Read The Fire Prince (The Cursed Kingdoms Trilogy Book 2) for Free Online Page A

after.”
    “Naturally.”
    Petrus looked at the two swords. The Lundegaardan sword was perfectly serviceable, but the one he held...
    “I’ll take this one.”
    “Thought you might.” The prince grinned. “Why not kill the bastards with their own swords, eh?”
    Petrus bared his teeth in an answering grin. “Why not?”
    The prince took the Lundegaardan sword back to the pile of supplies. Petrus watched, his grin fading. For a moment there, he’d actually liked the prince. He slid the new sword into its scabbard, disconcerted. When he wasn’t being a surly mage-hating whoreson, Prince Harkeld was surprisingly pleasant.
    But only to Justen, who he thought wasn’t a mage. He treats the rest of us like vermin .
    He scowled briefly and looked around. A dark figure knelt at the assassins’ grave. Frane, using his magic to make the grass grow. Hew was no longer at the fire. He was at Susa’s grave.
    Petrus walked across to him. Meadow grasses now thickly covered the mound of stony soil. Hew knelt with his hand on the grave. Did he think he was to blame for Susa’s death? Was he apologizing to her? Begging her forgiveness?
    “It wasn’t your fault,” Petrus said.
    Hew glanced at him. His lips pinched together in denial.
    Petrus crouched alongside him, lowering his voice. “The first time Gerit and I fought Fithians, they were too smart for us, too fast.” He grimaced at the memory. Compared with the assassins, they’d been blundering fools. “By rights, they should have killed us. They very nearly did. It’s only by the All-Mother’s grace we survived.”
    Hew’s expression eased slightly, became less bitter.
    “Next time you’ll be faster.”
    Hew’s lips pressed together again. He nodded.
    Petrus stood and walked back to the fire. He sat down beside the prince, unsheathed his new sword, and began to hone the razor-sharp edge with a whetstone.
     
     
    H ARKELD DREAMED THAT he sat in darkness. A breeze whispered over his face. Stars glittered in the sky. He wasn’t sure where he was sitting, or why, but he knew who sat alongside him without having to look. The witch, Innis.
    They were close enough that her shoulder touched his upper arm, and through that point of contact he felt her. Not just the warmth of her body, but an awareness of her emotions. Tonight, grief was dominant.
    In his dreams, he and the witch were friends. He’d given up trying to fight it. It simply was . Harkeld put his arm around her and pulled her closer. Innis leaned her head against his shoulder.
    They sat without speaking. Hours drifted past, while the stars wheeled slowly overhead. There was something deeply comforting about being with Innis. He wasn’t certain exactly what it was—empathy, friendship.
    “You would have liked Susa,” Innis said quietly, as the sky grayed towards dawn. “She would have made you laugh. She made everyone laugh.”
    “I’m sorry she’s dead.”
    How many people had died trying to protect him now?
    He didn’t have to count. He knew the tally. Eighteen of Lundegaard’s soldiers. And two witches.
    Twenty dead, for me.
    It was too many. I am worth only my own life . And yet, because of his blood— Rutersvard blood, tainted with witch blood—he was also worth tens of thousands of lives.

 
     

    CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    S AULT SLOPED DOWN to the Gulf of Hallas, the great ocean that stretched a thousand leagues to Lundegaard. It was cropping country. Barley nodded in the sea breezes. The roads were crowded, the hamlets eerily silent; the people of Sault had joined the flight from the curse. Nolt led his men between the teeming roads and the coast. Now and then a harvester, sweeping with a scythe, shouted angrily as the horses trampled his crop, but it didn’t matter. The barley still needed weeks to ripen. The farmers, the last to flee, were trying to fill carts with heads from which they might pick usable grains. Their shouts were the shouts of desperation.
    Jaumé understood now the value of