Never Kiss A Stranger Read Online Free Page B

liberated her pet.
    “I’ll wager you won’t like it out here any more than in there,” she said ruefully, pushing the sack aside as the monkey clambered up her chest. “‘Tis colder than Sybilla’s frozen heart.”
    The monkey clung to Alys’s bodice with warm hands and feet, and tucked its head under her chin.
    Alys sniffed and then sighed. “What are we to do then, little monkey?” She paused, tucked her chin to look down at the small, pink face. “Hmm. I can’t continue calling you Monkey, now can I? ‘Tis what that dreadful, nasty, ugly witch called you. Let’s have a good look at you.”
    Alys held the animal away from her for a moment, liking the way it curled itself around her hands. “From the Holy Lands, are you? A girl,” she mused, tucking the animal back into her body when it leaned that way. And perhaps because of her melancholy, Alys called to mind a sad romance from Persia itself, overheard while listening outside the soldiers’ garrison.
    “How do you fancy ‘Layla’?” Alys asked the monkey, feeling very much like old Graves who only ever spoke in questions. The monkey didn’t try to bite her, so she took that as agreement. “Very well, then. You shall hereby be known as Layla. A fine choice, and my congratulations to you.”
    That important detail resolved, Alys now appraised thering of stones tossed seemingly haphazardly around her, trying to keep her mind off of the incessant shivering of her body. Still no heavenly glow from any of the towering gray pillars, no ethereal music, no shimmering voice of wisdom calling to her through the ages, heralding the arrival of her true love.
    The fabled Foxe Ring was no magic place, after all. Yet another thing Sybilla had been right about. Alys had been in the very center of the frigid circle for ages it seemed, the moon lighting her like a beacon, and the only visitor she’d received was some sort of nocturnal animal scurrying out of sight in the ruined keep’s interior.
    It seemed everyone in the land had either tried the Foxe Ring, or knew someone who’d used it, as a last desperate act to find love, and all the stories had told of its wise success. Men and women, brought together alone within the circle of standing stones upon a full moon were fated for a lifetime of love together. So respected was the belief that many couples who met in the Foxe Ring never even bothered with an official ceremony. They entered the ring alone, but they departed a couple, for the rest of their lives and even into eternity, if the tales were to be believed fully. The ring had brought her own mother and father together, and so Alys did believe, God help her foolish, girlish heart.
    But for Alys, it was a failure. Or perhaps ‘twas she who had failed. Perhaps the stones felt her unworthy of a magical, forever union. Or perhaps Clement Cobb and old Lord John Hart were simply the only two remaining eligible men in the whole of England. Any matter, Alys couldn’t so much as slink back to Fallstowe to crawl into her own bed at this hour—she’d be forced to beat at the gates for someone to admit her, and her pride could not tolerate another stiff blow this night. Better to sneak backin with the sun, and simply avoid meeting with her future husband for as long as Sybilla would allow.
    “Alys Cobb, Lady of Blodshire,” she said aloud, and then pretended a retching sound. “Horrid.”
    Alys reached for her sack with one hand and plumped the contents. Then she lay down on her side once more, snuggling Layla into her midsection and cushioning the monkey with her arms. She pulled her cloak around them both, flicked up her hood with one finger, and then rubbed her face against Layla’s soft hair. Her nose was numb. She closed her eyes lest they begin to leak once more.
    There was a girl sleeping inside the ruin.
    A golden haired girl, lit up with moonlight until it seemed to Piers that she glowed. Asleep on a cold slab of rock as if it was her royal fairy bed,