Roman by Heather Grothaus Read Free Book Online Page A

he and the woman were gone. She heard him speak in a low voice again. “You will fetch me at any time if you have need of me? I must have your word or I shan’t leave at all.”
    â€œI will. Val will be here soon to look in on me.”
    Isra’s heart skipped in her chest. He’d come back.
    She heard the door scrape closed and then heavy footsteps growing louder as he approached. He took the seat Maisie had recently vacated, but beneath his huge frame it seemed a child’s chair. He pulled his right arm toward him and held the elbow in his palm.
    â€œAre you awake?” he asked.
    â€œYes,” she whispered. She tried to ask what had happened to his arm, but her words were like gravel in her mouth.
    Roman leaned forward and retrieved a cup that was out of Isra’s line of sight. “You must either hold up your head or try to grasp the cup. I fear I have only one capable arm at the moment.”
    Isra lifted her right hand from the pallet and saw that it trembled. She wrapped her fingers around the cup and discovered the tips beneath her nails were quite numb. She grasped it as firmly as she could. While she concentrated on lifting the cup, Roman slid his wide palm beneath her head and lifted.
    Her lips stung as she fitted the rim to her mouth, the sweet taste of the water made salty by her own blood. But each swallow came easier, as if the water was holy elixir in this strange prison. She drank it all.
    Roman eased her head back down onto the hard pallet and then took the cup from her before sitting in the chair again.
    â€œYou are injured,” she said, her words smoother but still heavy with rasp.
    â€œA gift from the man I found you with,” he said. He paused, as if waiting to see if she would ask the question she was too frightened to give voice to. “He is dead.”
    Isra closed her eyes for a brief moment. Thank God.
    â€œAre there more following you?”
    She emerged from the darkness once more at his question, to look at this man who seemed to be the embodiment of light with his pale skin, his curling, almost-white hair, and his glittering blue eyes. She was still so afraid. Afraid of the people who effectively held her captive, afraid of this strange land, afraid of Roman Berg’s question, afraid of what a truthful answer might mean for her.
    But she would not lie to him.
    â€œI do not know. Probably.”
    He said nothing, only nodded while he dropped his gaze to the floor for a moment. Then his face raised again and Isra was enchanted by the way his eyes seemed to hold all the colors of the sky.
    â€œWhy are they hunting you?”
    Isra swallowed. No lies.
    â€œI killed the man who was to lead the party meant to kill Baldwin. Certainly when they found him dead and me missing . . .”
    Roman continued to watch her, his eyes flitting over her face as if trying to discern the truth beneath her swollen features.
    She continued. “They likely think me to have gone to Baldwin or to one of his vassals. But at least one tracked me here. There could be more.”
    â€œWhy have you come? Why have you sought me out?” he asked. “We are strangers, and you owe the king of Jerusalem nothing.”
    â€œThat night in Damascus,” she said, her voice already beginning to weaken again, “I was seeking revenge against a man named Abdal. He killed my mother. I knew that your friends’ capture and death meant great honor for him, and I wished him destroyed.”
    â€œAbdal is dead.”
    â€œI know,” she said. “But there were many evil men ready to take his place. The man who came after him is even worse and has stolen the last thing in my life that I held dear. It is he who has made the pact to kill Baldwin in a time of truce, and I must see that he fails.”
    â€œYou came all this way, risked your life, thinking to convince me to return to Syria to exact revenge for you?”
    Isra tried to shake her head, but it