Nightblade: A Book of Underrealm (The Nightblade Epic 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

This time, her father had eyes for nothing but Xain.
    Loren kicked as hard as she could, and something in her father’s face broke beneath her boot heel.
    He fell away, rolling over and over to lay distance between them. Screaming in rage, he regained his feet. Then he paused. Loren’s arrow rested at full draw, aiming straight for his heart.
    Slowly, her father’s hamfist hands came up on either side of his head. For every inch they climbed, the fury in his eyes grew darker.
    “No more.” The words left Loren in a whisper. “No more will you torment me. I am leaving, Father, and I mean never to return.”
    “You mean to defy me? You will do your duty as a daughter or—”
    She pulled harder on the bow, another inch of draw. Her father fell to silence.
    “You have never done your duty as a father. I owe you nothing.”
    “You owe me everything. I could have killed you in the cradle. I could have killed you when I woke up this morning and emptied my bowels on your corpse. I made you, and now I see I made you worthless.”
    His words should have stung, but Loren was beyond them. They were only a stronger flavor of the same things he had said all her life. And in this moment, now that another fate beckoned, she stood under his sway no longer.
    “Then when I leave, you shall suffer no great loss.” Her icy eyes met her father’s boiling rage.
    Xain had finally recovered his breath and came to stand at Loren’s side. He muttered. His eyes glowed white, a ball of lightning hovered in his grasp.
    “You think you can escape me? I learned these lands years before I spilled you between your mother’s legs. Nowhere in Selvan can you hide from me. Ready yourself for sleepless nights by a bright fire. For if you close your eyes in slumber, if for even a moment you relax into darkness—”
    Loren loosed the shaft. It sank into her father’s thigh. He collapsed to the ground without a scream, only a gut-deep grunt of agony.
    “Chase us now,” said Loren.
    She turned and walked away, stopping for only a moment to retrieve the dagger and return it to its sheath. She did not turn to see if Xain followed but after a moment heard footfalls behind her.
    Her father’s hateful screams followed them for a while, long past the time when she could no longer understand the words, finally dying as they reached the flat plain between the forest’s edge and the King’s road to the south.  
    The sun hung low in the sky by the time they reached it. Loren had only seen the road twice in her life. Its hard-packed dirt felt odd underfoot. Not far beyond, they heard the Melnar’s whispering sigh roaring its way toward the High King’s Seat.
    “The King’s road at last.” They were the first words Xain had spoken since the fight, and they left his throat in a hesitant rasp. His bruises would long remain, Loren knew. She feared to see the marks on her ribs and whispered a quick prayer of thanks that nothing had broken.
    But the road would not let Loren long consider her aching. “Is it as long as they say?”  
    “I do not know what you have been told,” Xain said. “But I would imagine it is longer. Follow it west from here, and you will come to every capital city in the nine lands. Follow it east, and soon enough you will find yourself at the High King’s Seat.”
    “But we do not go that way.”
    “No.” He frowned. “We do not travel upon the road at all. Fast though our path might be upon it, watchful eyes would too easily spy us. We must cut across and follow its course south, far from its edge.”
    Loren nodded. “How far will we go tonight?”
    “Your arrow was well placed. We need not fear your father’s pursuit. And if I know constables, we will not see them until the morrow, if then. We will make for the river and camp upon its bank.”
    Loren would have traveled all night, eager to prove her willingness and worth as a traveling companion. But her heart nearly melted in relief at the wizard’s words. A