"Huff, Tanya - Fire's Stone V1.1 Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

The tossing stopped. The whimpering continued.

His twin still gripping his elbow, Kasil stepped forward, hands stained from contact with the floor. "You can't do this, Darvish," he whined as the iron bands fell clear, exposing torn and abraded wrists. "He's ours."

"The One he is," the older prince snarled, struggling with the last fastener. "He came into the palace through my room, that makes him mine."

"But he's in our room now," Shakana pointed out coldly.

"Your room?" Blood had dried around the bolt, nearly welding it to the band. "I thought this was the Chamber of the Fourth. ..."

She glared. "We serve the Fourth."

"You serve your own perverted appetites." He twisted viciously and inch by inch forced the bolt clear. With the thief lying unbound on the table he turned and faced the twins, a crazy light having nothing to do with the lamps burning in the depths of his eyes. "I'll fight you for him," he offered.

"Don't be . . ." Kasil tried to take another step forward but Shakana stopped him.

"He means it, Kasil."

Darvish smiled grimly, the thief momentarily forgotten

THE FIRE'S STONE

39

in the anticipation of beating both pointy little faces into an unrecognizable pulp. It was his turn to step forward. The twins stepped back.
"Highnesses?" Two guards stood in the doorway, a third hanging limply between them. He was conscious, but terror had quite obviously sapped the strength from his legs and made it impossible for him to stand.
The guard on the left bowed as well as he was able. "Highnesses, this is the man who let the thief past the inner gate."
Shakana's face wore the expression a farmer's might while examining a bullock in the market. "He looks strong."
"Strong," Kasil agreed.
Darvish's bark of laughter brought a moan from the new prisoner and worried frowns from the twins. He ignored both-he had the thief, but the guard would die; nothing he did changed anything, he found it bitterly amusing. Carefully, he lifted the thief from the table. "You've got something new to play with," he said as he settled the suddenly dead weight. The barely visible rise and fall of the tortured chest became the only indication he carried a living man. "I'll take what's mine and go." The copper head lolled against his shoulder and fell back, exposing the long pale line of throat.
"Darvish ..."
He had to pause anyway, so the guards could move clear of the door, their burden beginning to babble incoherent prayers as they moved further into the room.
"... what are you going to do with him?"
Darvish threw a dangerous smile back at the twins, careful not to let the strain of carrying what was after all a full grown man, show. "Whatever I please," he said.
THE FIRE'S STONE

41

Four

Pain. Old pain, constant pain, and for that Aaron was grateful. The body could get used to anything in time, even, given a chance, the searing agony that existed where he thought his chest should be. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think about breathing. Blind instinct tried to move him out from under the hurting. Training told him to be still. It was always better to be still, until you knew.

"He's conscious, I'm sure of that."

"He looks the same to me."

"You're not a healer, Highness." The middle-aged woman sat back on her heels beside the pallet and stretched. Formidable brows drawn down, she studied the work already done, then reached into the wicker basket resting on the floor by her right knee.

The prince peered over her shoulder. The thief had been under the healer's care for almost an hour but, Darvish had to admit, he still looked like shit. Between the twins and the wizards and the guards who had found him originally, there was hardly an inch of his pale body that wasn't coming up in purple and green bruises. His wrists and ankles wore bracelets of raw meat where he'd tried to twist free of the manacles and his chest was a bubbling mass of blisters and destroyed flesh.