Seeds of Betrayal Read Online Free PDF Page A

been betrothed. But Filib of Thorald had already been killed, and Cadel’s Qirsi employers worried that the death of another heir to the Eibitharian throne would raise suspicions. They insisted that it be the girl.
    He had heard tales of her beauty and her kindness, but only that night on the tor, when he met her in the duke’s great hall, did he truly appreciate how little justice these tales did Lady Brienne of Kentigern.
    She had worn a dazzling gown of deepest sapphire that made the yellow ringlets of hair spilling down her back appear to have been spun from purest gold. Though Cadel posed that night as a common servant working under Kentigern’s cellarmaster, the duke’s daughter favored him with a smile so warm and genuine that he would have liked to run from the castle rather than kill her, though it meant leaving behind all the riches promised to him by the Qirsi. But it was far too late for that. The white-hairs had paid them a great deal, and Jedrek was already spending the gold they were still owed. And then there was all the Qirsi seemed to know about Cadel’s past-his family name, the disgrace that had driven him from his father’s court. What choice did he really have?
    “None of the dead you see here can touch your heart,” the duke of Bistan said, gesturing with a glowing hand at the other wraiths who stood with him. “Is that what you want us to believe?”
    “It’s the truth,” Cadel said, “whether you wish to believe it or not.”
    A small smile touched the dead man’s lips, so that with his head cocked to the side, he looked almost like a mischievous child.
    “There is one though, isn’t there? One that you fear?”
    Cadel shuddered, as if the air had suddenly turned colder. He wanted to deny it, though it wouldn’t have done him any good. The dead could sense the truth.
    “Yes. There’s one.”
    The duke turned to look behind him, and as he did, the mass of luminous figures parted, allowing one last wraith to step forward.
    He had known that she would come, of course-why should she have spared him this?-but still Cadel was unprepared for what he saw.
    She wore the sapphire gown, though it was unbuttoned to her waist, as it had been that night. Her skin glowed like Panya, the white moon, and her face was as lovely as he remembered, save for the smudge of blood on her cheek. But Cadel’s eyes kept falling to her bared breasts and stomach, which were caked with dried blood and scarred with ugly knife wounds.
    Lord Tavis’s dagger still jutted from the center of her chest, its hilt aimed accusingly at the assassin’s heart.
    He had wanted to make her murder appear to be a crime born of passion and drunken lust. He had succeeded all too well.
    “You stare as if you don’t recognize your own handiwork,” Brienne said, her voice shockingly cold. “Don’t let my lord’s dagger fool you. It was your hand guided the blade.”
    Cadel started to say something, then shook his head.
    “Do you deny it?” she asked, her voice rising, like the keening of a storm wind.
    He looked up, and met her gaze. Her grey eyes blazed like Qirsi fire and tears ran down her face like drops of dew touched by sunlight.
    “
Do you
?” she demanded again.
    “No.” It came out as a whisper, barely discernible over the sobs of the other worshipers.
    “Did I deserve to die like this?” She gestured at her wounds and the blood that covered her. “Did I wrong you in some way?”
    “No, my lady.”
    “Was I a tyrant? Is the world a better place without me?”
    Cadel actually managed a smile. “Surely not.”
    “Then why?” the wraith asked. “Why did you do this to me?”
    “I was paid, just as I was paid to kill most of those standing with you.”
    “You murder for money.”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    He blinked. “What?”
    “Why would any person choose such a profession?”
    Cadel stared at her a moment. With all that had happened, and the way she glared at him now, he found it easy to forget that