The Golden Dynasty by Kristen Ashley, now you can read online.
Prologue
Running
I was running.
Running on those stupid, flimsy little sandals.
Running for my life.
He was on his horse, I could hear the beast’s hooves pounding behind me, hear this mingled with my own, panting, ragged, panicked breaths – and they were getting closer.
I was covered in blood. Not mine. It was still warm from spurting from that man’s body.
I didn’t know where I was or how I got there. I wasn’t certain what was happening. I went to bed in my bed in a world I understood and I woke up here in a world that was entirely foreign to me, everything about it, and not one thing about it was good.
And now I was running for my life.
The horse’s hooves got closer; I knew they were almost upon me. Frantic, I glanced back and saw I was right. Not only were they close, the man, the rider, so huge he seemed giant, had leaned so deeply to the side, his body was in line with the horse’s middle.
And his long arm was stretched out.
I faced forward and tried to run faster.
But I couldn’t go any faster and I certainly couldn’t go faster than a horse.
I cried out when the arm hooked me at the waist, closed around and lifted me clean off my feet before my ass was planted on the horse in front of him.
Without thinking, I screamed bloody murder, twisted on the horse and prepared, instead of running for my life, to fight for it.
Chapter One
The Parade
One hour earlier…
I was in a pen, a kind of corral.
Yes, a corral. Like you keep animals in. Except basic, not modern, primitive – tall, thin but sturdy-looking stakes woven with leather bands all around.
There were enormous, extremely muscled men standing guard every four feet around the corral wearing nothing but pants made of hide, their upper bodies painted with black and white streaks. And the inside of the pen was filled with women dressed like me.
Flimsy sandals and wisps of thin, silky material of all shades curved around our bodies and held together at two ends at a kind of ring-like necklace at our necks.
Their faces were made up to extremes. Heavy kohl eyeliner. Pink, purple, green and blue eye shadow. Penciled in brows. Rouge. Deep red, pink or berry lips.
And everyone had lots of hair. Lots and lots of it. Out to there.
I suspected I looked the same.
Truthfully, if I hadn’t been in that corral wearing a light blue wisp of material and a silver ring-like necklace, I would have thought they looked cool. Whoever did their hair and makeup was a master. It was phenomenal.
But I was too terrified to think anything was cool.
There were people milling about around the corral looking in but not getting too close. They were not getting too close because the guards weren’t letting them get too close. We girls in the pen were off-limits, it was clear. They could look but they couldn’t touch nor could they speak to us.
Some of these onlookers wore weird clothing; the men, hide pants like the guards but some had loose vests on top or wide leather bands around their chests (only the guards had the black and white paint, however). Some women wore what looked like sarongs at the bottom, attached to and apparently held up by belts mostly made of woven material or leather or some were made of metal, silver or copper, but there weren’t many of those. Up top they wore bandeau-style or halter bikini tops, some a folded piece of material that went straight across the tops of their br**sts, the bottom coming down to a point.
There were other men looking in too, these men dressed in old-fashioned clothes, breeches, boots, flowy shirts, vests, wide-brimmed hats with feathers.