The Crystal Heart Read Online Free Page A

the four pictures on the wall – scenes of spring, summer, autumn, winter. Every book on that shelf I’d read several times over, I knew every word in the notebooks I’d kept for so long, and every inch of the small portion of landscape I could see through the darkened window. How it distorted the life outside, the houses, the people far below scurrying like ants, and yet how beautiful it looked to me right then! For a moment it seemed like the best place on earth. Only a moment.
    I was not resigned. I’d tried to be but I couldn’t. Everything was taken from me, everything I cared about, everything I knew. At first I was angry, frightened. I tried to think of ways to escape. Nothing worked, and I grew desperate, numb. It was like that all the time, passing fromhope to fear to anger to numbness, then back to hope. Since I’d started having the dream, hope had returned, and these last couple of years, whenever I got a visit from one of them , I’d try my best to make them see that I was of no threat to them. I promised to persuade my father to bring lasting peace between our people. And for a while, I’d imagined it was working. That they were beginning to see they could one day let me go.
    What a fool I was. They never intended on letting me go. There was nothing I could do. Nothing I …
    What was that? The elevator already? No, it couldn’t be – they said it wouldn’t be till the night began its march to morning. The wolf-hour – the darkest time of night – and that’s hours away yet.
    But why should I have believed anything they said? They have lied to me over and over and over again, especially the one they call the Commander. He had never been unkind to me. Lately, he’d even said things were looking different – that treaties could be renegotiated and arrangements could be made. I had been co-operative – that would be taken into account. It was he who told me in the end what was to happen to me.
    I heard the rattle of the platform coming to a stop. And all at once I felt as if a great burden had slid off my shoulders. I no longer had to fight. It was over. I stood there, straight and tall, ready to meet my fate with all the honour and grace my people would expect. But it wasn’t the elevator that slid open. It was the small door of the shaft next to it, which housed the machine that brought up my meals. As I stared in numb perplexity, the door was pushed back and someone half-crawled, half-stumbled out,scrambling almost immediately to his feet, revealing himself to be a tall young man with dishevelled black hair, dressed in the uniform of the Tower Guard, a ragged blindfold covering his eyes.
    Why had they sent their assassin this way? ‘Is it part of their plan that I should be brought down by a man who can’t even look at me before he takes me to my death?’ I growled. ‘Is there no honour in your people at all?’
    The man gasped and pulled off his blindfold, revealing a pair of long-lashed dark-brown eyes. He’d gone so pale I thought he was going to faint. A spot of blood had appeared on his lip where he’d bitten down on it. He stared at me and whispered, ‘It’s you .’
    I stared back at him. ‘Of course it’s me. Who else were you expecting?’
    â€˜You … You are a witch – the immortal witch of the Tower. So how can you also be … her ?’
    Against the whiteness of his skin, his hair was starkly black and his bloodied lips were scarlet. A shudder rippled through me as I remembered my dream. ‘What do you mean?’ I said quietly.
    Something flickered in his eyes. ‘You haven’t turned me to stone.’
    â€˜What?’ My wonder was ebbing and I was beginning to think he was touched.
    â€˜They said you would turn any who laid eyes on you to stone.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand any of it. All I know is that you’re just