Sinner by Sara Douglass Read Free Book Online Page A

not move, pretending not to notice. She would make him beg. She would!
    Except he never begged. Always she ended on the floor before him, her hands clinging to his legs, her goldenwings spread out in appeal behind her, begging him to bed her.
    She would writhe before him, sobbing and shrieking, until he had her so completely in his power that she would scream her gratitude when he finally lifted her and threw her to the mattress.
    RiverStar frowned at her reflection. She did not like to have to beg…but, oh gods, how could she withstand him when his power stroked her, caressed her, penetrated her?
    As it did now. She shuddered, tears filling her eyes, and when he opened the door and entered the chamber she fell to the floor and begged, begged, begged…
    “You are unlike any other,” she whispered into his ear when it was finally done and they lay sweat-tangled amid the sheets. “None.”
    “I was made for a purpose,” he said, smiling, and kissed her brow.
    “Let me stand by your side as your lover,” she said. “Please. Let all see how good we are together.”
    “No.”
    “ Why not? ” she screamed, hate for him contorting her beautiful face. “ Why not? You can do anything you –”
    His hand caught at her face, his fingers digging deep, hurting so badly she whimpered.
    “You will tell no-one about us,” he hissed. “No-one! Do you understand? ”
    “Yes, yes, yes,” she whispered. “I will tell no-one. Never tell. No. Please, love me again. Please…please…please…”
    Zenith stopped in her chambers to change into a vivid robe and to give her face and hair a cursory check in her mirror. Caelum was right, it was time she left Sigholt for a while. She’d been thinking much the same thing – thusher reaction when Caelum had verbalised the unspoken thoughts that had consumed her for almost a week.
    Something was wrong. She couldn’t say what, or even what it might be related to, only that for the past few days a feeling of formless dread had been growing in her. Dread, and a sense of loss so deep that for three nights in a row she’d woken drenched in sweat, her hands clawing at the sheets.
    Thus the reason she’d been wandering about Sigholt so late tonight.
    These nightmares reminded her of those she’d had when she was much younger. Nights when she’d woken screaming, nights when the only way she’d agree to go back to sleep was sandwiched between the comfort of her parents. Axis had always questioned her closely about the dreams, but Zenith could never remember their details – maybe didn’t want to remember – and Azhure had refused to let Axis use the Song of Recall to summon them from her murky subconscious.
    “Leave the child be,” her mother would say softly, stroking the hair back from Zenith’s brow. “She doesn’t need to remember them, only to be reassured of our love.”
    And somehow that love had helped Zenith through. The dreams had begun to fade when she was eighteen or nineteen, and were gone completely by the time she’d reached her majority.
    Although there was still the problem of the lost hours.
    This was something she’d never told her parents about – why, she could not say. But some days she would suddenly find herself in a distant part of Sigholt, or even in a nearby valley of the Urqhart Hills, and have no knowledge of how she had arrived there. Hours, sometimes even half a day, would have been lost to her.
    These episodes had also lessened as she grew older, but Zenith still had one or two a year.
    And, in the past week, three.
    This was the reason she’d hesitated when Caelum had suggested she go to Carlon.
    What if she “lost herself” somewhere in Spiredore and came to her senses sitting on an icefloe in the Iskruel Ocean? How would she explain that to Caelum? How could she explain it to herself?
    Zenith hesitated in the centre of her chamber, a stunningly beautiful, slim birdwoman, robed in scarlet that contrasted vividly with the darkness of her