Fist of the Furor Read Online Free PDF Page B

I took it. I didn’t have time to wonder what it was he gained from me.
    I had the sudden fleeting thought, The king is the most important piece in chess, but the queen is the most powerful.

 
     
    Chapter 5
     
    For a week, there was the constant sound of arguing from the Council hall in the palace. Brown robes mingled with blue as royal mages and scribes came and went, their heads down, their hoods cloaking their faces. There was an attempt on Prince Cadeyrn’s life. It was a hushed affair, an incident that transpired in the Great Hall. Poison. It killed one of his servants, a man hired to die for the prince. I never found out what kind of poison it was, or how it was administered.
    I continued to go to Cadeyrn’s room. We played chess, but he never spoke of the attempt on his life. It was, as I was told, a common occurrence.
    It was on the seventh night that I was turned away. I stood outside the prince’s chamber, but his door never opened. I traced the full moon in the wood until my fingers fell to the grains of wheat surrounding it, and still the door didn’t move.
    I stared.
    “You should return to your room,” Ryon coaxed.
    The guard’s voice was insistent. I wanted to argue, but it would have done no good. My entry into the prince’s life was frowned upon in the palace. I was the bastard daughter of a nobleman raised by a Medeisian man. Princes weren’t friends with bastards, even powerful ones.
    “Yes,” I answered finally, my back to the guard. “I should go.”
    However, I didn’t move. I stood for long minutes, my gaze on the wood, on the carving. “The moon?” I asked Ryon. “Why is it a harvest one?”
    The guard coughed. “It’s no secret, I suppose. It was under a Harvest Moon that the prince was born.”
    I froze, a cold chill traveling up my spine. “The Kiarian Freesonalay.”
    I had been born under a Harvest Moon. It was something I’d always known, something Aigneis had always made sure I’d known. The prophecy talked about the Harvest Moon and a girl, but it didn’t say anything about a prince.
    “You should return to your room,” the guard insisted.
    I turned to look at him, my eyes traveling his features. Ryon’s short blond hair was clipped close to his head, his clean-shaven cheeks sharp in the dim, lantern lit hallway.
    “You all hate me, don’t you?” I asked.
    Ryon’s gaze searched mine. “Not the guards, rebel. We respect you. You’ve fought with us. We’ve seen what you are capable of. But in the end, you mean only tragedy for our leaders.”
    “Because of an excerpt in an ancient book?”
    Ryon’s lips quirked. “You’re Medeisian. You live in a country cloaked by superstition and magic, and you ask me if I believe in an excerpt in an ancient book?”
    I inclined my head, my gaze going to the gaping dark hallway before I finally left the prince’s door. It amazed me how powerful words could be, how fearful they could make people.
    Oran met me at my room, his silver fur muted in the glow from the guard’s lantern. “You return too soon, Phoenix,” he noted.
      I didn’t spare him a glance. The wolf knew too much; he saw too much in my eyes. It was disconcerting how perceptive the animals in my life were.
    “It is the way things must be from here on out,” another voice interjected, and my gaze flew to my open bedroom door, to the reptilian eyes that peered out at me from the frame.
    Ryon hissed, “You walk unguarded, Dragon.”
    It was a warning, and we knew it.
    Lochlen grinned, his white teeth flashing, his eyes dilating. “Do you think I need guarding?”
    There was the faint smell of smoke and Ryon stepped back. “I’ll be in the hall,” he said crossly.
    I nodded at him, my teeth scraping my lips to keep from smiling.
    Turning back to Lochlen, I chided, “You shouldn’t do that, you know. You scare them.”
    Lochlen moved aside, his green tunic and brown leather breeches black in the darkness until we passed into the lit room. A bath