The Dare Collection September 2018. Stefanie London

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ love. Love for Damien. Love for the child we created in three nights of passion. Love for the potential we hold if only there is a way.

      Even in all this darkness, love—a fantasy I never believed to be real—still exists.

      I suck a shuddering gulp of air deep into my lungs and set my jaw. I have no idea how I will survive this night, but I have to try to believe. Even if the Black Watch does take my life in a few short hours, it can’t take the power of this love from me.

      And that has to count for something.

      A heavy march of combat boots on flagstones draws closer. They halt outside the stable.

      Boom! Boom! Boom! comes the bang of a drum, the execution drum.

      Four Black Watch soldiers enter my stable, their faces obscured by black ski masks. I’ve heard stories of Nightgardin public executions. They aren’t common, saved only for those who commit the worst offenses against the state. There were a few in my childhood, but I was never allowed to watch. At the time, I thought my parents were trying to protect my innocence. Now I realize that they simply didn’t want me in public. I was the princess intended to be kept out of sight and out of mind.

      I wince when one of the guards removes a sharp blade from a scabbard, but they won’t hurt me away from the lights and cameras. Instead, he cuts my bonds and my arms collapse against my sides like two sacks of potatoes.

      “She put up quite a fight earlier,” one tells the man beside him. “Sent Captain Augustin to the hospital to get stitches.”

      I can’t restrain a smile at that news.

      “We could muzzle her,” one growls.

      The biggest one steps forward and cracks his knuckles. “Or knock her teeth out.”

      “Enough.” A fifth man enters the stable. He’s got a puckered empty hole where his left eye should be and a large angry scar that distorts half of his face. “You have your orders. The princess is to be left unharmed until the broadcast begins.”

      Ah yes. There is a twisted ritual to my death. Protocols must be preserved.

      The man with the missing eye reaches out to grab my arm, and I spit in his face.

      I won’t make this easy.

      But he throws me over his shoulder as if I weigh nothing and begins striding away. Loratio, my stallion, stomps and huffs as I pass, but to no avail. I beat on the man’s back and shoulders, but I might as well be caressing him for as much as it seems to bother him.

      Minutes later, we come to a stop beneath a platform draped in purple velvet and bearing the Nightgardin crest. Upon it are two high-backed chairs, one occupied and one empty. My mother is dressed head to toe in white, her face somber, her hair tied in a severe knot. She looks as pure and merciless as the Old Testament God.

      She rises and steps forward. “Good people of Nightgardin, it is with a heavy heart that we gather here on this evening to bear witness to what happens to those who betray the kingdom. No one is above the law, from the farmer in the fields to our very own princess in the palace. A crime against the state is a crime against us all, and the penalty for treason is...death. Princess Juliet, as the Queen of Nightgardin, I condemn you to one hundred lashes for your crimes. After which your body will be burned, living or dead, in an attempt at purification. May God have mercy on your soul.”

      The drum beats three times, and she takes her seat on a high throne. My father isn’t there. He must not have yielded. Perhaps he will burn tomorrow night.

      The crowd is utterly silent. I feel the heat of thousands of eyes on my body. The quiet will not last long. I won’t be able to endure one hundred lashes, let alone fire, in silence. But I will not give my mother the show she desires.

      “A word, Mother,” I call out, and the crowd stirs. They aren’t expecting this. No one talks back to the queen in our kingdom. “You might burn my body tonight, but there is a flame that you’ll never be able to extinguish, that of the love that I bear for my husband, Damien, Prince of Edenvale, and our unborn child whose life you will snuff out as well. Some fires burn too bright. May God have mercy on your soul for trying to stop true love.”

      The uneasy murmurs in the crowd increase. Even the guards on either side of me seem uncertain what to do next.

      Finally, Mother rises again. “Proceed,” she says in a tight, high voice. This isn’t going according to her plans. She expected me to meet my fate like a sacrificial lamb. Instead, I’ve shown her a boldness she never knew was there—a boldness I never knew I possessed until I met Damien Lorentz, banished prince of our sworn enemy, Edenvale.

      I’ve been the good, obedient daughter for too long, and look where it got me. Now it’s time for me to be a strong woman who doesn’t go down without a fight.

      “I said, proceed,” Mother says again, her voice rising, going hard and ugly. “Make it two hundred lashes, and anyone who hesitates can join her.”

      That jolts the guards out of their stupor, and they begin dragging me toward the stake.

      “This is murder!” I scream. “You are killing your own child—your own grandchild—for the crime of love when you know that’s not your true motivation. The only reason you are taking my life is for your own ambition. You are the guilty one.”

      My words are brave, but my strength is no match for these men. They bind me to the stake, but no one meets my eyes. The drum beats louder and louder, playing my death song.

      I lift my eyes to the sky in time to see a shooting star cut across the horizon. And here at the end of it all, without hope, but full of love, I whisper my final wish.

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      Damien

      AS INSTRUCTED, I park the Alfa Romeo in a wooded area a few miles outside the Nightgardin border. Air travel would have been too noticeable, yet I fear none of that matters now. Even though I made it here faster than anyone should be able to drive, it still took hours—excruciating hours where I had to be alone with my own thoughts, imagining what that ruthless witch and her spineless king might be doing to Juliet.

      Juliet, who thinks I forgot her.

      Juliet, who thinks I cannot love her.

      Juliet, who may not be alive by the time I get to her.

      As soon as I exit the vehicle, something rustles in the brush up ahead.

      I’ve been in a bar brawl or ten. I can hold my own if my hands are not bound behind my back or if I’m not clocked upside the head with a fucking pistol. But I didn’t think of obtaining a weapon before I hopped in my car and drove—my singular focus getting to my wife and child in time to save them both. I hadn’t really thought about the how.

      The sound comes again; this time the entire bush shakes.

      “Show yourself,” I say, readying myself for hand-to-hand combat.

      A horse whinnies and my shoulders drop. I follow the sound, guided only by the light of the moon. On the other СКАЧАТЬ