Read Online Not Magic Enough and Setting Boundaries Boxed Set (The Coming Storm) by Valerie Douglas - Free Book Online Page A

The last time Kort appeared he’d ridden off with her prize stallion to sell as riding stock. It had taken two weeks to get it back and she’d been lucky to get the animal before he’d been gelded.
    Kort had sold him for a fraction of what he’d had been worth.
    Petra held a cold piece of meat to the Delae’s bruise to ease the pain.
    “Why is he here?” she whispered.
    “Either I’m not sending him enough coin,” Delae said with a sigh, “or he’s spending it too quickly. Otherwise, I don’t know.”
    She didn’t dare offer him more money to leave either or he’d be convinced there was more she wasn’t giving him, that she’d been holding back from him.
    Which of course she was. 
    Over the course of the day many of the folk of the homestead reported Kort skulking and poking about as if he looked for something. He was short-tempered and angry - so much so that most of their people actively avoided him.
    There was an air about him even Delae found disturbing, as if he were on edge for some reason.
    If she didn’t know better, she’d have said he was frightened. But what could he be frightened of here? There was no one to challenge him except her. Yet he was clearly nervous and irritable, even more so than usual. It was disturbing and unsettling.
    She knew better than to ask, it was unlikely he would tell her.
    In disgust, Kort slammed his knife down at the food offered to him for dinner.
    “Tasteless slop,” he snarled. “I get better in the slums of Doncerric.”
    Most days Delae ate alone, save when Dorovan had been here. It was only on the rare occasions when Kort was here that they ate together as a family. It was a sham, a sop to convention, but it kept the peace and Delae couldn’t deny the benefits of it.
    Not this time, though.
    Lifting her eyes to him, without a glance at his mother and father who well knew this was the best the homestead had to offer, Delae said, “Then why don’t you go back?”
    “I should,” he shouted and threw the bowl at her as he stormed away from the table, taking the jug of wine with him.
    The bowl glanced off the arm she threw up to protect her face.
    As angry as he was, she took care not to sleep in her own bed that night.
    Still, she didn’t get a peaceful night’s sleep either.
    “Lady,” Hallis whispered, “milady, wake up, I been keeping guard, keeping watch, he’s gone and found it…”
    Stunned, furious, she shot to her feet, terrified and nearly in tears.
    If he had, she’d kill him.
    “Go to bed, Hallis,” she said, quietly and, snatching up the sword, ran down the hall.
    “Might have known this was where the bitch hid her money,” Kort muttered, holding a single candle, pulling the bag from the hidden niche in the wall.
    Quietly, from the doorway Delae said, “And if you take it, we’ll starve.”
    He spun, furiously, reminding her suddenly and startlingly of a maddened boar with his bloated face.
    She fought the urge to weep, to beg.
    “Where is it? There should be more!” he demanded.
    “Supplies were needed,” she said, begged. Pleaded. Fighting sobs. “We bought them. Half, Kort. Take half and go. I’ll send you more as soon as we have it. Half, no more.”
    “Or what?” he snarled.
    She looked at him. “Or you try to get past me and one of us dies. I’ll take my chances with King Hastan, thank you very much”
    “Hastan and his Dwarven bride with their half-breed son,” Kort said. “At least he’s prettier than you. Think you can best me?”
    There were tales of Dwarven women who were as big and bulky as their men but Delae knew better. In truth they were small, warm and lovely. Delae had been lucky enough to meet the Queen of Riverford two summers past when she’d bought one of Delae’s tapestries.
    She only answered his last question.
    “A sword in the gut?” she said with a careless shrug, “you’ll be just as dead, it will just take longer. Or, I might slip…”
    The sword tip dropped a little, toward his