The War for Mare (The Fall of Man Book 3) by Jacqueline Druga Read Free Book Online

different,” Iry stated. “But is it
inconceivable to you that we live amongst you in peace? As brothers
and sisters?”
    I laughed. “Yes.”
    “Then you have not learned anything of us in
your time here, Vala. Many of us can coexist with humans very well.
Only those of us who are pure, one hundred percent Ancient are
those that look slightly different.”
     
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    Finally, after hours of waiting, and the sun
had already risen, the court guard open the door for us.
    “The king shall see you now.”
    We stood up from our chairs in the hallway
and that was when I noticed the look on Susan’s face.
    “Why do you look so smug?” I asked.
    “It’s not smug. It is confidence,” Susan
said. “Because I am certain that the king will understand my
intentions.”
    Iry was bothered by her response, and it
added even more annoyance to his mood. He gripped her arm tightly
even though he didn’t need to all the way to the king’s
chambers.
    We stepped into the court of the king where
he sat on his throne.
    “What is it that beckons my attention,
educator?” he asked.
    “Iry pushed Susan forward. “This human
has—”
    “This human, if she has done anything,” said
the king, “is your business. She is from your house. You should
handle it, not me. What could she have done that has made you
disturb me?”
    “This.” Iry held out my arm exposing my
fresh wound marks still bleeding on my wrist.
    The king stood from his throne. “She draws
her blood?” he asked. “This is unheard of. It means nothing from
one human to another.”
    “Exactly,” Iry said. “This is the second
time she has done it. But it is not that she has done it, it’s why she has done it that I bring her to you.”
    “Why?”
    Susan answered “I did it for the queen.”
    “What queen?” the king asked.
    “Your queen,” Susan replied.
    “That is absurd. My queen was lost many
years ago during the Starvation period”
    “No!” Susan said strongly. “She is
alive.”
    “You lie. Guards! Take care! Take her for
treason and for taking from a food source.” Two guards hurried
forward both taking hold of Susan and dragging her back.
    “No!” she screamed out. “No! I’m not lying.
She’s alive. Ask Vala. She is seeing her.”
    Hearing her accuse me of something like
that, of seeing someone I did not know existed, threw me a little.
I looked at the king and shook my head. “No, I am not.”
    “Yes!” Susan screamed from the room. “They
brought you to them!”
    The king looked at me. “What is she speaking
of ‘has someone transported you?’
    “Not that I…” I paused. I remember. My
dream. “Unless it was a dream.”
    “What dream?” the king asked. “Did you have
an ejecting dream?”
    “Tonight. When I was awakened, yes. With all
that was happening was Susan, it slipped my mind. But I was cut
from it very quickly.”
    “What was the dream?” the king asked.
    “Savages. Many, many of them. Too many to
count. This thing stood up right in the middle of them. He was a
man from what I could tell. My eyes shifted from Iry to the king.
And then to Susan who had been halted by the door. “He was a large,
tall man with a human body, his skin was black as tar. Yet he had
the head of a Savage beast.”
    “Anubis.” Iry looked up to the king. “It
sounds like Anubis.”
    “I will agree. I should have known. He would
lead the Savages,” the king said.
    “Who is Anubis?” I asked.
    “He is the god of the dead,” Iry told me.
“The world in between the suffering and the damned.”
    “He would have the power to pull you through
past any blockader guard you have of your dreams,” the king said.
“But this does not mean you have seen the queen.”
    “Was your queen not a Savage at one time?”
Susan spoke up.
    The king looked as if he wanted to kill her.
“How do you know these things?”
    “Your daughter told me. She told me that the
queen was transformed and never returned from the Great Starvation.
But