Untouchable Read Online Free PDF

to him. Unlike his brother, he was discriminating, and he preferred short-term monogamous relationships to bouncing from one woman to the next with abandon. Those relationships never lasted very long. As soon as any woman got too close, as soon as she looked at him with curious eyes that asked too clearly, “What are you hiding?,” he found a reason to walk away. It was best that way. It was the only way.
    Now past thirty years of age, Alix had considered marriage a time or two. The same priests and ministers who had been demanding that Jahn marry had also been hounding Alix—though less strenuously and less often. Still, he knew the time was coming when he would be forced to take that step. His position demanded it. When the time came, he would be obliged to choose a woman who would be a distant wife. He would be forced to choose a woman he did not like too well, a bride who would not look too closely or ask questions he could not answer, and yet he did not wish to be shackled with a wife he did not like at all.
    The demands on a soldier were simpler, and there were times when he wished he could return to that time in his life.
    While the sentinels saw to the horses and the Tryfynian soldiers and servants began to erect the tents the females insisted upon each night, Alix walked away from them all, moving toward a shallow stream they had just crossed. He needed a moment of silence, a chance to breathe deeply and still the stirring at his core. He would not allow that stirring to rule him. He would not give in to the animal inside him.
    He would not become his father.
    Alix squatted beside the stream and splashed water on his face. The chill was refreshing and stimulating, and served to bring him into the reality of now. There was no need to ponder what might happen in months and years to come. First he needed to get through this trial and deliver Princess Edlyn to Jahn. Somehow he thought his brother would not choose the Tryfynian princess, even though she was more highly placed than the others who were being fetched for the same purpose. She was too harsh, too petty. A shiver of warning ran up Alix’s spine. What if his brother insisted that Edlyn become his bride, in the name of keeping peace with the neighboring country? What if Jahn chose a more agreeable bride, and forced his brother to wed the demanding, petulant Edlyn?
    Inside, a part of him rebelled against the very idea, but he understood himself well enough to know that if that sacrifice was asked of him, he would agree without argument. Whether he was called Alixandyr Beckyt or Trystan Arndell, he always did his duty without complaint. That was who he was, who he insisted upon being.
    “You confuse me.”
    Alix turned his head toward the woman who surprised him with her lightly accented voice. Annoyed at being disturbed,but also intrigued, he said, “You do not know me. How can you possibly be confused?”
    Sanura—blue-skinned, bright-eyed, and scantily clad— sat down beside him, not too close but more than close enough to make Alix’s mouth go dry. “Seeing into people is my gift,” she said, her blue eyes alight with that curiosity which always sent him running. His eyes were drawn to her full lips.
    “So I have been told,” he responded in a calm voice.
    “While it is true that some people are more complicated than others, at their core most are simple. Kind, greedy, cruel, needful . . . there is always a strong foundation deep within that we are forced to call upon or disguise or embrace. ”
    His heart skipped a beat. It was not possible that this woman could see anything of the struggle he lived with every day. She could not know.
    “But you,” she continued, easing her body closer to his, “you are not so simple. You are at war within, in a way I have never seen before. I did not understand until last night, when I saw you wandering through the camp at midnight. ”
    Alix breathed easier. The woman was a charlatan. “I was sound asleep at