Page 52 of The Traitor Queen (The Bridge Kingdom 2)

Lara sat against the cool stone of the wall, taking another sip of water. Her eyes stung with maddening fierceness, and she prayed the damage wouldn’t be permanent. They needed to be flushed, but for that, she required cleaner water than she had. She was soaked from having fallen into the spring, sand scratched in places where it really shouldn’t, her guts ached, and all of her muscles were cramped. But worst of all, she was freezing, her wet clothing like ice against her skin as the desert’s temperature dropped in the growing night.

“Where are we?” His voice was raspy. “What is this place?”

It was a secret place. A place she’d never intended to ever return. “This,” she whispered, unbuttoning her sodden dress and pulling it over her head, “is where it all began.”

27

Aren

Aren walkeddown the cool corridor, listening to the thunder of the typhoon outside, the air heavy with moisture and the charge of lightning. He had a hundred things to do. A thousand. But like iron to a lodestone, he was drawn from even the most important of tasks to find her.

Pausing on the landing of the stairs, he rested his elbows on the railing to look down into the foyer of the palace. Lara sat on the floor amidst a dozen children, who all watched her with rapt expressions. She was reading to them, as she often did during storms, her voice rising and falling dramatically, the children leaning forward with anticipation as the tale reached its climax. Sensing his presence, she looked up, a slow smile crossing her face.

Boom.

The palace shook with the intensity of the thunder, and several of the children jumped in alarm.

“Easy now,” Lara whispered. “There is no danger here.”

Lightning flashed, illuminating the vaulted room, and it struck Aren that for it to do so was strange, because there were no windows.

Boom.

All the lamps guttered out, plunging the palace into darkness. Screams filled the air, and Aren raced down the steps, tripping and stumbling in the darkness. “Lara!”

More screams.

“Lara!”

Lightning flashed again, and for a heartbeat, Aren could see. See the palace floors and walls splattered with crimson. Then once again he was cast into darkness.

Boom.

“Lara!” he shouted her name, feeling around in the darkness. “Where are you?”

More lightning, illuminating Lara on her knees, her father standing behind her with a knife to her throat. “Tell us how to break Eranahl.”

Aren jerked awake.

All around him was blackness and noise, and he coughed violently, his mouth as dry as sawdust, tongue tasting like grit.

Panic raced through him, and he clawed away the scarf wrapping his face, his knuckles brushing against the soft texture of hair.

Lara.

Her shivering body pressed against his. One of his arms was beneath her neck, the other wrapped around her torso, their fingers linked. She coughed, then rolled to face him, still asleep. And though he knew he shouldn’t, Aren tightened his arms around her, holding her close against the icy cold of the desert night.

The noise was incredible—as intense as that from any typhoon—the raging wind slamming sand and God knew what else against the sides of the small stone building. Thunder made the ground shake. Despite the closed door and the total lack of windows, dust and sand still hung in the air, forcing him to pull the scarf back over his nose and mouth, though he hated the suffocating feeling of it.

Lara had said little after revealing they were in the compound where she’d been raised, both of them so exhausted they’d fallen asleep next to one another, her wearing his shirt in lieu of her soaked dress. But it hadn’t required any explanation for Aren to realize that she’d saved his life.

He last remembered being surrounded by gritty, choking blackness, and then nothing, until he’d woken to her pouring water into his mouth. Which meant she’d managed to both find this building and drag him inside, and then she’d gone back out to retrieve water. Seemingly impossible feats, though she’d proven them otherwise, and it elicited from him a grudging admiration.

Lara’s capacity to endure hardship was nothing short of astonishing, and that surprised him and yet somehow . . .didn’t.Even when she’d been hiding her true nature from him, she’d shown herself to be both adaptable and willing to push herself through the worst sort of circumstances. Part of it was training—what Serin and the rest had put her and her sisters through during their time in this place, but that wasn’t the whole of it.

Willpower.That was what kept her going. Sheer force of will and a stubbornness to match.

But what did she hope to gain from helping him?

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