The Twilight Lord Read Online Free PDF

considered what they would think of the good fortune that had given her a wonderful noble husband, three healthy sons and a respected place in her community.
    And Lara. Without Lara she might have ended up a concubine to a Forest Lord, only to be killed when she had delivered a healthy son for her master. She shivered and shook off the black thought. She was the lady Noss, wife to the lord of the Fiacre. She was loved, and she was safe. There was peace and they were far from Hetar. It was enough, she thought as she rubbed her distended belly and felt the child within move lustily. “I am going to call you Mildri,” she whispered softly to herself, smiling. And then her three sons came running toward her and Noss laughed with her happiness.

2

    T HE CHAMBER WAS A square one. Its walls were black marble veined with silver. Tall silver censers burning fragrant oils lined the room, their flickering flames casting shadows upon the walls. The floors were wide boards of ebony edged in strips of pure silver. At one end of the room, a square throne of gray and silver marble had been placed upon a matching marble dais beneath a silk canopy of purple and silver stripes. To the right of the throne, a colonnade of shining, veined black marble offered a view of the surrounding mountains between its pillars. The sky beyond was reddish-dun colored. On the wall opposite the throne were great double doors of silver. And directly in the center of the chamber had been set a footed silver tripod holding a wide black onyx bowl filled with crystal clear water.
    Kol, Twilight Lord of the Dark Lands, waved a languid hand over the vessel. The water roiled for a moment, grew dark and then cleared once again. “Ahh,” Kol said, staring down at the beautiful woman revealed to him in the water. “Soon, Lara. Soon you will belong to me and I shall have your magic combined with mine. I shall take both Hetar and Terah, and our worlds will be one.” He smiled a dazzling smile.
    He was a very tall man, his skin faintly bronzed, his hair midnight-black, his eyes a dark gray that sometimes seemed almost black. His face was a very masculine one, yet he could almost be called beautiful rather than handsome. His cheekbones were high, his nose long and straight, his mouth wide and sensual. He had thick, bushy dark eyebrows and long, dark eyelashes that were tipped with silver. He wore a simple dark robe with a round neck and long sleeves embroidered with silver at his wrists.
    “Will it be soon, my lord?” asked the man who stood by Kol. He was a dwarf with the wrinkled brown visage of an old man. His back was slightly crooked, his fingers gnarled with age, but his brown eyes were sharp with curiosity.
    “Aye, Alfrigg, soon, for I feel the mating lust beginning to rise within me,” Kol answered his chancellor’s question. “The Book of Rule says when that happenstance occurs, I must take the faerie woman for my mate. She is destined to give me my son.”
    “She will not come willingly, for she has a mate whom she loves,” Alfrigg said. “And faerie women will not give children to those they do not love.”
    “I have summoned the Munin,” Kol replied.
    “The Munin? My lord, that is dangerous. What do you want of them?” Alfrigg looked concerned by his master’s news. “The Munin are not easy creatures and can be treacherous if provoked.”
    “If I steal the faerie woman from her world she will resist me. But what if I have the Munin steal her memories before I take her?”
    “What good is she without her knowledge of magic, my lord?” the chancellor asked. “No matter that she is the woman fated to birth the next Twilight Lord, you need her magic, as well. If she has no memory of her magic then she is of little use to you other than as a life bearer.”
    “The Munin will place her memories in an alabaster jar and restore them to her as I require, but first I must convince her to trust me so completely that when I return her knowledge of