The Passionate Queen (Dark Queens Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

morning and received a cuff to the face for it—“did not bathe tonight, mistress.”
    It wasn’t true; I had bathed. But the stones smelled of peat and moss, scents I commonly smelled of since I had to bog through the swamps most every day to gather Zerelda’s herbs.
    If she walked to me and sniffed my neck, she’d know I’d lied.
    I swear I could taste bile on the back of my tongue.
    Holding my breath, I waited to see what she’d do, releasing it very slowly when her lip curled and she turned her face to the side.
    “You smell of waste. Ye’ll ruin my sheets! Get out and bathe, now!” She stamped her cane on the ground.
    I wanted to defy her, wanted to rant and rail at her, swear that I would never again do as she bid. That I was soon to be my own woman and I would not forget the torments she’d leveled on me, but Zerelda was not what she seemed to be, and I had no power against her.
    “Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled, already dreading the icy cold waters I’d be forced to step into.
    Zerelda took another step into my room, her eyes immediately shooting down toward the lumpy shadow on my floor.
    “Girl, I—”
    The rocks belonged to the boy; I would not let her find them. Reacting purely on instinct, I closed my eyes, bit down on the inside of my cheek, and made as though to walk toward her.
    But instead, I fell. Hard. My knees scraping against the wood, ripping a chunk of flesh out as a large splinter drove through my shin.
    Hissing, tears squeezed from the corners of my eyes.
    “You stupid, foolish girl!” She slammed her cane down onto the center of my back.
    The pain was exquisite. Blooming outward like a tight bud opening to the first kiss of morning sun. She hit me again, harder the next time, so that I lost my breath.
    “You nearly tripped me. You tried to hurt me. You did that on purpose,” she screamed, punctuating each sentence with yet another snap to my back.
    I said nothing, only whimpered with each swipe of her cane. She was right. I had done it on purpose. But not for the reason she’d imagined.
    My only consolation was that in her fury, she’d forgotten all about the odd lump on my floor.
    “Get outside now! Bathe this filth off you, and bring me back some wild turnips, my bones are aching. Go!” With one final slam of her cane that struck against my neck and had me seeing stars, she finally relented.
    My arms trembled, and it took me several halting tries before I was finally able to push myself up from the floor. I felt the tackiness of blood at my back and winced with each step I took that caused the dress to rub up against the wounds.
    “Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, every inch of me screaming in pain. I walked painfully slowly toward the front door.
    Hagar, I noted, was sitting at the kitchen table with a glazed look in his eyes when I passed him. He was mumbling incoherently and slightly drooling from the corners of his lips.
    After years of ingesting wolfsbane, I worried that he was beginning to develop a tolerance for it. The dosage should have knocked him out; instead he was little more than a drooling wastrel covered in his ridiculous skins and furs.
    Being half ogre and half man, he was a thick and powerfully built male. But his features were horrifying to look upon for one not expecting the sight of him. He had a thick brow ridge like that of his ogre ancestors, a heavy jaw, and a flat blunt nose. With yellowed teeth and patches of reddish fur that he called a beard lining his cheeks and jowls. He weighed at least a ton and moved slow enough, which made escaping him easy when I could put him down. But he was a power to be reckoned with when awake.
    I’d have to gather more bane on my way back in.
    Creaking floorboards had me scurrying out the front door. The absolute last thing I wanted was for Zerelda to catch me dawdling.
    The night was cool when I finally got to the water’s edge. I tried not to but couldn’t hold back my whimper of pain when I took the dress off. The blood