Forbidden (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) Read Online Free PDF

bring it back. Perhaps, she thinks, she might make a gift of it to the King of Spain.”
    Snow White and Tom exchanged glances. The expression on Wolfsbane’s unshaven face was uneasy, but his tongue rolled glibly with lies.
    “Where exactly in the Enchanted Forest?” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. Tom, on the other hand, wore his terror on blanched cheeks. Wolfsbane paid him no heed. His eyes were fixed on Snow White, a cougar measuring his prey. Once again, she caught the flicker of guilt within them.
    “Northwest, where the honeysuckle is thickest. Two days by horseback,” he said.
    He needs two days to kill me? I must be more of a handful than I thought.
    She held her head up. “Very well, but I will need my equipment. Everything’s in my lab.” Anything to get them off Tom Cherry, whose mouth was opening and closing like a bellows.
    And now they were deep in the Enchanted Forest. The uppermost boughs wove a tapestry above their heads and the sun was mostly blocked out. Unseen birds darted in the foliage. Everything was suspiciously tranquil. The scent of wood and musk flooded the air, but Snow White could not see any wild beasts.
    The wildest beast of them all was by her side, astride a galloping horse.
    Where would he make his move? How fast exactly was his horse, Wolfstomper? Snow White was no equine specialist, but she was willing to wager his black stallion – whose vicious eyes were ringed with white – would easily catch and take a bite out of the rump of gentle Coleoptera, chosen for her specially because she kept falling off as a child.
    Back to her escape plan. Or the non-existence of it.
    “So,” she said conversationally, “how long have you known my stepmother?”
    “About a year and a bit.” He drew his horse to a canter beside hers. He avoided her eyes.
    “Do you love her?”
    He pondered this before replying, “Most people don’t think so, but I do.” He shot Snow White a look that said ‘I don’t care if you believe that’. “She’s not like anyone I know. She can be a little ruthless – ”
    More than a little, Snow White thought.
    “ – but she has layers. She’s a mystery I haven’t wrapped my mind around yet, and I thought I’d seen them all.” He paused before adding, “It’s complicated. I don’t expect you to understand.”
    Oh, so she’s a murderess wanting to make you a murderer, so she’s complicated. Snow White fumed.
    Midday came and she still hadn’t thought of a plan. It didn't occur to her that other girls could only dream of having her face and figure, and she could well use her feminine wiles to lure Wolfsbane away from his mission. But Snow White didn’t have any feminine wiles. Her mind ran in different circles: the scientific, the strange, the obscure, the complicated. It would have shocked her if anyone were to suggest she turn alluring eyes to Wolfsbane and barter her virginity for escape. Snow White was not prudish – growing up, she was used to seeing Tom Cherry and his brothers semi-unclothed – but the very fact that men could find her irresistible was as outlandish to her as wearing a dress made of insects.
    “Do you know how my father died?” she suddenly blurted out.
    “You mean the King? It’s common knowledge. He was leading the chase for a particularly huge wild boar, one that was terrorizing a poor village. His horse stumbled and fell off a cliff.”
    “That’s the gossip parchment version. My father died from eating a bad apple.”
    Wolfsbane raised his eyebrows. “A bad apple?”
    “A particularly bad one,” she said, turning clear eyes towards him. “I was two at the time. No one knows how it got into his breakfast basket, but there it is. You never know who’s going to knife you in the back.”
    “It might have been an accident,” he said, clearly troubled.
    “There are no accidents where royals are concerned,” she declared.
    They stopped for the horses to be watered. As he firmly took Coleoptera, which