Horns for the Harem Girl Read Online Free PDF

my dear, you’ve stolen his heart completely. And he’s never even seen how pretty you are under that mask.”
    “Veil,” Helena said.
    “Yes, of course. Good evening to you,” Crane bowed slightly from the waist and made his exit through the back door that connected the lavishly anointed harem chambers from the main palace. It was a semi-secret door that opened into a series of hallways from where a person could reach most any room in the noble wing of the palace – again, through a secret doorway.
    The power that the harem held was almost staggering. In a way, they controlled the comings and goings of Salomana’s most powerful with little more than a whisper or a kiss. Helena knew the power; she’d been trained in the ways of secret and confidence by the very best, by Maret, but she wasn’t interested in any of that.
    She slipped the golden hoop through the top piercing in her right ear, completing the ring of golden, shimmering jewels. With the glittering of sapphires and rubies, if the flame from a candle or headlight hit her just right, it looked like flames licked her ears.
    Anyone who saw her like this, anyone , would have been smitten, she thought as she gave herself one last look in the mirror she’d brought from home. The turquoise-rimmed memory of her mother and her sisters was almost painful to hold at times, but at others, it made her feel safe.
    “Protect me,” she whispered at the looking glass, “even as I do something so monumentally stupid I can hardly believe that I’m thinking about actually doing it.”
    She thought she heard a rustle in the silk curtains that separated her chambers from the common room, but she couldn’t be sure. She was too wrapped up in admiring the job she’d done with her eye shadow to think of much else. And it wasn’t that she was vain – far from it – but it was a very good job she’d done.
    She turned her head first left, and then right, looking at the sparkles.
    “What in the hell am I doing?” she asked the mirror. The entire rest of the harem was out at the banquet, and anyway she was whispering. No one would overhear. “Am I really going to take this idiotic chance and run with it?”
    The more she thought about it, the more Crane was probably right. The king would have summoned her by now. The clock on her wall was almost at midnight. Surely he would have summoned her already if he intended to see her tonight. What harm could it do? If she was called anyway, it was so late that she’d be reprimanded, but the excuse that she had fallen asleep would likely not be questioned.
    On the other hand, if she didn’t go, she would certainly be missing the one thing she’d wanted more than life itself since coming to this damn palace two months before. Helena was taken in by the glitz and the jewels and the glamor, but they soured quickly. Not so with this prince. The more she thought of those enchanting eyes, that curly, care-free hair, and the way he smiled just so at her... She felt herself blush in places she shouldn’t be blushing.
    But more than the thought of some kind of carnal rendezvous with Prince Arad was the feeling that she would just be doing something . Anything besides practicing the harp or working on standing still with her back straighter and straighter; anything was more exciting than another damnable night of that, or of foot rubs, or soaks in the tub. She was just so bored .
    Before she knew what was going through her head, Helena was up and she was away.
    She disappeared into the doorway that led to the spider’s web of tunnels through the walls of the palace, checking behind herself to make sure no one had seen her leave without first having gotten a summons.
    But Helena made the same mistake a thousand others before her had made. She didn’t bother looking up .
    Overhead, in a nook known only to herself and a pair of others, Maret sat, twirling a string of pearls between her smooth, aged fingers. “I’d say don’t be stupid,”