Free The Prophecy by Nina Croft Page A

inherited the sight from her mother. But she had been only fourteen when the fire-demons had taken her, too young to have it confirmed.
    “It’s going to be messy, Sorien. Very messy.”
    Sorien raised a clenched fist and backhanded her across the mouth. Blood spurted from her lips, dripping crimson against her white skin. Kael saw her small pointed tongue come out and lick at the blood while her eyes remained fixed on Sorien. She smiled again.
    “Soon, Sorien,” she crooned. “Your end draws near.”
    The fire-demon leapt for her then, punching her face, her belly, anywhere he could reach, and Kael held his breath. He had to force himself to stay immobile, to accept that at that moment he could do nothing to help. He knew, logically, that Sorien could not kill her like this. She could recover from any amount of beating, only a stake through the heart and decapitation would ensure her death.
    No, she would not die. Still, he made a promise to himself that her prophecy regarding Sorien would come true and that Sorien’s death would indeed be very, very messy.
    At last Sorien stepped back, breathing heavily. Raven was unconscious, her face a mask of blood, the dark bruises already beginning to blossom across her white skin.
    Kael glanced out of the window; the sky to the east was showing faint traces of light, dawn was approaching. He knew they would have to remove her from the hall before the sun rose, but he had her scent now and would find her. With one final lingering glance at the unconscious woman, he launched himself from the beam and swooped out through the open window.

Chapter Two
    “Be strong, Raven. Do not give in to despair.”
    Raven woke to the utter darkness of her underground cell with the words lingering in her head. A woman’s voice, a stranger’s voice, soft and low, and Raven gritted her teeth against the fury it stirred.
    She wasn’t strong. And she was tired of pretending she was when her whole body was racked with pain and her first feeling on realizing she was still alive was despair so intense it twisted her guts.
    She had long ago learnt to deal with the pain of the frequent beatings, had come to accept the idea of her death as inevitable. Raven even believed in some shadowy place, deep within her soul, that she deserved to die for the innocent blood she had taken.
    No, it wasn’t the pain or the thought of death that tore her apart, it was the knowledge that Sorien would benefit from that death. If Sorien won a final victory, she had no doubt there would be a reign of terror on the earth beyond all imagining.
    She tugged at the chains that shackled her to the wall. She hated the sense of powerlessness; she knew that however much she taunted Sorien, he would not kill her before the time of the sacrifice.
    And on top of that, for the last two months she’d had to put up with a stupid voice telling her to be strong. It was advice she could do without.
    Her throat was parched, but she could scent water nearby. She scrambled to her feet, reaching blindly for the bucket only to find it had been placed just out of reach. Obviously Sorien had decided to punish her further and suddenly it was too much. She threw the whole weight of her body against the chains, over and over until at last she sank down, exhausted, the sound of her ragged breathing thundering in her ears.
    Something moved. A flutter of tiny wings stirred the chill air of the cell and she went instantly still, listening. A moment later the room was flooded with light.
    A man stood in the center of the cell and her breath caught in her throat. He appeared to have materialized out of nothing, and her first thought was that he must be another vision. But this was no vision, it was a flesh-and-blood man, she could feel the warmth radiating from his body. She drew the scent of him into her nostrils, the warm muskiness of animal overlying the sweetness of fresh blood.
    He was huge, almost as tall as Sorien but with the lithe leanness of a