Siege of Stone by Terry Goodkind

Author:Terry Goodkind
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER 40

Left inside her lifeless cell, Thora was tired of waiting. She refused to let her captors determine her fate anymore, and she would not be blocked from the great city, her city. Ildakar had discarded her, shoved her into this dark corner where no one bothered to think about her anymore. Thora had reached her breaking point.

Her own husband had spread his poison, brought the city down upon itself, and then dashed off, laughing at what he had done. For a long time, Thora had felt a sneering indifference toward him, and now when she thought of how he had kissed her and stroked her skin, she felt nauseated.

High Captain Avery had been a far superior lover, so attentive, appreciating her for her beauty, not just her power. In the cell now, thinking of the handsome captain, Thora touched her arms, her breasts, let her fingers explore her thighs and between her legs, but what should have been a tingling erotic sensation was little more than a numb touch. Her body was more stone than flesh and could no longer experience pleasure.

How she hated Maxim, hated the duma members who had cast this petrification spell on her, the conspirators who had pronounced her guilty because they didn’t understand what she had done for Ildakar. Everything for Ildakar!

She felt like the unloved stepchild of her mother city. The leaders dismissed her vision and ignored her powerful magic that had protected them for so many centuries. Her heart was broken for how her dreams had crumbled.

She returned to the doorway of her cell, where the rune-engraved stone blocks prevented her from using magic to escape. Thora ignited a light in her hand and set it afloat. The glowing ball hovered in the air, illuminating the stone walls. She studied the spiderwebbed fracture pattern where, in her fury at Lani’s taunting, she had lashed out and damaged the block with her bare fist.

It was just a start. She knew she could do more.

Thora had to get out of this cell, had to see her city. No, she needed to escape this place. Much to her dismay and disgust, Ildakar was no longer her home. She understood that full well. Nicci and Nathan, the duma, the ungrateful lower classes who had revolted against Ildakar and killed her son Amos—they were no longer her people. No, Ildakar was not her city anymore, no matter how much she had given to it.

She bunched her fist, drew it back, and slammed against the stone above the cracked block. Her knuckles hit so hard that the blow resonated up her arm, sending a shiver of pain up to her shoulder. In a way, she was reassured that she could feel it.

But she hadn’t managed to crack the next stone. She needed more.

Something about Lani’s provocation had triggered the extra power in her. Now, when she thought about her dulled sensations, how she longed to feel the thrill of pleasure in that most intimate of places which was now dead to her, she felt anger again.

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