Read Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Prince for Free Online

set her free and take vengeance on
the commander who had captured her. Her near-black eyes shifted to
meet his, sending another bolt of warmth through him. She gave him
another little smile, a faint curving of her lips that spoke of
hurt. Her brow furrowed.

    “ He will be all
right, won’t he?” she whispered, her look almost pleading him to
lie to her.

    He didn’t need to
lie.

    “ Nothing will
happen to him,” Tres whispered in return and moved closer to her.
He leaned his back into the wall and kept his head turned towards
her, watching her closely. She was beautifully unguarded with her
feelings and the depth of her love for her brother stunned Tres. He
was sure that his sister, Tesia, loved him, but it couldn’t
possibly extend to this. Renie looked as though she would die if
anything happened to her brother.

    For some reason, that made
him a little jealous.

    Jealous.

    It was a new feeling for
him. He had never had a reason to feel it before.

    He held a high position
within society, so admired and feared that he wanted for nothing.
Only his family could refuse him something. Yet he craved more. He
stared into Renie’s eyes, reading all the love in them. He longed
for a life where he was treated differently. An existence where
there was more. More. He didn’t know exactly what it was that he
craved, but he knew that he would find it on the other side of the
barrier, away from the Black Zone.

    Freedom. Feelings.
Life.

    All the things he had ever
wanted but had never had. The things that he couldn’t ask for. The
things that were denied him.

    He wanted to live. He
desired to see how others lived. He longed to experience life in a
place less dark than the Black Zone.

    Something dawned on him,
something that made him feel the depth of his loneliness and the
hollowness of his existence, something that made him despair at the
thought that he might lose what he had found. He didn’t want to go
back, didn’t want to continue his old life now that he had
discovered what was missing from it.

    He wanted to live. He
desired to see how others lived. He longed to experience life in a
place less dark than the Black zone. But he didn’t want to do it
alone.

    He wanted to do it all
with a female like Renie.

    She was everything that he
had ever wanted.

    ****

    Chapter
4

    The door
opened.

    Renie’s heart leapt into
her throat when the Vegan commander walked in, flanked by two
soldiers. He still frightened her. She stood, unwilling to let him
see that fear, and walked to the bars of her cell, coming face to
face with him.

    “ We have
contacted your family,” he said, his eyes showing a smile that his
lips hid. He seemed pleased with himself. Renie’s heart pounded at
the thought that her family were coming. She hated the position she
was in, but the knowledge that her father was coming for her
lightened her heart and made her feel better. The commander’s gaze
raked over her and then met hers again. “It will be a while before
they reach us. You would be wise to make yourself
comfortable.”

    Renie glanced back at the
bench and then at Tres. He was still sitting with his back to the
wall, his strange eyes fixed on the commander in a venomous
stare.

    “ You will eat,”
the commander said.

    Renie looked at him,
shaking her head. He wasn’t going to order her around. She might be
his prisoner but she wasn’t about to let him take all her strength
from her. Tres had refused to eat and she was going to as well. She
wasn’t going to make things easy on the Vegans. It could be days
before her family arrived. When they did, she wanted them to see
exactly how poorly the Vegans had treated her.

    “ What do you
intend to do with myself and my brother?” she said, straightening
her back and standing tall. She was a princess of Lyra. This
commander wasn’t going to frighten her.

    But her heart thundered in
her ears and her palms sweated as she stood before him, staring up
into his golden eyes and waiting to