Palace of Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

assailant. I hoped I would be able to tell the difference at a glance. But I was still holding my breath. The thoughts, You’re running out of air! You’re going to have to take another breath! pounded in my head, making me dizzy. I couldn’t see the man before me very well; his hulking shape seemed to waver in and out of focus.
    â€œPrincess,” the man purred, patting my arm.
    I couldn’t decide which threatened me most: The lack of air in my lungs? The overwhelming smoke around me? The stinging sensation on my arm?
    And then I couldn’t decide anything, because everything went black.

4
    I awoke.
    In . . . a bed, is it? I wondered groggily, feeling what could have been soft cotton sheets tucked around me.
    I heard no crackle of flames, no shrieks of panicked courtiers in fear for their lives. So it seemed I was in no imminent danger from fire, at least.
    But maybe . . . from something else . . . ?
    I decided it might be wise to learn as much as I could before tipping off anyone else that I was awake.
    I let my eyelids flutter, not as if I were waking up, but in the manner of someone suffering from a horrific nightmare. This also gave me a reason to thrash about a bit, to gauge the width of the bed, to snatch quick glimpses of the room on either side of the bed. I let a soft moan escape my lips—the moan of someone deep in sleep, deep in the grasp of a dread-filled dream.
    â€œPrincess Desmia?” a woman’s voice murmured softlyfrom the left side of the bed, the same side as a heavily draped window.
    Of course I didn’t answer. I turned toward the right, still pretending that it was only because of my nightmare thrashing. Then I pretended that I found the sound of my own name comforting, that I was settling back into a soothing slumber.
    Actually, I was staring at a wall.
    Plaster, not stone; whitewashed, not painted . . . I’m not in the palace anymore, I told myself.
    That alone was a shock.
    Because my supposed parents, the king and queen, had been murdered, the threat of danger from the unknown assassins had hovered over my first fourteen years. As long as Lord Throckmorton was my guardian, I couldn’t remember ever being allowed outside the palace, except to stand on the single balcony high above the adjoining courtyard.
    Which meant that, in reality, I might as well have never stepped foot outside the palace in my first fourteen years.
    And in the month since Cecilia and the other princesses arrived, and Lord Throckmorton and his evil cohorts were unmasked and imprisoned—since everyone else thought the danger was over—somehow there was always too much to be done or watched over within the palace walls for me to take advantage of my new freedom and go outside.
    But now I was outside the palace. Now I was exposed.
    You’re still in a house—still in a structure of some sort, I reminded myself, because my stomach was roiling, mythroat was growing tight, my vision was threatening to go dark again. And, remember, it’s not as if being in the palace kept you safe, anyway . . . not as if sharing the palace kept the other princesses safe . . .
    Thinking about the other princesses steadied me a bit. But it also made me too impatient to focus on cataloging the level of ornateness of the pitcher and bowl on the table beside the bed, or to bother with covertly scanning the wall for artwork that might provide clues about my location. Those details wouldn’t help me find out what I really wanted to know.
    I took a sudden breath as if I’d been startled awake, possibly even by my own dreams. I jerked, and rolled back again toward the left.
    â€œWhere . . . am I?” I groaned. “What . . . happened? My sisters—where are my sisters?”
    â€œShh, princess. Calm yourself.”
    The voice came from beside the bed again, from a location that seemed to be hidden behind