The Thirteenth Scroll Read Online Free PDF

convinced him
     that her magic was a tool she could use in his favor.
    They had been together less than a year when an assassin managed to enter their bedchamber. He had made it past Giraldus’s
     guards, but he could not sneak past her magic. Caught in the web of protection she habitually set over them each night, the
     assassin had raised an arm to strike—and found himself unable to move.
    Giraldus would have turned the man over to his guards and had information tortured out of him, but Aurya considered torture
     clumsy and unreliable; too often the subject died before everything could be gleaned. Instead, she asked Giraldus to give
     the assassin to her. An hour later, she knew everything the man’s mind had held—and he was by then a mindless, helpless threat
     to no one.
    The assassin had been sent by Giraldus’s cousin, Tyrele, who was next in line for the Barony, should Giraldus have no children.
     Aurya’s revenge on Tyrele had been as slow and deliberate as her action against his ill-fated tool had been swift. She could
     have killed him with any number of spells, but that would have been too easy. She wanted him to suffer, and she wanted others
     to realize what couldhappen to anyone she considered a threat… and she wanted Giraldus to see her powers at work.
    Tyrele died a slow, agonizing death of the plague, his swollen and disfigured body covered with unburst pustules and twisted
     in fever and pain.
    After that, Giraldus made certain Aurya was part of every occasion, whether he was negotiating a trade agreement within his
     own province, settling disputes over lands and borders, or simply hearing the petitions brought to him by the townsfolk. Most
     often, her presence was enough to ensure that events went the way Giraldus intended; it was rare anymore that she had to take
     a more… active… role.
    Throughout the nine years they had been together, she and Giraldus had many an argument—in the privacy of their own bedchamber.
     But they had only one true disagreement; it was ongoing—and its subject was marriage. Even after all this time, he refused
     to accept that she hated the entire notion.
    She stayed with Giraldus because she had chosen him as the means to the end she meant to have. She had come to his bed shortly
     after Anri came to the throne, and for the ensuing years she had been content to be the Baron’s consort, using her magic to
     prevent conceiving a child. She would bear no man’s name, be no man’s possession, nor be bound by any ties other than her
     own purposes.
    Now that the throne was empty again, Aurya had set her sights higher—for both of them. How long after that she would be able
     to keep both her freedom and her childless state, she did not know. But she intended to try.
    Now, on the battlements, they stared at one another, close to an argument again. Such a look from Giraldus would have had
     his courtiers and advisors stammering to apologize and his servants scrambling in fear.
    Aurya did not flinch.
    It was Giraldus who finally looked away. He raised one eyebrow and gave her the slightest of bows. “I’ll leave you then,”
     he said, his voice now filled with sardonic humor, “and do my
pacing
where I will. But if Elon is not here by nightfall, I’ll have his hide—and yours.”
    Aurya knew he did not like to be bested by anyone—even her. But as he strode away, she nearly laughed at the emptiness of
     his threat. Competent leader, fierce warrior—and acceptable, even accomplished, lover—Giraldus might be. But he did not have
     the ability to stand against the powers she could summon. She knew it… and so did he.
    Once Giraldus had departed, taking his frenetic energy with him, Aurya closed her eyes and let the welcome silence envelop
     her. She did not need her powers to know that Elon would be here within the hour. She could have said as much to Giraldus,
     but he needed to learn how to
wait
, how and when to let things come to him. In all their years