Beyond the Pale: A Thin Veil Novella (The Thin Veil Book 3) Read Online Free

which would soon be her home. As the queen-to-be, she had been assigned protection from the Royal Guard: two uniformed warriors who followed her everywhere.
    She didn’t see her husband-to-be until the night before the wedding. She should have been sleeping, but her tangled emotions had drawn her out into the warm night air, where she sat beneath the swaying branches of the willow tree outside their home. It was a beautiful refuge, but a solemn one too. Each time a soft breeze shook the branches, a sound like the chimes of a hundred tiny bells filled the air. She waved her arms, and the tree parted its branches so that she could look up at the stars. Is this what the stars had foretold? That she should marry a man she didn’t love? How could that be? Perhaps there some greater destiny of which she was not aware. Or perhaps her life had no meaning at all.
    She was startled out of her reverie by the sound of someone approaching. Lorcan , she thought, her voice catching in her throat. She had tried to visit him again, to beg his forgiveness, but his door had remained closed to her.
    But it wasn’t Lorcan who stood before her in the moonlight. It was Brogan.
    “Can’t sleep either?” he asked, sitting down next to her and leaning against the willow’s trunk.
    “Your Majesty!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? I mean…” She looked around for his guards and saw none. Her own had left her to her parents’ care for the night.
    “They’re easy enough to give the slip if you really want to,” he said with a wink, that seductive dimple appearing in his chin. “I wanted to talk to you before the wedding…and without a hundred servants and attendants around. I had a feeling you might still be awake.”
    “Is everything all right, Your Majesty?” she asked politely.
    “Kier, please, call me Brogan. We are about to be husband and wife.”
    Kier felt herself blushing at the thought, but she nodded. “Brogan.”
    “That’s better,” he said. “I know something has been bothering you. Is it…our coming marriage? Your parents told me you were pleased with their choice. But I have the feeling they may not have represented your true feelings. You seemed unhappy at dinner the other night.”
    She tried to find his eyes in the darkness. Could she admit to him that her life had been going in one direction before being yanked in another?
    “Are you concerned about the Departing? Do you fear you will miss your parents?” he asked.
    “I will miss them, I’m sure,” she said. She paused before continuing. “And I will miss…others.”
    “Ah,” he said slowly. He ran a hand through his dark curls, suddenly looking not quite so self-assured as usual. “Of course.”
    “You do me great honor by choosing me.”
    Brogan let out a huff. “Oh, Kier, enough of this standing on ceremony. You are beautiful and kind and clever, and I want to marry you—not just because your parents arranged it with my grandfather. I believe we are well matched, and that our marriage will be a happy one. But…” He looked at her carefully before continuing. “That does not mean we must completely abandon our old lives. There is no reason why the things that have made us happy in the past cannot continue to do so once we are wed.”
    Kier felt her mouth open slightly. Was he saying…? Or was it just wishful thinking on her part? For the first time she registered the fact that this was an arranged marriage for him too. Did he also love someone else? She wasn’t sure how to respond, so she just nodded her head. “Thank you, Your—I mean, Brogan.”
    “I hope we will be together for a long time,” he said, “and I am confident that once we get to know each other, we will be very happy indeed.” He glanced around, and then looked back at her with a grin on his face. “I know we are supposed to wait until the wedding, but…may I kiss you?”
    Kier’s thoughts were still tangled up in his cryptic words, so she was taken