WinterofThorns Read Online Free PDF Page B

Your Grace, but…”
    He moved so quickly she had no time to
react. His hand snaked out and he grabbed her savagely by the throat to thrust
her against the wall. Her head hit the wainscoting and bounced back, a pitiful
whimper escaping her throat.
    “Where. Is. Lord. Seyzon’s. Room?” he bit
out, squeezing her neck to punctuate each word.
    “Th-there, Your Gr-grace,” she managed to
reply. She pointed to a door two down from where they stood in the corridor.
    “Go to your room and wait for me. Allow no
one in save me and speak to no one. No one,” he ordered. “I’ve business
to attend to before I see to you.”
    She tried to smile but he was cutting off
her air. In her foggy mind, she reasoned that all was not lost. She might yet
be able to win herself a position at court.
    He released her throat and gave her a tight
smile. “Are we clear?” he asked.
    “Aye, Your Grace,” she whispered, gazing up
into the hard planes of his handsome face.
    “Then go,” he said and stepped back. As she
sidled warily past him, he reached out to smack her hard on her more than ample
ass. She giggled like a schoolgirl though his hit had stung like fire. She did
not hear the word slut he tacked on as she hurried down the corridor to
her room at the far end.
    Hands on his hips, the prince watched until
the woman was safely inside her room before he went to Seyzon’s door. He didn’t
knock. He simply reached for the handle and opened the portal.
    Jana stiffened the moment the door opened.
Her heart skipped a beat as she turned to find the prince standing just inside
the room. Her eyes popped wide as he closed the door behind him then almost as
an afterthought reached behind him to twist the dead bolt into place. Door
secured, the edges of her world rippled as he dropped his hand to the broad
black belt at his waist.
    * * * * *
    “You know he will not hurt her, Seyzon,”
Gilbert Tohre, the Primary Elite Guard, said as he walked beside Seyzon on the
way to Riverglade’s dungeon.
    Seyzon couldn’t speak. He was terrified of
what Vindan might do. He cared next to nothing about himself, was thinking
entirely of Jana, and fear for her was like a sea urchin hatching inside his
gut.
    “From your lips to the goddess’s ear,”
Alden said. He was as pale as Jana had been. His nervousness was exhibiting
itself in the constant fiddling with the collar of his dress shirt as though
the thing was choking him.
    “The prince is a good man,” Gilbert said.
“Is he not, Seyzon?”
    “He can be,” Seyzon answered. “He can also
be a mean—”
    “I would not finish that thought if I were
you,” Gilbert cautioned.
    They had arrived at the cells. In the
distance Seyzon could hear the steady drip of water, and closer by, the squeal
and scampering of rats. Under foot, the stone floor was littered with filth.
    “It has been decades since anyone was
jailed here,” Alden said. “There has been no need.”
    Along the way they had picked up the
elderly man who had been in charge of the dungeon when Lord Alden’s father was
the overseer of Riverglade. Though he hobbled along and mumbled to himself, he
seemed competent. The large ring of rusty keys he had plucked from the damp
wall at the nadir of the long stone stairwell that led down to the dungeon
jingled in his arthritic hand.
    “Ain’t got no bedding left for the cot,” he
told Alden from a mouth devoid of most of its teeth. What was left was a
sprinkling of broken, pitted and darkly stained remnants. He fumbled a key into
the cell door’s lock. “Rats done got to that long ago.”
    “Smells like shit in here,” Gilbert
observed. “When was the last time that shitpot was emptied?”
    The old man shrugged. “Ain’t got no notion
of that and don’t rightly care. Jails is for those what break the law and they
get what they deserve.”
    “I want that pot emptied, you old coot,”
Gilbert ordered. He was peering through the bars at the porcelain vessel
sitting in the corner. Its