Allegories of the Tarot by Annetta Ribken, Eden Baylee Read Free Book Online Page B

like some horrid poison.
    Blood. He bled inside, under
his skin, and he knew that if he cut himself, if it opened, it would not stop
flowing until his veins ran dry.
    The monk had forced the boy’s blood disease into
Dmitri’s hand.
    Is this what he meant by “Be the Tsar?” Dmitri scoffed,
staring at his hand as the cold numbed his bruised flesh.
    Enough concentration and his fingers would be strong
again. How often had he healed himself? The knife wound in his shoulder after
that fight with the French emissary, the broken leg when he fell from that
damned horse as a child—this injury meant nothing.
    He stared at his fingers and willed the numbness and the
blood back to their places. His flesh would not riot. He would not have an
uncouth and ill-mannered hand.
    Except the healing did not happen. The blood pulled back only a fraction.
    Dmitri sucked in the morning’s frozen air, his foot
lashing out at the corpse. He’d bound Dmitri to the boy. To
irrelevance. To the Tsesarevich.
    Thunder rolled under Dmitri as the ice cracked. The sun
flooded over the river, the red hitting the floe’s edges. He flew backward,
crawling up the bank, as the river took the body and the rug.
    A prick and he clutched his swollen hand. Nothing bled. He
stared at his flesh, thankful for the mud’s smoothness.
    Thankful that his blood stayed where it should be.
    Dmitri glanced up at the rising sun. The cold of the
world burdened Russia, but she controlled it. His nation’s strength knew no
bounds.
    He looked down at his hand. This burden would not kill
him. He was Russian and he’d control what that peasant did to him. He’d keep it
in his fingers, make it obey. Dmitri would carry this burden, because he could.
He would not die before his next birthday. He had the strength needed to be the
Emperor.
    He stumbled to his car. The Tsar would not send him to the
Prussian front. Or worse, banish him to the decadent west of Europe. Nicholas
would see the truth. They’d clasp shoulders.
    Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov would now and forever do his
best for the Tsar’s family. For Russia. Because Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov could be Tsar.
    ***
    Read more about Dmitri in the Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~
Dragon series :
    Prolusio
    Games
of Fate
    Conpulsio
    Flux
of Skin
    For
more info, visit sixtalonsign.com .
    As a child, Kris took down a pack of hungry wolves with only a
hardcover copy of The Dragonriders of Pern and a sharpened toothbrush.
That fateful day set her on a path traversing many storytelling worlds—dabbles
in film and comic books, time as a talent agent and a textbook photo
coordinator, and a foray into nonfiction. But she craved narrative and a
richly-textured world of Fates, Shifters, and Dragons—and unexpected, true
love.
    Kris lives in Minnesota with her husband, two daughters,
Handsome Cat, and an entire menagerie of suburban wildlife bent on destroying
her house. That battered-but-true copy of Dragonriders ? She found it
yesterday. It’s time to pay a visit to the woodpeckers.
    ***
    THE HIEROPHANT
    On the Shoulders of Muses
    By Jessica McHugh
    The bell chimes, and Rico drops his sandwich.
    “Every damn time,” he grumbles, sighing at his lunch before
he switches on the transceiver. “Bridge here. Go
ahead, Dispatch.”
    He hasn’t eaten a meal in fifty years. Although he
doesn’t derive energy from food anymore, he still enjoys tasting it, chewing
it, even the faint memories of when something worked in his interest. His work
for others is monumentally more important, but that fact no longer satisfies
him. A bite of turkey wouldn’t change that, but the treat could lessen his
melancholy for a day or two.
    “New kid’s here. Want me to send him in?” Dispatch asks.
    “Can it wait until I’ve eaten?”
    Dead air. Whispers.
    Rico leans in to the speaker, his bones aching. A
resounding “no” barrels into his ear, and painful static crackles through his
brain. He uncoils the terminal cord from his ear, twisting the pin in the