Royal House of Shadows Box Set by Gena Showalter Jill Monroe Jessica Andersen & Nalini Singh

Author:Gena Showalter, Jill Monroe, Jessica Andersen & Nalini Singh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

To my sweet Alfreda on her eighth birthday, with the rest of the story to come when you turn sixteen.

—Your maman

Reda’s heart thudda-thudded in her chest as she brushed her fingers across the last word. Maman. Her older brothers had teased her about putting on airs, calling her “princess” and poking at her because there was nothing remotely royal about any of them. They were army brats and proud of it.

You’ll never get anywhere by looking backward. The major’s voice suddenly came so clear he might have been standing right behind her. Which he wasn’t; he was overseas. It was just that the words were such a familiar refrain: eyes up and ahead; one foot in front of the other; look ahead, not back. Words to live by.

“You’re right,” she said softly. “I know you’re right.” She should put the book back in its box and set it aside, maybe even lock it in the fireproof safe where she kept her unused passport. She should take comfort in knowing she had a cherished memory back, and then focus on more important things—like filling out those applications.

But she turned the page, anyway, unable not to glance at a picture of the young, innocent girl with her hamper. Then one of a huge wolf—her maman had called it a wolfyn—stalking her along the pathway and watching with too-human eyes as she entered her grandmother’s cabin, only to find it empty. The next few pages showed the wolfyn and girl together, the story relying on the text more than pictures. But then the huge beast morphed to a shaggy-haired man with hot, feral eyes, and the girl looked up at him, face bright and excited, like she was looking at a handsome prince, not a leering wolfyn. But now Reda saw something she hadn’t before: the girl looked disconnected, and she was almost smiling past the wolfyn, not at him.

Reda’s stomach dipped. She had seen that look on the faces of roofie victims.

She skimmed the next few panels, realizing that her maman must have skipped some pages. Or had she seen the pictures as a child and not really realized what they meant? Because now, looking at them with an adult’s perspective—and that of a cop who had worked rape cases, though mercifully far fewer than would be the norm in a larger, grittier city—the girl’s vacant, glassy expression and rag-doll compliance to the wolfyn’s G-rated yet highly suggestive demands smacked of drugs or brainwashing. Or both.

She hadn’t been seduced. She had been compelled.

Reda shuddered. “That’s not really the way I remembered this part.” But then again, most fairy tales had started out dark and bloody, rarely reaching mainstream puppies-and-kittens territory until Disney got hold of them.

Something buzzed in the back of her brain, like a trapped bumblebee of a thought that wouldn’t land long enough for her to catch its meaning.

“Poor girl,” she murmured, touching an image of the young woman lying heavy-lidded near the hearth of the cottage, where a fire burned low.

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