The Choosing (The Pruxnae Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

his broad shoulders. Why hadn’t he claimed her already?
    He paused at an
open doorway and tugged her closer, tucking a warm arm around her shoulders.
This room had what looked like cooking appliances of some sort on the far end
and a table down the middle, long enough for maybe six to eight people to sit
comfortably.
    “Dyakul,” he
said.
    “Kitchen?” she
guessed, and he shrugged.
    What she wouldn’t
give for a good translation program. Maybe then she could get him to understand
that he needed to let her go now before her parents discovered she was missing.
    He led her farther
down the corridor and pulled her into a small room at the end. A wide panel
dotted with knobs and buttons was set into the far part of the room under a large,
blacked-out screen. Two swiveling chairs were bolted into the floor directly in
front of the panel. More instrumentation filled the walls, while a third chair and
a smaller panel were set against the wall to her right.
    Ryn let go of
her hand and squeezed between the two chairs, taking a seat in the left one. He
touched several mechanisms, stared intently at a rectangular screen set into the
panel, and grunted.
    She eased her
way into the room behind him, soaking in every detail. It reminded her of the
control room in the Wyanata’s dam, one of the few places in Arden Hollow where
technology bloomed freely. The Tersii didn’t eschew the sort of technology Ryn
used in his home, but they didn’t exactly embrace it, either. It was a tool,
her father often said, and most Tersii treated it exactly that way, as a method
for improving their lives without losing sight of the traditional values of
hard work, self-improvement, and wise stewardship of the land.
    The first thrum
of interest hummed through Ziri. She perched tentatively on the edge of the
chair to Ryn’s right and watched him carefully, memorizing his actions so she
could repeat them later if she needed to. He glanced at her and smiled,
flashing a dimple. She jerked her gaze to the panel. If she softened every time
a handsome man smiled at her, one of her two handfastings would’ve taken and
she’d have children by now.
    Of course, if
she were handfasted, she likely wouldn’t have been stolen from her home,
either.
    Ryn’s fingers
tapped the panel. She lifted her gaze to his, and he slid his fingers along a
depression set into the middle front of the panel. The large screen above the
panel flickered and a star field burst into view. Ryn flicked his fingers and
it disappeared.
    Ziri bit her
lip. He was watching her, like he was waiting for her to do something. She
reached hesitantly out and slid her fingers along the depression the way he
had. Stars winked into view ahead of them, their number far richer than the
ones she observed from her garden at night.
    “Where are we?”
she asked, then pressed her lips firmly together. He couldn’t understand her.
She had to remember that, had to remember that she couldn’t trust him. He
wasn’t worthy of her friendship or consideration, hadn’t been since the moment
he’d chained her to his bed.
    She swiveled
away from him and slumped into the seat as he fiddled with the panel’s
controls. A planet appeared on the screen, small and distant. The screen
wavered and the planet jumped closer, then closer still, and Ziri stared
blankly at the yellow-orange planet and the wisps of white clouds painting its
atmosphere.
    Tersi.
    She’d never been
off planet, not once, and her parents only rarely. The Tersii weren’t a
spacefaring people. Traders came to them, not the other way around, and her people
were quite content with that arrangement.
    But she
recognized the surface on the screen, recognized the large, near-dessert
continents and the jagged spine of the Brula Mountains. Tersi’s one large water
body spun slowly into view. Her parents had taken her to its western shores on
vacation several times as a child. She’d always loved the water and would’ve
dived right in if her mother