WINDDREAMER Read Online Free Page B

have him, you resorted to drugs and lies and deceit, as well as murder. What difference is there in the way we each tried to take him?"
    "I did no murder," Kaileel snapped, waving a hand in dismissal.
    "What of his daughter? What of Nadia?"
    Kaileel snorted. "That was not my doing."
    Raja blinked. "It wasn't?"
    "Why would I lie? The babe was of no concern to me!"
    "Then who was responsible?"
    "I do not know, nor do I care."
    She shook her head. "But you drugged him, nevertheless. When he balked at joining you, you had him falsely charged with sedition. You had him flogged, even took the whip yourself when he had not suffered as greatly as you wanted him to." She sneered. "You were the one who scarred his once-handsome face!"
    "He deserved punishment."
    "Just as he deserved being exiled to that hell-hole?"
    "It taught him humility," Tohre reasoned. "It taught him that he was not above the law as he thought."
    "Yet after all you have made the man suffer, is your vengeance satisfied?"
    "Is yours?"
    Raja's face filled with disgust. "Do you think I would be here if my thirst for him had been quenched?"
    Kaileel glowered at her. With the insight he had into the darkness of other people's souls, he saw the similarity between this woman and himself. They both wanted the same thing: Conar McGregor. And neither of them could obtain him through normal means. Each had used magic and evil to bring the young prince to them, and each had failed abysmally. Each had pushed Conar farther away in trying to bring him closer.
    Raja lowered her voice to a soft croon. "Neither of us will ever have him other than with the combined use of our powers to fight his. You want him humbled as much as I do. You want his soul, I want his body. We both want his defeat, his ultimate destruction. We have the means in our hands." She held up a fist. "We can crush him, Tohre. We can have him groveling at our feet before we drain the stubbornness from him. Tell me that is not what you want."
    Tohre felt astonishment. "You want him dead?"
    Raja shook her head, outwardly exasperated. "Not in the sense you mean, but dead to those around him. Once you have taken his soul, what is left will be mine to command. I can make him docile, accepting of his plight. You will have what you want, I will have what I desire."
    For a moment, Tohre continued to stare at her, seeing past the smiling, seductive beauty into the pitch-black soul deep within her. He saw her evil as surely as he felt his own. Given other circumstances, he supposed, the two of them might well have been allies, lovers even, had she been a male. He could sense her overpowering desire to destroy the essence of their common enemy, their common love.
    "Will you let him win, Tohre?"
    "No."
    "They have invested that milksop wife of his with the powers of the Wind Force. Her powers--"
    "Bah! No woman is a worthy adversary for the might of the Domination!"
    "Do not say I didn't warn you, Kaileel! You refuse to see the possibilities of Elizabeth A'Lex's power. It's a failing that could spell disaster and might be your undoing! But if you will not guard yourself against the bitch, that is your business. I will not make the same mistake!"
    "Do what you will. Joust at ghostlings, if you must, but I will save my energy for Conar, alone!"
    "Then send the message to Regan! The time is at hand." With a coy lowering of her lashes, she jabbed home the final dagger. "Or are you afraid Conar has become too powerful for you to handle?"
    "I am afraid of no man!"
    "Then be done with it!" Raja yelled, spittle flying in Tohre's astonished face. "Bring him to his knees! Destroy him. Now! "
    Warning voices inside Tohre's brain told him to ignore the challenge, cautioned him to restrain and delay, shouted a denial of what he was setting, too soon, in motion. The thought kept tumbling before him that the time was not right, the day not yet come in which to do battle with Conar McGregor.
    But the smirk on Raja's face needled him.
    "So be