And now, well, it doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore if she’d died out there. Maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe Jacob’s family would still be alive.
    â€œKat,” Heph says gently. He brushes the hair out of her face. “If Olympias has done what you say, then she must know who you are. And if she finds you here when she returns to the