Two Queens (Seven Heavens Book 1) by Ryan Holden Read Free Book Online Page A

it had been behind rock. Orion saw, seared as with flame, his father's hand, bloody and stuffed into the halter. His body made no effort as the horse's neck rose up but swung like a pendulum into its shoulder. The horse lost his balance and tripped the other way when, rising up again with its powerful hindquarters, it screamed.
    Orion knew that humans screamed and was used to it. But the horse was the first animal he had heard scream. Not a wail, not a whimper, not a high-pitched squeak. A scream.
    Orion had never heard a horse scream before. He never wanted to hear one scream again. Only the sound like the “harrumph” of old men. In one second what he thought he knew about horses exploded, like a dry leaf when it's stepped on. That one scream had so much passion and intelligence behind it. And terror and horror.

 
    Its left forepaw trod the empty air. Its right jerked spasmodically, caught between Devlin's legs. With a last wild look from its eyes the horse fell of the edge of the mountain.
     
    Astra's face turned red. She breathed short bursts as if trying to speak. She clutched at Enda. “Devlin dies. Tell Orion.”
    “Oh no! Ramona!”
    Astra convulsed again. Blood ran out of her mouth. She spat it out. “Take. Ring. Queen. A sparrow.” She fell back.
     
    Orion sat under drumming rain. He hated and feared the mountain. He hated the loud men who called up to him to come down. He hated himself for having Kerry when his father did not have Myra.
    He cried into Kerry's coat then sat pressed against her, willing her frame to fill the aching emptiness he had within him. It was no use. Yelling a wordless noise he pushed himself off the mountain onto Kerry. She stumbled sideways then wheeled downhill and ran. He bounced on her back, willing it to be over, hoping it was over. Hoping that there was a place he would be with his father again.
    Kerry's hooves left the ground and Orion floated weightless for a moment as beautiful as a rainbow.
    But it was not to be. With a staccato thudding Kerry found her feet and navigated her way down the mountainside, slowly depressing the headlong rush.
    Mere seconds later, shaking and breathing shallow, jerky breaths she stood with the boy on her back in front of the horsemen.

Ten
     
    Paris had enough of wandering around, hearing local gossip until he was blue in the face, running through his plan again and again and again. In short, anything but the thing that needed to be done. His hand still went to the strange weight over his left ribs. The heavy steel annoyed him, whacking him every so often when he abruptly changed direction.
    In villages nearer Darach he hinted at the raven-tressed woman. Villages further west or even north didn't understand the question, the barmaids taking it as an insult. He didn't know her taken name and so eventually circled back southeast.
    He heard more of the same stories the high-pitched woman had told him. Once, though, he was told of her husband's background, the word “husband” always marked with a different voice or replaced with a different word. He was illegitimate, born to an unmarried country woman. No one knew who the father was. The joke outside Darach was that it was a problem of too many candidates, not extreme secrecy. Then the stories faded into a heated debate over who of the young couple was more to be despised.
    “I tell you all,” one woman said at the town inn, “he's lucky to have her. Why, she's beautiful, none of the tales deny, and what did he expect, being baseborn with no father? That any woman would look twice at him is a great gift.” She nodded at her audience with the air of one who had a share in bringing about the said gift.
    “Aye, that any woman should look twice is a wonder. But who here would consider a witch fit company for even a bastard? He's a harmless fool with no pity from me but she—why, excepting a monster from the utter East”—at this the speaker drew his palm down in front of him from head to