Read Princess of the Damned for Free Online Page A

Sayan.”
     
    “ She’s my wife!” He restrained the urge to shout. Even if he was a prince, such insolence could sever his head.
     
    “ Bride elect,” his father corrected him, “and now she is the concubine of Prince Sayan.”
     
    He glared at his father. All the respect he had for the man evaporated in an instant. “ She is mine !”
     
    “ If and when I say she is,” his father slammed a firm fist on the table to put him back in his place. Such display would only work on his subjects, not on him.
     
    “ There are many beautiful women in our kingdom, why must it be her?”
     
    “ I specifically forbid her from attending the banquet. However, Prince Sayan accidentally discovered her in the garden and asked to have her. What was I supposed to do?”
     
    He clamped shut.
     
    “ Think of your country, my son.”
     
    Those words again. He stood up without permission to challenge his father’s authority. His father walked around his desk and stood face to face with him.
     
    “ Do not let a woman cloud your judgment.”
     
    A sour taste rolled down his throat as he turned away and exited the doors. His father could ask him for any kind of sacrifice and he would not utter a word, but he could not sacrifice Nala for the sake of ascending the throne. Even if he becomes the king, this humiliation would follow him to the grave.
     
    He must get her back before she crosses the border.
     

Chapter Five
     
    There is a desert separating the Northern Kingdom and the Western Kingdom.
    Nala snugged her abductor’s cape around her body and used it to veil her face. They were traveling toward the North against the northern wind. It would hurt to breathe in the sands flying at her.
    The scent of blood was all around him.
    She looked up at her abductor and saw a violent storm in his dark brown eyes. His chest was very warm, even hot. She didn’t understand why he was so angry. She should have been the one who is angry. She waited for him to make the first insult so she could counter, but he said nothing.
    The full moon was rising higher and higher. The wind had calmed quite a bit. The group stopped at her abductor’s command and set camp at a tiny patch of oasis. Her abductor dismounted the horse first before he grabbed her by the waist and flipped her onto his shoulder again.
    They said men from the Northern Kingdom were brutes, and now she knows why.
    She didn’t bother to fight him. He would have to put her down eventually. She may not weight much, but combined with the weight of the weapon behind his back, a ton of feathers still amount to a ton.
    Her abductor carried her into the newly set up camp and threw her onto a pile of cushions. He may be rough, but he was nice enough not to throw her on the hard ground. He unstrapped the blade from his back and set it aside. He glanced at her every so often. There was still an angry expression on his face, but he said nothing to her, not even a word.
    “ Are you…sulking?” she asked curiously.
    “ Who’s sulking?”
    “ You’re obviously angry with me, but you’re not saying anything.”
    “ What should I say to you?” He asked. “I don’t have any rights to say anything to you.”
    “ You…abducted me,” she reminded him.
    He knelt down to her level and stared her in the eyes. “Do you really want to marry that man?”
    “ What does ‘want’ have anything to do with it?”
    He curved his eyes downward. When she thought he would stand up again, he lay down onto the cushions and turned his body sideways, facing away from her.
    “ Do you have any intentions of taking me back?”
    “ No, you are coming back to the Northern Kingdom with me.”
    She leaned forward and rested her elbows on his arm. “You look like someone I know, but that really can’t be. He’s a shepherd and you’re a prince. One had to be born a prince, right?”
    He turned to lie on his back. Her elbows slipped onto his chest.
    Nala slowly got up to create distance between them.