Forbidden (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) Read Online Free Page A

tightly shut. Isobel’s reflection stared back: rich mahogany hair curling at the edges, storm blue eyes, complexion like cream. It spoke in a voice that dripped honey, “Isobel, has what I have seen come to pass?”
    “Imogen.” Isobel’s voice was strained. “You were right. The girl is beautiful. But surely not comparable to us.”
    “Our devil pact suggests otherwise.” The reflection flashed an unpleasant smile. “Tick tock, the clock stops for no one. Is that a sliver of grey I see in your hair, sister? A wrinkle forming at the side of your eye?”
    Devil pact? Snow White repeated. Who was the devil here? The horned youth in the tapestry?
    Isobel stepped back, uncertain. The image in the mirror remained still.
    “Do I have to be the right arm of your wrath and envy once again?” Imogen opened her arms. Her expression was beatific, loving. The white sheet slipped off the sensuous curves of her body.
    Snow White held her breath as the Queen turned from the mirror in a trance-like state. Her body was ripe, lush with full womanhood. Such a contrast to Snow White’s own, which was a budding flower compared to Isobel’s radiant bloom. The mirror dissolved into its grey fog again. Isobel exited the antechamber, leaving the door ajar.
    “I have a task for you, Huntsman,” Snow White heard her say.
    “Oh, we’re back to calling me Huntsman now. I thought we were past that months ago, unless we’re back to playing outlaw and damsel in distress.”
    The Queen said, “I want you to take Snow White into the Enchanted Forest and kill her.”
    Snow White’s blood turned cold.
    No, she couldn’t have heard properly. She squeezed her knees to stop herself from bolting out of the closet.
    “Whoa,” Wolfsbane’s voice, backing off, “that’s a little extreme, don't you think?”
    Yes, Wolfsbane, you’re absolutely right. It is extreme in the way an ocean is a little salty. And I have done nothing! Except being responsible – in an unfathomable, roundabout way – for giving my stepmother grey hair.
    “It never stopped you before, Wolfsbane,” the Queen went on. “You’ve always been quite the predator. I remember the tailor’s daughter well. Five months gone she was. Didn’t stop you from laying a blow that made her lose the child and bleed to death. I had to persuade the lynch mob to cut you down from the stake.”
    “It was an accident.”
    Slithering noises. A moist plop to suggest kissing. Snow White’s stomach turned.
    “If you do this, Wolfsbane, I’ll make you my prince consort. Imagine – you, a lowly born huntsman becoming a royal.”
    No, Wolfsbane, Snow White wanted to say out loud, royalty is overrated.
    “And to assure me the deed has been done,” the Queen said, “I want you to cut out her heart and bring it to me as a token.”
     
    #
     
    The Sporadean day was balmy, meaning it would have been forty degrees centigrade on Earth if centigrade had yet been invented. But Sporadean carapaces, which were harder than shellfish, protected them from extreme heat and blistering cold – though the corpses would turn in their graves if Spora were to see a cold day.
    Perhaps in the next millennium, Aein mused, when the trees came back and the soil became fertile and loamy again. Spora had not seen an abundance of trees since the days of Fytenach the Fair. Then the blight came. The trees sickened and died. Sporadeans desperately turned to other food and shelter sources. Famine raged through the land, and the Sporadeans lost more than ninety percent of their population.
    The new generations grew up hungry, frugal and determined never to starve again.
    Aein gazed upon the blighted desert. The golden silos shimmered in the rising heat as far as the eye could see. His home. His world.
    “Spora,” he whispered, and his heart ached for its barren golden beauty. How far would he go to preserve her? Thulrika’s words thundered in his mind: We need this world, and every vote . . . your vote . . .