Furyborn by Claire Legrand Read Free Book Online Page A

old enough to sit in a saddle.
    Grinning, Rielle guided her mare beneath the maze of stilted spectator boxes. Her ears rang from the noise—gamblers shouting their bets, children racing through the crowd and shrieking with delight. Smoke from market vendors selling roasted pork sandwiches and blackened fowl skewers stung her eyes.
    She finally reached thetent set aside for Odo’s riders. The gown she wore was a favorite—forest green to match her eyes, iridescent vines sewn at the hem, a swooping neckline that showed off her collarbones—but the midday sun made her itch to rip it off. Leaving her horse with the paid swords guarding the door, she slipped inside to change.
    And froze.
    Audric was already there, clad in only his riding trousersand boots. His fine emerald tunic and embroidered jacket hung neatly from the back of a chair. In his hands, he held a plain linen riding shirt.
    He grinned at her. “Took you long enough,” he said and threw her a shirt of her own.
    She caught it, barely. “The crowds are larger than I had anticipated,” she said, though her throat was suddenly dry, and it astonished her that she could managea word.
    It had been a long time since she had seen her kingdom’s prince so unclothed.
    Growing up together, it would have meant nothing. She had spent hours playing with him and Ludivine in the gardens behind the castle. They had swum together in the lake surrounding the city, worshipped together at the Baths.
    But that had been before.
    Before Audric and Ludivine’s betrothal, anarrangement that bound the houses of Courverie and Sauvillier even closer together. Before Audric had transformed from her shy, gangly, awkward friend into Prince Audric the Lightbringer, the most powerful sunspinner in centuries.
    Before Rielle had realized she loved Audric. And that he would never be hers.
    She drank in the sight of him—the lean muscles of his arms, his broad chest, hisnarrow waist. He was not as dark as his father, not as pale as his mother, the queen. Dark-brown curls, damp from the heat, loosely framed his face. Dappled sunlight fell through the tent’s netting and painted his skin radiant.
    When he looked up at her, she flushed at the warmth of his gaze. “Lu’s all right?” he asked.
    “And enjoying the attention, I’m sure. And your mother?”
    “I toldher I’d take care of Lu, and that she should relax and enjoy the race.” He shook his head ruefully. “She thinks I’m a dutiful son—”
    “And instead you’re sneaking off to risk life and limb.” Rielle threw him a sly smile. “Your lie was a kindness. She’d be frantic if she knew where you really were.”
    Audric laughed. “Mother could use a fright now and then. Otherwise she gets bored, and whenshe gets bored, she starts to meddle, and when she meddles, she starts pestering me and Lu.”
    About when we will be wed. The unsaid words lingered, and Rielle could no longer look at him.
    She stepped behind the dressing screen Odo had provided, undid her gown, stepped out of it. Clothed in only her shift, she reached for the trousers Audric tossed over to her.
    “If I didn’t know better,”she said, keeping her voice light, “I’d say you’re sounding rather rebellious. And here I thought you weren’t one for breaking rules.”
    He laughed again. “You bring it out of me.”
    This was, she began to realize, a terrible idea. She should have asked Odo for a separate tent. Undressing five feet away from Audric was the sort of delicious madness for which she could never have prepared herself.
    God help her, she could hear the fabric of his riding tunic sliding against his torso. She could almost feel it, as if he were there beside her, drawing her gown up over her head, freeing her of the last remaining barrier between them.
    As she tried to wriggle into her own black tunic, cursing herself and her unhelpfully vivid imagination, she got her arm stuck through the heavy embroideredcollar.
    “Rielle?” came Audric’s