Loving a Prince Charming - By Danielle Monsch Page 0,9
well as a drink to soothe her parched throat. The movement pulled her sleeve away from her wrist, exposing skin.
The moment Kira put her glass down, Sara picked up her arm and twisted it slightly so her inner wrist was visible. “What an unusual birthmark.”
The intricate bundle of lines on Kira’s skin was only an inch wide, but it was such a complex design that people often mistook it for a brand at first. “Yeah, it is unique. I like it.”
Sara rubbed her thumb over the mark. “Anyone who knows the old ways would say you were fairy-marked.”
Kira looked up from the mark to see the older woman staring at her, the blue of her eyes as kindly as ever, but there was force there as well, and a depth of knowledge Kira was going to drown in.
“Excuse me, please. Are there any rooms available?”
That someone had gotten so close without her noticing embarrassed Kira, though it was an unassuming man with his equally unassuming wife and son. She pulled her arm from Sara and leaned back, her father’s warnings zinging through her mind with an audible snap.
“Of course we have a room. Can’t let this handsome little man not have a roof over his head.” Sara was back to being the grandmother of all as she bustled the family in and got them settled.
Kira took in the inhabitants of the tavern again, observing them a little more carefully than she had the first time. They all looked happy and grateful, that was true, but their happiness was of the same variety as the family that just came in. It was a gratitude that they had found an oasis in the midst of their troubles and that they could lay down their worries for a little while.
Sara returned. “More to drink?”
“No, thank you. Is something going on, some sort of trouble?”
A spark shot through Sara’s eyes and she leaned forward, motioning Kira closer in a way that screamed she had good gossip to share. “They are refugees from the city of Tolshire.”
King Matthias’s city. Seth’s fiancée’s city. “I have heard nothing about Tolshire being in any sort of trouble.”
Sara’s lips thinned. “It’s being kept very hush-hush. The refugees aren’t supposed to be coming here. The soldiers are herding them to camps, but the camps are crowded and, frankly, unlivable, and as a result many of them are escaping and taking their chances to come here.”
Kira locked her hand around her empty glass, needing something to hold on to. “Why? What’s happened there?”
“The curse happened.”
The curse. That damned curse that ruled over every moment of Seth’s life – and, by extension, her own. Kira shook her head. “The curse hasn’t been fulfilled. There would be talk of nothing else if it was. No one could keep that secret.”
“No, at least, I haven’t heard that it was. What I have heard is that the fairy who cast the curse left a message for the king. To punish the king for being so arrogant about keeping his daughter safe all these years, when she finally does succumb to the curse, a dragon will appear in the city to imprison her forever. So the king has ordered the city evacuated until her twenty-third birthday is over.”
Damn. Bad. Bad. This was so bad. If Rosamund did succumb to the curse, Seth wouldn’t let a dragon stop him from trying to save her. The only problem with that was while Seth was a decent fighter, he was in no way experienced enough to slay a dragon.
He still couldn’t beat her dad.
Kira threw money on the table and ran for her horse.
Chapter Four
If he had been asleep, the light taps on the window would still have woken him. It was a lifelong signal between Kira and him and the only noise in the world guaranteed to rouse him.
But he wasn’t asleep. He had been unable to clear his mind of that damned perfect curve of Kira’s top lip, and the image of how her eyes had changed and darkened was on a constant loop. And now he headed towards the window to let in the cause of all of tonight’s turmoil.
At the sight of her, all his thoughts of how sunlight lit her hair or how the curve of her neck was more appealing to him than other ladies’ half-exposed bosoms faded. Her face was serious in a way she rarely was with him, outside of those rare moments she thought him in danger.
“What’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer