Temperance by Ella Frank Read Free Book Online Page A

remained silent.
    “How are you doing that?”  
    Colors started to appear within the brightness and swirl together as she watched, spellbound by the display before her.
    “Wait for it…”  
    She couldn’t have moved to save her life or her sleeping sisters’. “Wait for what? What are you doing?”
    “I’m going to show you who, and what, you need to see. It just takes a little longer now.”
    She brought her eyes up to focus on the man who was fixated on the light. “Why?”
    When his dark eyes found hers, she noticed that they were black as night.
    “Because it is a time that’s long passed.”
    Curious about his riddles and tales now, she asked, “I don’t understand. What’s in the past?”
    That was when he gave a half smile and nodded towards his palm. “Your parents as they once were, Naeve, and the world they left behind.”

    * * *

    “Kai!” Ry’Ker shouted as he stormed into the old armory.  
    The doors created a loud bang as they slammed shut behind him, and he spotted his brother immediately. It wasn’t hard considering he was in the process of beating the hell out of a piece of brightly glowing iron. On the upside, at least it wasn’t a person. That was something that Ry’Ker had heard his brother was apt to do on occasion.
    “Kai , ” he repeated with much more force this time.
    His brother’s arm halted where it was raised in the air, gripping a hammer. He spared him a quick glance before he turned the narrow piece of steel resting on the solid anvil and brought the hammer down, starting up the same unforgiving rhythm.
    Ry’Ker put his helmet on the large wooden table in the center of the room and made his way over to where his brother was working. He remembered when they were young boys of six and seven, spending many hours in there with their father, learning how to craft the perfect sword, knife, and arrow—some of which still remained hanging on the wall behind Kai. Now, here he stood in front of a stranger, a man he hadn’t seen in years—his own brother.
    He knew that coming here was a risk. One he wasn’t sure would pay off. They needed as many men as they could get, and no one knew the Taise Forest better, or despised the Empress more, than Kai.  
    When he’d mentioned his thoughts to Li’Am, he’d been wary at first. But the night Seraphine had come to her brother and told him that she’d succeeded in bringing the women back to their land, Li’Am had made a choice.
    “Go to your brother, Ry’Ker. I don’t care what it takes. Get him on board.”
    “I know, Kai. He won’t make this easy. He will expect…compensation.”
    “Whatever he wants. I’m sure we can come to some kind of arrangement. If we are to succeed, we have to have him on our side.”
    That was the only reason he was now standing in a place he’d sworn he would never come back to.  
    When it was clear he could be there for hours, he reached for the handle of his sword, drew it from its sheath, and placed it across the piece of metal being pummeled. That got a reaction.  
    Kai dropped the hammer with a resounding clang on the stone floor and finally spoke. “Want to remove your sword?”
    Being the younger of the two, he’d always looked up to Kai. Not only because he was one of the tallest men he’d ever met, but at the time, Ry’Ker had always believed him to be one of the greatest. That was until he’d betrayed him in the most monumental way of all.
    Eyes the same color as his own stared him down, but he wasn’t about to let his own brother intimidate him.
    “And if I don’t?”
    Kai narrowed his eyes and they turned to slits. “Do not test me.”
    “Or what? Are you going to kill me?”
    Kai’s mouth twisted into a cruel line, and before he could even blink, the piece of burning-hot metal was wielded to disarm him in one precise move. Somehow, Kai had gained the upper hand and was now holding the tip of the iron to his throat.
    “Do you doubt that I could, little