Wings of Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

found her by now if he’d had that one scrap of information.
    And right now, she wished more than anything that she could tell him of her present danger, ask for his advice, his help, anything.
    Oh, God, would she even be alive by morning?
    But no matter how hard she tried to create a telepathic link with Antony, she simply couldn’t. Only at the point of release, when she would touch herself and experience an orgasm, could she whisper his name in her mind and know that he heard.
    She had tried countless ways to talk to Antony short of standing on her head. She had attempted to scream his name inside her head, scream it aloud and in her head at the same time, whisper his name, cry out his name when she was having an orgasm all by herself. Nothing worked. Only in this one special moment, when they connected through her voyeur’s window, could he hear her, and then only once. Everything else had failed.
    She hated that she was so weak in this way. She hated that she was a prisoner. She hated that she still knew so little about ascended life and her powers. The only thing she had accomplished in three months was improving her flight.

Be wise and do not judge what creates love for others, since shoes often travel to unsuspecting feet.
    — Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth
    CHAPTER 2
    Rith was not an original thinker. He never had been. For that reason he relied on the future streams to guide him, all those beautiful ribbons of light that prophesied forthcoming events.
    He reclined on the dark blue velvet chaise-longue in his small private room adjacent to his office. He clasped his hands loosely over his stomach. He stared at the mahogany ceiling. His facial muscles felt strange and lax, almost burdened, and his throat was tight.
    He’d just emerged from the future streams and was devastated all over again. The same prophecy from last night had returned even stronger just moments ago, while the shower had been running and Parisa had been going through her nightly ritual.
    Parisa Lovejoy was to share a bond with Commander Greaves.
    It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.
    Parisa’s unspecified yet critical role in the war against the Commander had already been foretold numerous times. Rith had recommended her death to his master over and over, but for whatever incomprehensible reason, Greaves tended to play fast and loose with Seers’ prophecies. He couldn’t be entirely faulted for this, since the prophecies didn’t always come to pass. And Greaves preferred to work every angle of a prophecy before acting, and often succeeded in his rather daring ventures.
    But where the mortal-with-wings was concerned, the Seers’ predictions had been constant, and increasing in intensity in recent days. Rith had developed a sense of near-panic where Parisa was concerned. He was, himself, a man of power, perhaps more than the Commander realized, and of late he had developed a real knowing about just how dangerous Parisa was both to himself and to the Commander. He had several times urged Greaves in the proper direction, to get rid of the woman, but the Commander would not be moved.
    However, even with all Rith’s knowing, even with the numerous prophecies and their intensity, what had finally pushed Rith over the edge was this latest future stream about a bond-forging event. A sense of deep despair and of jealousy now devoured Rith whole. He could forgive the predictions about Parisa’s danger to the Coming Order—but not that she would become so intimately connected to his master.
    He could not imagine, even on a prophetic level, how Greaves could allow this travesty when even he, Rith Do’onwa, the master’s most favored servant, did not have such a bond.
    Earlier, when Parisa had asked to fly one last time before nightfall, he saw an opportunity to kill her himself. If she left his artfully crafted domes of mist, he could follow after her and cause a most unfortunate but very fatal accident.
    But she hadn’t left. She