The Soulstoy Inheritance Read Online Free

You’re queen now, you have an entire synfee army at your disposal.”
    “It’s not all about power, Nareon.”
    He seemed shocked at my answer, and I didn’t realise until his winged brows lowered over his eyes and his fists clenched at his sides, that what I had said might have been misconstrued. Or was it a misconstrual? I had kissed Harbringer after all; my first kiss devoid of synfee hunger or compulsion, my first real kiss. But that wasn’t the reason I wanted him to stay. He was in danger just as much as I was, and I trusted him.
    Sighing, I let my head fall into my hands, and a silence stretched out that nobody seemed inclined to break, until Grenlow cleared his throat.
    “There is no real harm in the Power Thief staying. His kind of strength could be a real asset to us.”
    “It will help once everyone knows he’s fucking the Queen.”
    I shot out of my chair. “Nareon, that’s enough! ”
    Harbringer’s eyebrows shot up, and I could tell that he was surprised at the direction Nareon’s thoughts had taken, which meant that Nareon must have been guarding his mind carefully. Or perhaps it wasn’t even possible to read the mind of a dead man. Those grey eyes were blazing down at me now, his jaw set, and a savageness to his expression that I had begun to associate with the tales of the old synfee King; the dangerous, insane and cruel one.
    “That’s enough,” I said again, a little softer now. Soothing him.
    For a moment, I was terribly afraid that my hold over Nareon might have slipped, but after a moment, the brutal edge seemed to fade away, and I no longer felt that I held a live grenade in my hand. I reached out, brushing my fingers across where his arm hung beside his torso, feeling the air drop in temperature where I should have scraped skin. There it was again, our bond. He smiled slightly, and then touched his head, looking behind him at something that I couldn’t see.
    “I need to do something,” he muttered.
    “Thank you for your help, Nareon.”
    He turned back to me, nodded, and with the faintest of smiles, disappeared.
    Grenlow let out a loud breath, and I slumped back into my seat, rubbing at my temples.
    “I think I need to get some sleep. We all probably do.”
    “I’ll get a servant to show you to your chambers, they should be ready by now. Wait here,” Grenlow said, already moving for the door, seemingly glad to leave the room. 
    We sat in silence until he returned, and on the walk to our rooms, I only paused to ensure that we had been given connecting chambers. I didn’t want to be separated from either of them, Gretal especially. We went into our rooms and I barely spared a glance for the richly decorated bedchamber, the brocaded window seats, and the heavy, woven carpets. I stumbled straight for the bed, struggled out of my destroyed clothes, and as soon as I slid beneath the sheets, I fell into a deep sleep filled with gut-wrenching sorrow and blurred faces.
    When I awoke, it was late afternoon, and someone had already been in my room to clear away my dirty clothes and lay out new ones. There was an assortment of court dresses that I immediately overlooked, along with a few tunic dresses in my usual style, which I assumed some astute person had noticed in the few times that I had visited Nareon.
    I bypassed all of them and chose a shirt and tights combination that made me feel less fragile. The tights were black, and the shirt was white, both without adornment, which I immediately liked. I slipped on a pair of riding boots next, and re-attached the dagger that had killed my father before leaving the room. I knocked on Gretal’s door first. When there was no answer, I cracked the door open an inch, and found her fast asleep, buried beneath a pile of blankets, on a large four-poster bed similar to my own.
    I closed the door softly and moved to Harbringer’s room. The door opened just as my hand was raised to knock, and Harbringer ushered me in. He had bathed and changed, and