The Fire King Read Online Free Page A

careful greed.
    The shape-shifter spoke to him. Her language was sly like her voice, and he understood none of her words. He did not need to. Karr found nothing reassuring in her tone, and when she finally stepped into view, allowing him to see her for the first time—and blocking out the light—her face was just as he had imagined: sharp and bony, and hard with a cold beauty that Karr suspected might frighten weaker men into instant obedience. Her hair was short and blonde, and a black patch covered one of her eyes. The other iris was golden but disfigured: the pupil was a slit, like a cat.
    Caught between skins in a bad shift. Karr had suffered several of those himself, but had healed, in time. Time healed all, he had been told.
    But not the heart,
he thought. Nor
that.
    The shape-shifter was not young … but not old, either.
Well aged,
Tau might have said. Karr watched her carefully, tension finally pushing through his tight control. She reminded him too much of the old queens of the southern clans—unpredictable in their rage and disdain, and pleased to have a chimera as their slave and plaything.
    Her clothes were odd. That she wore anything at all was strange enough, but she was covered from neck to ankle in tight black cloth, the weave so fine it could hardly have been made by human fingers. Her feet were bare.
    She stood above him, and for one brief moment he saw raw flickering tension in her eyes.
Fear.
She hid it well, but he knew what to look for. He had seen it often enough in her kind.
    Her right hand flared with golden light. Spotted fur rippled over her skin, her fingers lengthening into claws. Razor sharp. She flexed each one of them, slowly. Watching him. Tension still twisting through her.
    Karr braced himself, but instead of attacking him she said another word. Somewhere on his left the door opened. He smelled that fresh scent again, stronger now, as though a slice of the sun and wind had been cut for him and braided into flesh. Human flesh. He could taste that, too, now. A woman.
    Her footsteps were slow but almost as light as the shape-shifter’s. Careful movements. Cautious. Or just curious. He had suffered idle eyes enough in his life. Anger curled through him, but he swallowed it down. Not yet. Now was not the moment to lose himself. He had done that in the wagon and failed to escape. Strategy was the key now. Strategy and deception.
    Karr’s gaze ticked sideways as the human woman finally entered his line of sight. The hole in the iron hood framed her face for him, as did two long black braids, frayed and unkempt. A similar rugged wildness was in her eyes, which only enhanced the delicate beauty of her features. High cheekbones, a small mouth, long throat.
    She wore a man’s clothes, as all the women did in this place: black leggings, skintight, and a long, shapeless tunic made of blazing white cloth. Around her neck hung loops of lapis chunks, resting heavily against her olive-toned skin, a color that marked her as a woman of the desert or sea.
    The desert,
he decided, staring into her dark eyes, drawing in her scent until his chest pressed hard against the restraints—holding her within him, holding her until he thought he might choke without air. He exhaled slowly, still trying to possess that sunlit scent, and her mouth tensed, as if in pain.
    The shape-shifter spoke, a melodic one-sided conversation that was soft and cold, and infinitely menacing. The human flashed her a hard, angry look; brazen, defiant, without a shred of fear. Startling, utterly unexpected. Karr had never seen a human look at a shape-shifter as an equal. Not with such confidence, or disregard.
    The human muttered several sharp words filled with scathing disdain, and the shape-shifter tilted her head, a dangerous smile touching the corner of her mouth. Karr tensed, certain he was about to bear witness to death, and pain, and humiliation. No shape-shifter would tolerate such boldness from a human. The woman would not be