Forbidden Embers by Tessa Adams Read Free Book Online Page A

like her father had been known for his kind heart and pleasant personality.
    A spurt of guilt assailed her at the thought, ruining the last bit of pleasure she’d been taking in her flight. Her father was dead, murdered by the new Dragonstar queen, and Cecily had never been one to talk ill of the dead. At the same time, though, she’d never been a hypocrite. While she had loved her father very much, she hadn’t been blind to his faults. Silus had been arrogant in the extreme, diabolical and, more often than not, amoral.
    But he’d still been her father. And, for the most part, he’d been a hell of a king to the Wyvernmoons. She might not have agreed with everything he’d done or every decision he had made, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t had the clan’s best interests at heart through it all. He had just gone about it differently than she would have.
    Not that anyone had ever asked her. Then again, why would they? She might be a member of the royal family, but she was also a woman and in some ways—many ways—the Wyvernmoons were a clan stuck hundreds of years in the past.
    It was why her father had wanted her to marry Julian, after all. Or at least one of the reasons. Julian’s family had provided factionnaires and Conseil members for the royal family for millennia. They were one of the richest, most powerful families in the clan, and they were probably the only family with strong enough magic to wrest the throne away from the Fourniers by force, if they put their minds to it. Oh, it had been a long time since they’d tried—at least four or five hundred years—but her father had had a long memory. And while he ruled with an iron fist, in the years before his death, his sovereignty had been called into question more than once. The last thing he’d wanted was a challenge from Julian’s family, so in exchange for their loyalty, he had promised her to Julian.
    It had nearly killed her when she’d found out what he’d done, and for the first time in her life, she’d contemplated leaving the compound. Leaving the clan. Her whole life, she had longed to be useful, longed to have some sort of responsibility, the way Jacob had. To have some sort of role to play that would help her clan in a meaningful way.
    But when she’d been confronted with what her role was to be—marriage to a man she despised—she’d balked. Hugely. Had refused to even consider it. Her father had been furious, and she’d felt the considerable force of his wrath. She hated that her father was dead; hated more that he had died while they’d been completely at odds. The fact that she’d never have a chance to make things up with him haunted her.
    Shuddering at the hard truth, Cecily dropped lower and lower until her feet were on the ground. She winced when her sore front leg touched down, annoyed that Julian had managed to injure her arm so severely that a shift to dragon had not alleviated the wound.
    How could he possibly think that bullying me is going to get him what he wants? she wondered furiously as she tested the leg’s ability to bear weight. All he’d done was piss her off to the point that she could barely see straight. But, then again, Julian had watched her interact with her father for half a century, knew that intimidation was Silus’s favorite weapon to wield against her. What he hadn’t understood was that just because she’d bowed to her father didn’t mean she would ever do it for another man, and certainly not one as horrific as Julian was turning out to be.
    Cecily shifted back to human form so she could get a better look at the damage done to her elbow. What she saw made her curse. The bleeding had stopped, thanks to her first shift, but the skin was pretty torn up—as was the muscle beneath it. Though she healed quickly, she figured it would be a day or two before the arm was back to normal, especially if she didn’t get to Simone, the Wyvernmoon healer.
    She knew that was exactly what she should do—head