Page 8 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
My knees trembled. The rumors were true–they did have blood in their weapon hilts, swirling around in their transparents prisons as if asking for more sacrifices.
The Blood Brotherhood had come. The only other Clan aside from the Protectorate that had weathered centuries, invasions, and wars, and had turned out stronger for it.
Everyone around me, all these ferocious, powerful Clan members who nobody dared to even look at the wrong way, sat petrified.
Leading the fighters was the man my parents had tried to keep me hidden from my entire life.
The man I was destined to marry in the first place.
The vicious heir to the Blood Brotherhood Clan.
The pride of the Rohen Dynasty.
The crown prince known as The Dragon.
He’d found me.
Chapter
Three
EVIE
Nobody moved.
I smelled it in the air, wafting from the crowd like an acrid cloud.
Fear.
As the mighty Dragon stepped forward, I stopped breathing.
The prince looked fearsome. He was tall and imposing. He tilted his chin at the huge fighter standing right behind him, whose short, blond hair was almost as white as his stone face. A tremor passed through the crowd as the ghost of a man raised his arm in an unhurried arch. The sentinels and more than half of the guests jolted, as if struck by an unseen force, then just stood there, frozen.
My heart leaped in my throat.
Beside me, Allie flicked her palms with practiced ease. But the blue tendrils didn’t come. She glanced at her fingers, horrified, for the briefest moment, then schooled her face into amask of rage and calm. But I heard her harsh breaths and saw the muscles tensing in her shoulders.
“What did he do?” I whispered, barely moving my lips.
Allie shook her head, silencing me. She didn’t take her eyes off The Dragon.
The prince was a fierce, poised contrast, with moonstone skin and midnight black hair that fell past his shoulders, and had a feline grace so at odds with his unflinching gaze.
I hadn’t had a chance to see my share of men, but I recognized an apex predator and the hush that fell as the prey sensed one among them. This predator was on the hunt.
He wore the same shadowy uniform as the rest of his Clan members, small vials stitched into the leather in a criss-cross pattern, the blood inside them winking as it swirled. A golden dragon pendant, the Rohen sigil, hung between them.
Sinewy muscles flexed underneath the rich leather. He was living, breathing confidence, from the top of his high, chiseled cheekbones, sharp enough to cut, down to the tip of his mighty sword, held steady in his right hand.
He was lethal and gorgeous. The kind of feral beauty that was almost stupefying. The kind that kept you awed and paralyzed until it struck.
There was carefully controlled power in his steps as he prowled closer, each beating against my heart.
Cold sweat ran down my spine.Thiswas my true fiance? This perfect killer whose name was feared throughout the entire continent?
“Such a darling little wedding.” His grin was sharp, but his eyes terrified me more, even as they stayed mercifully away from mine. They were the color of ice, the kind that cut straight to the bone. His fighters gripped their frightening weapons harder. “Pity we weren’t invited. No hard feelings, we found our way here and arrived just in time.”
Right as The Dragon passed him, Orion “The Mountain” Brawd rose with lightning speed. Whatever the ghost had done, it hadn’t affected him.
