Free Ghost in Her Heart by Autumn Dawn

clenched in her yellow robe
trembled.
    Vana didn’t care. Any woman who could do that
to her children was not a woman Vana wanted near them.
    Dagon glanced at Ellyn. Grimly, he told the
boys, “Greet your mother.” As she’d been coached, Vana knelt and
accepted their light touches on her shoulders as they affixed the
beads with their name runes engraved on them in her braided hair.
Each bead was carved from the stone for their birth week. When they
were finished, she had two beads of jade, one of gold, and a
winking ruby among her tresses. It felt good. The glow of family
filled an ache she hadn’t known was empty.
    Maybe she had found a reason to stay after
all.
     
    Dagon was polite to those at the banquet,
though he said little, especially to Vana. Had she not been so
distracted by the merrymaking, she might have paid closer
attention.
    She might have feared.
    When the feast was over, she was summoned to
his room.
    The door closed behind her. That was first
bad sign.
    Still dressed in black, though he’d discarded
the red robe, Dagon advanced on her with the slow tread of a
stalking cat. Dark rage shimmered from his every line. “I have
never, never felt so much like beating a woman,” he breathed in her
face. “How dare you cast Ellyn out!”
    Confused, but unwilling to be cowed, she said
tightly, “The woman deserved it.”
    He made a slow circle around her. His size
dwarfed her, his closeness made her feel the danger. “Do you have
any idea how powerful of an enemy you’ve made today? Do you have
some hidden protection that I can’t see? Ellyn has reason now to
despise not only you, but what are now your sons. You publicly
humiliated her. She will never forgive it.”
    Bile churned in her stomach. Even her teeth
wanted to chatter with her fury. It was too much like her father,
the way Ellyn had turned her back. Vana could still see his face as
he shoved her mother out of his way, gave his little girl a look of
disgust, and left for good. “I hate the air she breathes! I don’t
care if she does hate me.”
    Dagon’s teeth flashed in a snarl as he
grabbed her and shoved her up against the wall. Face contorted with
emotions she couldn’t fathom, he rasped at her, “She will try to
kill you. Is that worth your revenge? Is death a high enough price
to pay?”
    “What is that to me? You’ve already taken
away everything I loved. My world! What’s it to you if you she
takes my life, too?”
    He shoved away from the wall as if she’d
burned him. “You are a fool.”
    Just then, she felt like one. Had she ever
felt soft toward him? Where had this dark side of his come from? It
didn’t take much to tell her that any move she made would ignite
his shaky temper. And just then, she wasn’t sure she could control
the watery burning that threatened to spill down her cheeks. Though
they were born of wrath, she couldn’t bear to shed tears in front
of him.
    He looked at her. His face hardened. “Get
out.”
    Dagon watched her leave, furious at the loss
of control he’d just shamed himself with. He’d meant to chasten and
warn her. Instead….
    He paced. The moment Ellyn had turned her
back and Vana had looked at him with eyes that were open windows to
her soul, he should have known. Every thought in her heart was bare
to him, and his own had shuddered with impact of the connection.
But it had still rocked him to hear the words that put her in
mortal combat with a woman who had seen more than her share of
opponents to their defeat. This time he feared the grudge match
would see Vana in her grave.
    Unable to bear the memory, he cursed. She’d
had no idea. That heart he’d pegged as too soft had led her.
Without his guiding hand, she had leapt into the fire to protect
the innocent.
    She was a fool.
    Dagon’s hand clenched. Bloody disrespect for
politics. Overblown noble urges. The woman was the worst possible
candidate for queen. Testing or not, he was not going to accept
her. No woman who thought the way