Read Online Forbidden (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) by Dawn Steele - Free Book Online

Earth!”
    Snow White awoke in cold sweat. Aein slept a good twenty feet away beneath a canopy of trees. The night rang with the occasional chirping of crickets, but the air was sharp with danger. Uneasily, she felt for the knife by her side. It was still thankfully there.
     
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    The longer they journeyed, the more surefooted Aein became. His tentative steps became confident strides. His speech became less mannered and his accent less pronounced. His wonder at the trees abated in the way a man walking through a path paved with jewels would find himself bored by them after a while. But he still ate every dandelion he found.
    On the fourth day, she heard a trickling in the distance. Her heart leaped. She came to a silvery stream and almost slipped on the wet, crumbling banks. The water was wild and mottled with smooth rocks. It smelled like ambrosia, so fresh it had a fragrance all of its own. She threw herself on the bank and dunked her whole head in.
    Water! Now she could finally be rid of Aein!
    Before she could lift her dripping chin, Aein flopped belly first into the stream, splashing her.
    “Oh,” she spluttered, strands of her now wet hair clinging to her like seaweed, “of all the rude, infantile things to mow me with – ”
    “Look,” he said, pointing to the far bank.
    She swung her head. A grisly sight met her gaze, something she hadn’t noticed before. Several ravens which had gathered flew off, disturbed from their feast, their wings brushing the leaves.
    Snow White and Aein half-swam and half-waded to other side. A breeze swept up as she stumbled onto the bank. She shivered in her sodden clothes.
    A man had been crucified upside down onto a tree. A large rusted nail was driven through his ankles. His arms dangled, his blood-caked fingers clawing the soft ground. The corpse wore a black beard that flopped over his open mouth. His eyes were literally empty, pecked down to the skull orbs. His black boots stood at the bottom of the tree. From the leaking stench, the corpse could not have been more than a day old, though Snow White did not consider herself a superior judge of rotting corpses.
    “Who did this?” Aein murmured.
    Snow White hugged herself. For the first time in many days, her bones felt chilled.
    “They’re probably still around, ahead of us,” she said. The awful reality of her situation slammed into her. The people who did this are not my stepmother’s soldiers looking for me, are they? Her heart began to thump in an erratic beat. She prayed Tom Cherry was all right.
    “Is this common among your natives?” Aein asked. “Do you kill each other?”
    “It’s fairly common. Of course,” she added hurriedly, lest he think they were all a bunch of murderers and cutthroats, “there are laws against this, but some people do it anyway. And it’s fairly legal to do it during wars.”
    The corpse’s sockets stared back at her, and she squeezed her eyes shut, thinking of Wolfsbane.
    Aein did not seem convinced. His narrowed eyes took in the corpse, seeming to memorize every detail: the buzzing flies, the dried blood on the nailed ankles, the matted beard.
    “Is there much cruelty among your people?”
    “Fairly,” she said, thinking of her stepmother. She turned to face the stream, its silvery ribbon of water a joyous sight in contrast. The wind lifted her wet tresses. A roiling, churning sensation started in her tummy.
    “Then is it fair to say that you are a cruel race?” he persisted. “That you would do evil unto each other?” He seemed to be pressing for a certain answer, for her to say yes. Once again, she felt an undercurrent of something sinister.
    “Why are you here, Aein?” she demanded, turning to him. “Why are you visiting us? Have your Eastern generals sent you to spy on us?”
    “No,” he began, “I – ”
    All her penned up anger and frustration came bubbling to the surface. Wolfsbane, Tom Cherry, her fugitive status, everything.
    “No, tell me!” Her hand