Free Shrouded: Heartstone Book One by Frances Pauli Page B

years, but the distraction had worked too well. Perhaps the quality of goods coming out of the core would cause even more trouble.
    He glanced up to the high screen and watched the arrivals and departures scroll over their heads. Mofitan’s shuttle had left the platform. The elevator cars were the only road to the planet’s surface. For anyone nonnative, there was only one ticket that earned you a ride down. And that ticket, the one that brought brides to the Shrouded, was a one way trip.

Chapter Eight
    “ N ow this is choice .” Tarren sat cross-legged on the bunk opposite Vashia and eyed the blue wig. She turned it over and ran her hands down the silky strands. “Where did you find it?”
    “I traded for it.” Vashia leaned against her pillow and smiled at the ceiling. Their stuff had been returned once the transport was cleared of Eclipsis, but the wig she could definitely live without. “You want it?”
    Tarren dropped it too fast. She shook her head. “No, no. It’s just nice.”
    “I was going to leave it behind when we got there.” Vashia shrugged. “If you don’t want it, I’ll probably throw it out.”
    Below them, directly under Tarren, Murrel snorted and rolled over in her sleep. Since the mess hall altercation, Tarren spent more time in their room than her own. She slid the wig back into her lap and kept her eyes on it.
    “Do you believe what she says?”
    “Murrel?” Vashia chuckled. “That depends. Which part?”
    “All that fairy tale crap.” Tarren lay down and rolled onto her side to face Vashia. She fixed a skeptical expression. “All that stuff about the crystal picking your perfect mate.”
    “No.” Vashia stared back and saw a flash of disappointment cross Tarren’s face. “Not really. Do you?”
    “Course not.”
    Damn. She’d dashed whatever secret hopes Tarren was hiding. The tough note to her voice was proof of that. Vashia had given her the wrong answer, but what else could she say? She didn’t want any of them swallowing Murrel’s rubbish. She didn’t want them to get those kinds of hopes up, but she felt guilty anyway.
    “You know,” she began, trying to force some optimism into her voice, “I’m sort of just hoping I won’t be sold, or beaten too much, or anything weird.”
    “Hell,” Tarren snorted, “we’re all hoping for that.” Her sigh filled the cabin. “But what are the odds?”
    “You know most rumors do have a seed of truth to them.” Vashia had to give her something. She felt like the queen cynic at a convention of the downtrodden. “Maybe it was just so much better than what everyone was used to that it seemed like a fairy tale.”
    “I bet that’s it.”
    “Me too.” The hope in Tarren’s voice would have made her laugh if she hadn’t been so terrified of their immediate future. How could someone like Tarren—someone who had been beaten, mistreated, and who knew what else—still have a streak of optimism? If the alpha prostitute could imagine a fairy tale ending, why couldn’t the governor’s daughter?
    For whatever reason, Vashia couldn’t hope. She couldn’t imagine anything at the end of the journey—not a fairy tale or even a horror. Her mind evaded the topic like a shadow cat dodging the moonlight. In her mind, nothing waited. Nothing neared with each passing day and no husband could possibly claim her on Shroud or any other world. She told herself that repeatedly while she listened to Tarren fall asleep.

    W hen Jarn entered the room , Kovath turned away from his post at the window. The governor tilted his head to one side and ran a hand over his mustache. His boot clicked against the flooring.
    “It’s done,” Jarn reported. He watched Kovath’s face and catalogued the emotions he saw pass over it. “She’s on her way to Shroud.”
    “She signed up?” The shock in the man’s voice confirmed that he never really believed the plan would work.
    The idea to take Shroud had been Kovath’s, but it was Jarn who’d