Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall Read Online Free Page A

here with us."
    "I could stay here?" Cinderella asked in surprise. "At the palace?"
    A sad smile pushing past her lips, Akasha's dark eyes held her own. "Not as a guest," she said softly, and Cinderella felt an unfamiliar fear roll through
    her, a foreboding of something she did not truly understand.
    "Keeping the king company?" she questioned.
    "Yes," Akasha nodded.
    "How does one do that?"
    A tempered laugh passing her lips, Akasha lowered her gaze, looking up at Cinderella through long lashes. "You are truly not from around here, are you?"
    With a suppressed shiver, Cinderella pulled the blanket tighter around her as she shook her head, and Akasha nodded, taking a deep breath.
    "Do you know how babies are made?"
    "Yes, of course. I..." Cinderella began, stopping to blush furiously. One could not walk into a pasture without witnessing how new creatures came to be,
    and her stepsisters had always delighted in telling her the horrors humans could inflict with their bestial urges. "Oh," she breathed quietly, remembering
    all she had seen and heard in vivid detail. "And do you like doing that?"
    "As an act, or with the king?" Akasha surprised her by asking.
    "Are the answers different?" she questioned.
    "Yes, I should say they are," Akasha stated, hand slipping beneath the edge of Cinderella's blanket. Nervously watching it go, Cinderella jumped slightly
    as it brushed her knee. "The touch of another can be either good or bad, Cinderella," Akasha said gently. "You do know that, don't you?"
    The hand sliding above her knee to rest beneath the fabric of her chemise, it felt as if it meant Cinderella no harm. The hand did not hold her captive or
    leave a mark. It felt uncommonly gentle, the touch, the kind she had seen given to others, but had not received herself in many years.
    "Of course." This time it was she who lied, and she was sure Akasha knew it when she smiled sadly in response.
    "You must be very tired," she said. "You should try to sleep."
    Akasha's hand retracting from beneath the blanket, Cinderella found the soft touch hurt just as much, if for a very different reason. Feeling tears push
    against her eyes, she settled back against the mattress, grateful when Akasha pretended not to notice.
    For a time, there was silence, but not sleep. Cinderella was not sure if she was keeping Akasha up, or if it was Akasha who kept her awake, but she knew by
    the breathing next to her the other woman was not asleep.
    "If you do not like the king, why are you here?" she found the nerve to ask. "Why do you choose this life?"
    "I did not choose this life." Akasha's voice came from the darkness. "This life chose me."
    "Does that not bother you?" Cinderella questioned.
    "I do not think about it," Akasha returned. "My mother, she was glad, I think, that I found somewhere to go."
    "But you could go anywhere," Cinderella said at once. "You could be an apprentice. Or a wife. Or whatever else there is in this kingdom."
    Feeling the soft movement as Akasha sighed beside her, Cinderella knew it was the shake of Akasha's head.
    "Why not?" she asked.
    "I have a taint on me," Akasha stated, and Cinderella felt the tears press with greater force, the statement one she herself could make. Though she had
    spent the last three nights in Troyale at a ball in a gown that made her look like wealth, and, though she knew those of Naxos could not see it, she could
    still feel what remained of the hearth she had slept on, the ash and grit that clung to her. The taint on her had always shown clearly until the nights of
    the festival, though, and the magic that turned her clean and gave her the fine dress.
    "I do not see it," Cinderella whispered.
    "It is not on the outside," Akasha explained hesitantly. "When I was a girl, I played with the children of my father's friends in the wood that lives
    inside the town walls. One friend, his father was a butcher, still is, and we would watch him work.
    "One day, his son had the idea that we should play butcher. I