Bodyguards by Kallysten Read Free Book Online Page A

aren’t going anywhere without you.” He hesitated for a
second before he added, “Aedan and I... We’re not as strong here as we would be
in Foh’Ran. I can use the Quickening to make it more difficult for Rhuinn’s
guards to come into this house, but you’ve seen how it didn’t stop them before.
Any shield I build here will fail eventually; that’s the nature of this world.
Come with us back to Foh’Ran, and we’ll get Anabel back.”
    “But I can’t!” Vivien folded his
fingers over the pendant. “My life is here. We’ve got that presentation
tomorrow. Finals are in a month.”
    “Anabel could be dead already.”
    Vivien had never been
sucker-punched before. As she struggled to find her breath, she imagined it
felt a bit like this.
    “Time passes faster in Foh’Ran
than it does here,” Brad continued, stone-faced. “Every minute we argue here,
five minutes pass there. If she was taken two hours ago, she’s already been
there for ten hours. Rhuinn is not a pleasant man. If he wants her to tell him
everything that ever happened to you, from how many times you skinned your
knees while growing up to how many years you studied fencing, she will tell
him. It’s only a matter of time. And when he has what he wants from her...”
    He let the sentence hang between
them. The men downstairs, whoever they had been, had had no qualms about
hitting Anabel, however old or frail she might be. She was the only family
Vivien had, and someone might be hurting her at that very moment because of
Vivien. She swallowed back the tears that stung her eyes.
    “Should I... Should I pack a bag?”
she asked, looking at the ruined room around her rather than at Brad’s cold
eyes; he resembled his brother more in that moment than he had before. “How
long will we be gone?”
    “I don’t know,” he said more
softly now. “But it’s best to assume you won’t be back. Or at least not for a
while.”
    That last part was clearly an
afterthought. It made it harder to believe she’d be back at all.
    The strangest feeling took over
Vivien, and she felt like she was watching herself as she left Anabel’s room
and entered her own. She dug the duffel bag she had once used to carry her
fencing gear out of the closet and set it on her bed. She picked up clothes
from the floor and threw them in, not really searching for anything in
particular, merely filling the bag.
    She put her MP3 player in there.
She’d have taken her computer, too, if it hadn’t been destroyed. The thought
gave her pause; she wouldn’t be able to keep in contact with her friends from that
other place, would she? There’d be no one there she knew other than Brad—other
than the man she’d had a crush on for so long and who had rejected her that
very morning. She grabbed a few favorite books from her shelves, too; at least
she’d have something to do.
    The entire time, she was aware of
Brad’s presence just outside her room. He watched her without a word, offering
no advice about what she should pack. Was that place cold? Should she take a
coat? Would she need sunscreen? She was beginning to resent him, both for the
bad news and for his silence. When she pushed past him to go to the bathroom
across the hall, she gave him a hard look. He stopped her with a brush of his
fingers against her arm.
    “I know you’re upset,” he said
quietly. “I’m sorry the life you knew is about to change forever. But don’t be
mad at us. We didn’t decide to send you to this world, or to hide the truth
from you, or to bring you back to make sure you wouldn’t plot to take over the
throne. Aedan and I are the only ones you can count on right now. Being mad at
us won’t make your life any easier.”
    He retreated to the top of the
staircase; she had a feeling that, if she hadn’t run out from under his nose
before, he would have given her even more space. Troubled, she entered the bathroom
and transferred her necessities to the bag. She didn’t know what that