Knight of Darkness by Kinley MacGregor Read Free Book Online Page A

touch him.
    Shock riveted him as all of his anger fled. It wasn’t either of them.
    Instead, it was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her long, dark brown hair fell in soft ringlets all the way to her waist. Her face was small and oval, with brown eyes tinged with amber that slanted up like a cat’s. Her lips were full and inviting.
    But it was her pained expression that seared him as she gently used a cloth to wipe at the blood on his brow and cheek.
    “They told me to feed you,” she breathed in a soft, dulcet tone that was tinged by an old Anglo-Saxon accent.
    He laughed at that. “Why bother?”
    “To keep up your strength.”
    “So they can torture me more? Forgive me if I’d rather die of starvation.”
    Merewyn was surprised by his dark humor. How could he make a joke now? She frowned at the damage they’d done to him. His brow was split and bleeding. His lips swollen and purple, but not nearly as much as his left eye, which he could no longer open at all. There was no trace left of his handsomeness. Indeed, he looked more like her when she’d been a crone.
    She couldn’t imagine how much pain he’d have to be in. Her own beatings had hurt so badly attimes that she hadn’t even been able to move afterward, and none of them had left her this bloodied or swollen. How could he even be conscious? During her centuries at Camelot, she’d seen a great deal of horror and numerous atrocities, but never anything like this, and the fact that it was his own mother who had done such was incomprehensible to her.
    Her heart aching for him, she carefully wiped away the blood from his mouth, then picked up a small bite of garlic-roasted venison and held it to his lips. Given his earlier comment about starving, she half expected him to spit it at her or refuse. Instead, he dutifully parted his lips and allowed her to place the meat on his tongue.
    Varian wasn’t sure why he was allowing her to feed him at all as the salty meat burned the cuts on his lips and his loosened teeth. Yet he couldn’t seem to help himself. He was afraid that if he refused, she’d leave him, and he was strangely enjoying her pampering, such as it was. No one had ever been so kind to him, especially not when he was weak like this. All the people he’d known, including his father and brother, had only attacked him more whenever he was down.
    Her touch was gentle and warm, and it soothed him on a level that was frightening.
    But what surprised him most was the fact that she wasn’t a miren, mandrake, Adoni, or sharoc. There was no magick to this woman whatsoever. No power.
    She was human. Completely.
    How was that possible?
    He winced as he swallowed the meat down his bruised, parched throat. “Why are you here?”
    She looked back at the tray of food on the floor. “To feed you.”
    “No,” he said quietly. “How can a human be here in Camelot?”
    Her eyes turned dark and sad. “By great foolishness on my part.”
    It was then he understood. And when she met his searching gaze, he knew exactly what had happened to her. “You made a pact with an Adoni.”
    She nodded glumly.
    To his shock, Varian actually felt for her and whatever stupidity had possessed her to make her bargain. The Adoni never fulfilled their promises, unless they involved pain and torture. No human should ever be at their mercy. “How long have you been here?”
    “A few hundred years.” There were tears in her eyes that she didn’t allow to fall as she wiped more blood from his brow. “Early on, I kept thinking that I would eventually die of old age and leave here. But they wouldn’t even allow me that. So here I am, eternally at their mercy.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    She frowned at him as if she found his words as hard to believe as he did. Yet he truly meant them. “Why should you be sorry? I’m not the one chained to the walls.”
    She did have a point. “True, but eventually, I’ll get out of here and kill them.”
    She looked doubtful as she fed