Lord of the Abyss & Desert Warrior by Nalini Singh Read Free Book Online

renowned for their knowledge and artistry, their libraries the finest in all the kingdoms.” She carried on when her audience didn’t interrupt, the ghosts as motionless as the green-eyed man on the throne of black. “Elden was also a land overflowing with magical energy, its people’s bodies touched with it.” That energy had given Elden itsstrength—and made it a target. “All of Elden’s grace and prosperity flowed from the king and queen. King Aelfric, it is said—”
    “No!” The Lord of the Black Castle rose, his hands clenched, his eyes black, the tendrils spiraling out to run across his face. “You will not say that name.”
    “It is only a name in a tale,” she said, though the merciless cold of his gaze made her abdomen lurch with the realization that he could end her life with one swipe of that razor-gauntleted hand. “It is not real.” Better to tell a small lie, if it would help her slip under the viscous cobweb of her father’s spell. “Surely, you aren’t a child to be scared of tales.” It was a chance she took, that he wouldn’t kill her for such insolence, but the stakes were too high for her to walk softly.
    “You dare challenge me?” Quiet words. Deadly words. “I will—”
    “If you send everyone to the dungeon, my lord,” she said, brushing an imaginary speck of dirt off her tunic in an effort to hide the trembling in her hands, “it’s a wonder you have any friends at all.”
    His eyes turned green between one blink and the next, the tendrils of armor disappearing from his face. “The Guardian of the Abyss has no friends.”
    She understood loneliness. Oh, yes, she understood how it could cut and bite and make you bleed. “I’m not surprised,” she said, rather than offering him her friendship. That would most certainly get her thrown back down into the bowels of the castle—he was a man of power and pride, of arrogance earned through dark labor. “It’s a dicey business,” she said, taking her life into her hands for the second time in as many minutes, “talking with someone who locks up anyone who disagrees with him.”
    Anger turned his bones stark against his skin, but then the green gleamed. “Tell this tale, Liliana. I promise, whether it is good or bad, you won’t have to spend the night in the dungeon.”
    Liliana didn’t trust that gleam, her heart thudding against her ribs as her hands turned damp. “What are you planning to do to me?”

CHAPTER FIVE
    H E SMILED . A ND SHE CAUGHT her breath at the heartbreaking beauty of him. Now she understood, now she glimpsed the child he must’ve been, the one who had won a kingdom’s heart. However, his words were not those of a child, but of an intelligent, dangerous man. “You must imagine what the Guardian of the Abyss might do to you.”
    It took every ounce of her will to find her voice again when all she wanted was to stare at him, this lost prince who had become a dark stranger. “King Aelfric—” she saw him clench his hands over the arms of the throne but he stayed silent “—was wise and powerful. It was written that his people would do anything for him, they loved him so much.” She’d spent many an hour in the archives, a place her father never went, though he kept a chronicler on hand to record his “greatness.”
    “Kings are not loved.” A rough interruption from the Guardian of the Abyss. “They rule. They cannot play games of nicety.”
    Liliana rubbed a fisted hand over her heart. “Some kings rule, and some kings reign,” she whispered. “Some are loved and some are not. Aelfric was loved, for he was just and treated his people with a fair hand.”
    “Fairness alone does not engender love.”
    She looked into that gaze turned inscrutable, wondered if he was asking a question, or simply stating afact. “In Elden,” she said, “it did.” When he didn’t interrupt again, she continued. “Its people, hungry for knowledge, did love to roam. Some even found a doorway to a realm