Princess of Thorns Read Online Free PDF

a stack of crates like a ringtail. He reaches the top and balances on one foot as he paws through the weapons in the uppermost crate and pulls out a fairy staff more slender than my wrist. It hardly seems sturdy enough to last a sparring session, but it’s tougher than it looks. When the boy jumps from the crates—aiming the staff at a clear place on the floor and using it to leverage his body up into the air before giving a shove that sends both him and his weapon sailing over the sleeping mercenaries to land in a silent crouch ten hands from where I stand—the wood doesn’t even creak, let alone crack.
    The boy looks up, meeting my eyes with a satisfied grin before padding across the carpet to stuff his tiny feet into his boots.
    “Madman,” I mumble, but I can’t keep a grudging smile from my face.
    Prince Jor is a runt and a brat and lacks the sense the gods gave a blind goat, but he is an agile thing, I’ll give him that. I’m not sure how much good he’ll be in a fight, but at least it seems his staff will help keep him out of trouble.
    I cock my head and hold the tent flap open to let the boy pass, but instead of ducking under my arm he lunges forward, jabbing his weapon into the air behind me. I hear a deep groan and spin to see a bleary-eyed mercenary with a mangy red beard drawing his weapon.
    I reach for my sword, but the prince is already slipping around me, staff flying. He brings the wood down on the mercenary’s hands hard enough to make a cracking sound and, when the man drops his sword, goes for the bastard’s head, batting at one side of Red Beard’s face and then the other—back and forth, back and forth, sending the man’s head rocking before finishing him off with a final slam of the staff atop his skull.
    Red Beard sinks to the ground, gripping his head with a pitiful moan.
    Before his knees hit the grass, Jor is turning to run.
    “The horses are this way,” he says as he flies past me, swift as a river rushing over slick stones.
    “I know where the horses are,” I say in a harsh whisper.
    I glance back at the man curling into a ball in the damp grass, wondering if I should kill him to keep him from alerting the rest of the mercenaries to our escape, but I decide it isn’t worth bloodying my sword and run after Jor.
    Jor and I are traveling light, we’ll have a head start, and I know the secrets of these borderland woods as well as any Boughtsword. Usio and I explored every inch of Kanvasola and the surrounding borderlands, from the Locked Forest to the sea caves at Sivnew to the dying volcano high above Eno City—any adventure to keep us away from my father. I’ll have no trouble finding a safe place to camp come nightfall and will have avoided committing the ultimate crime against my fellow man for another day.
    I have yet to take a life. My father has killed enough people—enemies and friends, criminals and innocents, mortals and immortals—for the both of us. I am determined to be his son in no more than name, and that not any longer than I can help it.
    It’s customary in Norvere for the wife to take the husband’s family name, but I’m planning to break with tradition. I look forward to being Niklaas Ronces. I will have my new initials engraved on a seal and use it to close the letter I’ll send to my father telling him to go straight to the Pit and rot there.
    The thought makes me smile as I jump the remains of last night’s fire and race past the Boughtsword leader, still senseless on the ground beside it. He’s snoring, openmouthed, where I left him, making me feel that much better about our odds of escape.
    By the time I reach the remains of an ancient stone wall where the horses are tied, Jor has bridled a handsome bay with an ink-black mane and matching stockings and is swinging up to ride the beast bareback.
    “Saddles are in the tent at the far end of the wall. I suggest you get one, unless you want to be thrown before we leave the woods.” I hurry past him