Fallen in Love by Lauren Kate Read Free Book Online Page B

would take him past the scene of the worst moment of his life, he did not detour. He was on a mission.
    His horse, a stranger to him until a few hours ago—when he’d lifted her from the lord’s stables—adapted intuitively to his needs. She was a snow-white Arabian who looked fine in her black leather knight’s tack. Before Roland had found her, he’d had his eye on a dappled plowman’s horse with ample flanks—a workinghorse could travel longer than a nobleman’s horse, and on less feed—but Roland didn’t feel right stealing from the peasant class.
    This one—he was calling her Blackie after the single dark splash on her nose—had whinnied and reared when he first mounted her, but after a few discreet turns around the muddy path near the sheepfolds, they were friends. He had always had a knack with animals, especially horses. Animals could hear the music in his voice more clearly than humans. Roland could whisper a few words to a startled filly and calm her like sunshine after a tornado.
    By the time Roland passed through the mayhem of the marketplace, horse and rider were a seamless partnership, which was more than he could say for his armor. The set he’d nicked from the lord’s son’s armaments chamber in the castle did not fit him. It was long in the leg and narrow in the chest and it stank of sour perspiration. None of these qualities agreed with Roland, whose body was accustomed to an
hauter
couture.
    As he clipped past the gates, careful to skirt the lord’s line of sight, Roland had simply ignored the citizens’ alarmed looks and their conjecturing murmurs about what battle he was riding into. This formal armor—with its damned mail vest, girded with a twenty-pound embellished belt, and the stifling steel helmet that wouldn’t sit straight because of his dreadlocks—was worn solelyfor fighting; it was too conspicuous and cumbersome for casual travel. He knew that. He felt it absolutely with every shuddering stride of his horse.
    But this suit was the only thing Roland could find that would obscure his identity to the extent that he required. He hadn’t come all this way to be bothered with mortals attempting to seize and imprison a demon they mistook for a Moor.
    He needed a disguise that would not hinder his attainment of one goal: keeping Daniel’s medieval past self out of trouble.
    Not Lucinda. Daniel.
    Lucinda Price, Roland believed, knew what she was doing. And even when she had no idea what she was doing, she always did the right thing. It was impressive. The angels who followed Luce into the Announcers—Gabbe, Cam, even Arriane—did not give Luce enough credit. But Roland had first noticed a change in her at Sword & Cross—a strange heedless certainty that she’d never possessed in any of her earlier lives, as if she had finally glimpsed the depths of her old soul. Luce might not have known what she was doing when she stepped through on her own, but Roland knew she would figure everything out. This was the endgame, and she needed to play her part.
    That was why it was Daniel who worried Roland.
    It would be just like Daniel to blunder into Luce andruin everything. Someone needed to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid, which was why Roland had followed him through the Announcers in Luce’s backyard.
    But finding Daniel had been harder than he expected. Roland had been too late in Helston, just missed him at the Bastille, and likely wouldn’t catch him here, either. If he were being smart, Roland would just skip out and try to intercept Daniel in one of their earlier lives.
    If he were being smart.
    But then he’d spotted the two unchaperoned Anachronisms baldly scheming at the well—in broad daylight, in the center of the city, in their bad clothes and worse accents.
    Did they know nothing?
    Roland liked the Nephilim well enough. Shelby was a solid, decent kind of person, and not bad to look at. And Miles—he had a reputation for getting too close to Luce at Shoreline,