Silent Kingdom Read Online Free PDF Page B

wary. I could read the question in their look: Who would be at the door at this hour?
    As the man left to answer the door, his wife crept to my bedroom doorway and peered out. I closed my eyes, trying to keep my imagination from running wild. The king and his loyal guardsmen believed I’d died in the sea, so why would they be searching for me now?
    I tried to focus on the voices, but it was hard to hear over the beating of my heart.
    Snatches of the conversation reached my ear: “We are sorry to trouble you… Princess Halia is missing…”
    It was Narek’s voice. My throat tightened and the air caught in my chest, not letting me breathe. Did they know I’d survived, or was this search for mere show? Was there no escape?
    “The king and queen fear she has been kidnapped…”
    The world tipped in front of my eyes as fear overtook me. I clutched at the bedsheets, as if they could offer me protection, until my knuckles turned white. Here is the part where these people give me away and hand me back to my enemies, I thought. Who would disobey the King’s Guard?
    Blinking, I realized the woman was standing beside the bed. “Get up,” she said.
    I opened my mouth, gasping for air like a fish as I struggled to croak out something, anything to let the woman know I was in danger, but nothing came. Desperate, I shook my head and prayed my fear showed on my countenance.
    Her eyes flared with something. Realization? Determination? I couldn’t tell.
    “You are in danger from them.” It was a statement, not a question.
    I nodded frantically.
    Eyes widening, the woman pulled off her hooded cloak and threw it over me.
    Her voice was a whisper: “Quick!”
    I stood from the bed, the cloak so long it brushed the floor behind me.
    She threw aside the curtains and pushed the window open, then turned to me. In the moonlight, her eyes flashed like sapphires and her lips were a grim line. “I’ll lift you out and try to distract them. Get as far away as you can. We are outside the city walls, but not far enough from the capital. Find some place safe.” Her slender arms hoisted me up over the sill.
    I dropped to the earth and spun to face her as she prepared to shut the window. My heart fluttered at the thought of the risk this woman was taking if Narek and his men ever realized what she had done, but her command urged me on: “Run.”
    I plowed forward, my bare feet pounding against cold grass. Reaching the forest, I raced through without any direction or purpose other than to flee. How long I should run, or how far, I did not know, nor did I have any way to measure.
    To my horror, voices echoed somewhere behind me. Were the guards in pursuit already? Had they seen me flee? Did the woman’s husband give me away? I tried to increase my pace, but I was tired, cold, and weak. The world felt distant and yet all too close at the same time. I couldn’t catch my breath and sparks of light began to dance before my eyes. Blinking, I tried to make them disappear, but the world only seemed to close in on me further. How long had I been ill? Branches reached toward me, tearing at my hair and clothes and cutting my face. I stubbed my toes and tripped over roots and underbrush, slicing my foot on a sharp rock and nearly crying out in pain.
    “This is a fool’s errand!” someone behind me said. His words echoed in the forest, bouncing off the trees until it sounded like they were surrounding me.
    Stopping and pressing my back against a trunk, I scoured the trees for my pursuers. If I couldn’t outrun them, I could make myself quiet and disappear.
    “Stop complaining,” another man snapped. “There’s no danger this close to the forest’s edge.”
    This is Evren Forest, I thought with a shudder, wondering why the obvious thought had not clicked into place sooner. The forest of myth, the one featured in so many of the frightening fireside tales of Misroth.
    But I had a real, living danger to worry about, because the voices were getting