A Jewel for Royals by Morgan Rice

Author:Morgan Rice [Rice, Morgan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morgan Rice
Published: 2018-03-13T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sophia felt as though she were walking to her execution as she made her way down the beach toward the Master of Crows. Sienne stalked beside her, but even that protection didn’t seem like enough right then.

She put a hand over her belly protectively, thinking of what might happen to the child inside her if he chose to cut her down, but it wasn’t just him she was afraid of. The boats out on the fjord still had their cannons turned in toward the shore, and could still fire at any moment.

Shall I make things more comfortable? he sent over to her. The battles in the Dowager’s kingdom have given me power to spare.

He gestured, and the crows around him rose. He opened his coat, and more poured from it, joining with the others, until the space around him was black with them. They beat their wings, and the sand around Sophia rose up in answer to it, the dust forming a cloud that turned the rest of the world into shadows.

“I got the idea from something your sister did to my men,” he said, as Sophia got close to him. His tone was oddly formal, while his accent sounded like something that had been preserved from an earlier time. “Of course, when she summoned mist, she killed them in it.”

The fear within Sophia spiked at the threat contained in that, and she fought to push it back down. She put a restraining hand on Sienne’s head as the forest cat growled.

“If you’d wanted to kill me, you would just have attacked,” Sophia said, hoping it was true.

The Master of Crows regarded her the way one of his creatures might have looked at something, his head shifting slightly from side to side as if to get a better look.

“Perhaps I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t run,” he said. “Perhaps I’m more interested in letting the crows feast on you than in this little dukedom.”

“And are you?” Sophia asked. She looked around for a way to get clear if all this went wrong, but around her, all she could see was the swirling dust from the beach. It wasn’t even possible to see which way led back to the others.

That was bad, because she doubted that she could fight a man like this one. He was taller, stronger, and not weighed down with months of pregnancy, even without taking into account the part where he was well armed and Sophia had no more than an eating knife. Sienne might make a difference, but Sophia didn’t want to sacrifice the forest cat’s life just so she could save herself.

“Not yet,” he said, with a smile so brief it was barely there. “The crows will be fed better by you being alive. You will give them so many deaths, Sophia Danse, and each one will make me stronger.”

Did he think that the use of her name would intimidate her? Sophia stood up tall, facing him down the way she’d faced down everyone from rude noblewomen to bandits.

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