Fire In The Blood (Shards Of A Broken Sword Book 2) Read Online Free

as a building can recognise anything, your highness: yes.”
    The prince nodded. “Very well. We’ll take you with us.”
    “That’s very kind of you,” said Kako, with a light frosting of sarcasm. And yet, Rafiq was almost certain that the prince’s declaration had pleased her.
    “Bivouac for the night,” said Prince Akish. “We shall proceed in the morning.”
                  Sunlight was streaming through the windows when Rafiq awoke the next morning. He rose, stretching, and prowled closer to the golden warmth of it, a purr beginning deep in his chest but unable to roll properly in his human throat. Kako was curled up on a settee in the skewed square of light from one window, a twist of pink silk against the dark green of her chosen bed. A faint marking of lines on the marble floor showed where she’d dragged the couch in order to catch the light.
    Rafiq frowned down at her, his thoughts troubling him. There was still something so familiar about her. Yet, as far as it went, there was no reason why she should be familiar. A human, a female, a Shinpoan; he had certainly never met her before. He would have remembered her, he was sure, for in the bright sunlight he could see what he hadn’t seen yesterday: Kako was covered in myriad mismatching scars and scrapes. There was quite a large one along her right arm that showed soft, newly stretchy skin almost an inch wide at its widest. It made a long, tapering ‘v’ from her rounded shoulder to the inside of her elbow. There were a multitude of tiny cross-hatched scars across her knuckles and fingers, and the one scar that Rafiq had noticed yesterday was not the simple thing that it seemed. It ran across one foot, and with Kako curled as she was on the settee he could see the pad of her foot, where it made a darkened divot in the skin. Had someone tortured the girl?
    Rafiq’s eyes went to her face, and saw that even Kako’s slightly lop-sided smile was due to a small scar that pulled at her upper lip. He thought he saw the pinkening of new scar toward the edge of Kako’s neck scarf and reached out curiously to pull the scarf away.
    “Marred little thing, isn’t she?” said Prince Akish’s voice. “Careful! Take her scarf and you’ll find yourself wedded to the chit: Shinpoans are very traditional when it comes to the neck-scarf.”
    Rafiq’s hand dropped. “ Wedded? ”
    “Only a bridegroom can uncover his bride’s neck,” said the prince. “Shinpoan ladies are only permitted to cease wearing the scarf after they’re married.”
    To Rafiq, this seemed nonsensical: he could see the girl’s navel, after all! Her bodice, such as it was, covered what Illisrians would consider only to be the bare essentials, and no Illisrian woman would wander her house or grounds with her midriff bare. Nor would they be seen in a pair of trousers, no matter how light and graceful they were.
    Dragons, now: things were much simpler with dragons. No fuss about scarves or midriffs or lengthy wedding settlements. No even lengthier schism settlements. There was a drake and his she-dragon, and they wedded for life.
                  Rafiq settled back onto his rug cross-legged, where he could see both the sleeping Kako and Prince Akish, who had gone into the hall to begin his morning stretches. Akish always looked distinctly peeled of a morning: stripped of his chainmail and leg armour, his bulk was considerably lessened. This morning he was stretching in preparation for his sword drill, his shadow rippling smoothly over the blood-red floor. Before long the prince would be lunging and setting, practising his strokes: a routine as familiar as it was unvarying.
    Rafiq turned his attention back to the sleeping Kako. Here was an uneasiness that was tugging uncomfortably at the back of his mind– what was it about her that was so instinctively familiar? Human women were even harder to read than human men, perhaps because he saw so few of them. What was it about