The Champion Read Online Free

among those who’d lost everything.
    Even after almost two decades, he found little reason in it, positions taken and retaken, then abandoned, men sacrificed to accomplish nothing, remembered only in nightmares, in tarnished artifacts, warped and stained and kept, until even they were lost.
    No soldier need suffer it, however, when the battle that would have taken thousands of lives simply never happens, when the urge to ‘reshape’ was terminated before it could yield mortal devastation.
    There was reason enough in that.
    Pressing his lips together, he glanced at the view from the window. If his information was accurate, the royal apartments were stacked along all the upper floors of the North Tower, with the Sultan’s private suites occupying the top. He could easily climb higher using the windows and ledges and enter the corridors above. He’d need only few minutes for the guards, but longer for the Sultan, for an interrogation best done in the darkest hours.
    Narrowing his gaze on the horizon, he watched the cold glitter of stars above the hills, finding no peace in them now.

    Nadira turned the large diamond in her hand, watching colored streaks of light play in its depths. It was a thing of exceptional beauty, cut with amazing skill. Letoures was famous for robbing tombs and ruins left forgotten in vine choked jungles, but this stone held none of the rough texturing left behind by ancient jewelers. It was perfect.
    She pressed her lips together, tilting the diamond toward the light to find rays of color dancing within its solid blue heart. Rare. Priceless. Cold. That was the kind of beauty that could be owned.
    Osman had given her many sparkling gems and pendants, also hundreds of dresses and shoes, silks and veils. She’d been his favored pet, meant to shine solely for him, and soon made as hard as the stones he adorned her with. How many years had it been, since that girl from the desert arrived on the palace steps, a tribute from a lesser vizier seeking favor? Had she expected a kind master or a cruel one?
    She clenched her teeth, feeling a moment’s revulsion. The diamond cast its own dark light within the cradle of her fingers.
    Grimacing, she placed the stone back in her table drawer and gazed into the mirror above it, finding not a prisoner, or a ghost, but a woman restored, her face scrubbed clean of its mask, of its lies. Still young. Still beautiful, with two drops of honey wax glossing her lips, a medallion of pink sapphires resting at the part in her dark hair. She’d exchanged her white robes for peach silk; her dagger for pearls…lies for truth.
    Will you believe me, thief? Will you understand what I tell you…why I had to do it…why changing Ruman is the only way I can escape it…Will you understand? Will you care?
    She pressed her lips together, knowing that the last question should not have felt like the most important one. She shouldn’t be breathless, certainly shouldn’t be flushed, yet the thought of being so close to him, of being a woman around him…
    “Insanity,” she whispered, rising from her seat.
    Lifting the oil lamp from the table, she moved from her secure dressing room to the outer salon, her fingers stroking behind the closest pillar, finding the latch that sprung its inner door. The lock clicked and the small entry swung back, revealing the hidden passage used by members of the Harem.
    One corridor opened into many, into stairways and false doors, all of them narrow and cold, offering uneven steps polished with use. Nadira kept the lamp steady, checking herself several times, changing direction twice before arriving at the proper door.
    She tugged on the brass lever extending from the wall, activating an old pulley system, its metal wires and gears rusty. A crack appeared in the false stone, grinding softly as it widened to form an opening just large enough to slip through. She pressed herself against the wall and pushed through, hearing the secret door rumble shut