Read Online Third Daughter (The Dharian Affairs, Book One) by Susan Kaye Quinn - Free Book Online Page B

she hadn’t ever pictured herself boarding a train for the mountains of Jungali in order to do it.
    Aniri examined the couple dozen other passengers boarding the train: ladies in slim silk dresses with the kind of high collars fashionable in the Queen’s court. The colors of their dresses blended in a bouquet of deep greens, burgundies, and golds. The men were slightly more muted with plum and black jackets over raw silk shirts. Only a few noticed her standing alone on the platform. They kept their stares respectfully short. It wasn’t entirely unheard of for her to leave the palace grounds, but most of her travels had been limited to single carriage affairs to local climbing spots or on expeditions to a coastal town with the Queen and her court on holiday. On those occasions, they had the train to themselves, since the many members of the Queen’s court filled every seat.
    A figure caught her notice as he moved quickly through the crowd, skipping past the slower moving travelers and shouting apologies in his wake. Her breath caught in her throat.
    Devesh.
    Aniri looked to the train in a panic. All of a sudden, being so far from the car where she would board seemed foolish. Before she could think of a way to avoid him, it was all too clear she couldn’t. He was upon her.
    “Aniri!” Devesh called even before he reached her, and she was forced to turn back to him. His breaths heaved out of his chest when he arrived at her side, as if he’d run the entire way from the embassy. His hair was slightly damp, his linen nightshirt barely buttoned, and the laces of his boots pooled on the rough wood of the platform, clearly not having been tied in his haste. Dev set down the long traveling case he carried. In his other hand was clenched a piece of parchment. She recognized the royal stationary she had labored over last night, pouring her heart onto the page, hoping he could read between the lines and see that her actions didn’t reflect her love for him.
    But perhaps he had read too much, because here he stood. He grasped her shoulders, his hands warm and pulsing from the run, crushing the letter to her stiff silk traveling clothes.
    “Devesh—”Aniri said, but then Dev broke all decorum and crushed his lips to hers. His arms wrapped around her, not holding back in the slightest in his passion. Aniri struggled to push him away, and suddenly she was free of him. Janak had hold of Devesh, literally yanking him off Aniri by the back of his half-buttoned shirt. Devesh swung at Janak, which pulled a gasped “No!” out of Aniri. Janak easily dodged Devesh’s punch, landing one of his own in Devesh’s stomach, which bent him over double.
    Aniri found her voice, shouting an imperious, “Janak!” that caused him to pull a flat-handed chop that had been aimed at Dev’s throat.
    Janak roughly shoved Devesh away and turned to Aniri. “My lady, your train awaits.” His normally impassive face was mottled, but with anger, not exertion. He could easily have killed Dev with that single well-placed strike, the kind that earned the raksaka their reputation as silent assassins as well as royal guards. But her anger matched his: it was not his place to come between her and Devesh. Not now, and not before, when he had betrayed their affair to her mother. Her anger reached a new height with that thought.
    “The train will wait for me,” she said to him, her voice harsh with anger. “And you may wait on board.”
    If he did not heed her command, she would banish him from the mission altogether, whether her mother approved or not. Janak hesitated so long Aniri nearly sent him packing… but either the fury in her face or his sense of obedience turned him sharply on the hard heel of his boot. He strode to the train, where Priya stood, hand to her face and horror in her eyes. Aniri ignored them both, as well as the crowd that had frozen all around them to watch.
    Devesh had straightened, recovered somewhat from Janak’s