Read Online A Little Fate by Nora Roberts - Free Book Online Page A

slithered among the guests, a serpent in royal robes with his son and heir strutting in his wake. The black wolf prowled among them like a tame dog. Though his eyes were green and fierce, he kept his head lowered and kept to heel. Aurora saw the thick and bloody collar that choked his neck.
    She saw Brynn chained to the throne with her daughter bound at her feet, and the ghost of another girl weeping behind a wall of glass.
    And through the sounds of lutes and harps she heard the calls and cries of the people shut outside the castle. Pleas for mercy, for food, for salvation.
    She was robed in regal red. The sword she raised shot hot white light from its killing point. As she whirled toward Lorcan, bent on vengeance, the world erupted. The battle raged—the clash of steel, the screams of the dying. She heard the hawk cry as an arrow pierced its heart. The dragon folded its black wings and sank into a pool of blood.
    Flames sprang up at her feet, ate up her body until she was a pillar of fire.
    And while she burned, Lorcan smiled, and the black wolf licked his hand.
    Failure and death, she thought as the globe went black as pitch in her hand. Had she come all this way to be told her sword would not stand against Lorcan? Her friends would die, the battle would be lost, and she would be burned as a witch while Lorcan continued to rule—with the man she loved as little more than his cowed pet.
    She could turn this aside, Aurora thought returning the globe to its box. She could go back to the hills and live as she always had. Free, as the Travelers were free. Content, with only her dreams to plague or stir her.
    For life was precious. She rubbed the chill from her arms as she watched the last star wink out over Sorcerer’s Mountain. Thane was right, life was precious. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, turn away. For more precious than life was hope. And more precious than both was honor.
    She woke Cyra and Rhiann to help her garb herself in the robes of a lady. She would wear the mask another day.
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    â€œ W HY don’t you tell her?” Kern sat on a barrel eating a windfall apple while Thane fed the horses.
    â€œThere’s nothing to tell.”
    â€œDon’t you think the lady would be interested in what you are, what you’re doing. Or more what you don’t?”
    â€œShe looks for heroes and warriors, as females do. She won’t find one in me.”
    â€œShe . . .” With a secret little smile, Kern munched his apple. “Does not seem an ordinary female. Don’t you wonder?”
    Thane dumped oats in a trough. “I can’t afford to wonder. I put enough at risk last night because my blood was up. If she chatters about the tunnels, or what passed between us—”
    â€œDoes the lady strike you as a chatterbox?”
    â€œNo.” Thane rested his brow on a mare’s neck. “She is glorious. More than my dreams of her. Full of fire and beauty—and more, of truth. She won’t speak of it, as she said she wouldn’t. I wish I’d never seen her, touched her. Now that I have, every hour of the rest of my life is pain. If Owen chooses her . . .”
    He set his teeth against a flood of black rage. “How can I stay and watch them together? How can I go when I’m shackled here?”
    â€œThe time will come to break the shackles.”
    â€œSo you always say.” Thane straightened, moved to the next stall. “But the years pass, one the same as the other.”
    â€œThe True One comes, Thane.”
    â€œThe True One.” With a mirthless laugh, he hauled up buckets of water. “A myth, a shadow, to coat the blisters of Lorcan’s rule with false hope. The only truth is the sword, and one day my hand will be free to use it.”
    â€œA sword will break your shackles, Thane, but it isn’t steel that will free the world. It is the midnight star.” Kern hopped off the barrel and laid a hand