Free The Destroyer Book 2 by Michael-Scott Earle Page A

pink with thousands of tiny lines and glassy with tears, the contrast with the red made the blue of her irises bright and brilliant.
    "They are dead Kaiyer. I can feel it. You will die too if you go back to the castle. Just stay here with me. This is a nice village. We can live here for the rest of our lives. I will give you children and we can watch them grow. I don't need to be a princess; I just need you." Her mouth curved into the dimpled smile and her eyes lit up with adoration. She was gorgeous, and when she used her charm I found her hard to resist.
    The sincerity of her words shot through me, and for a second I considered them. Maybe I didn't need to kill Elvens or learn what happened in my past. Perhaps the memories would come, but if I decided to spend the rest of my life with Jessmei, it would not matter that I had been the driving force behind the annihilation of another race. I might be able to forgive myself for the crimes I committed to become imprisoned. I loved horses and the work around a ranch. The idea of sustaining a family with my own efforts did appeal to me. I was sure that I could come to love Jessmei.
    Then I realized why it wouldn't work. Jessmei would grow old and I never would. I would toss and turn at night worrying about the Elven presence waiting to enslave us once they grew in power. When I thought of what our children would look like, I imagined little Paug-like kids with blonde hair and blue eyes chasing me around and pleading for attention.
    I missed my young friend too much to abandon his memory.
    "What about Paug?" I whispered to her as my hands caressed her neck while we embraced. Her eyes met mine after I spoke and she began to cry again.
    "I forgot," she sobbed again and then threw herself back into my chest and cried for a few more minutes. "You have to go save them if you can. If they are alive. You have to come back."
    "I'm hard to kill Jessmei. I will come back with our friends," I said, and then I had kissed her deeply to drive the point home. After we had agreed on my quest she still asked me to stay for a few days, she had wanted to prepare the jerky for my journey, but she also wanted to make love many more times. We had little privacy in the house we shared with Rayat's family, but we discovered a tiny glade a mile and a half from the cottage. The spot was next to a small spring surrounded by alder, maple, and pine trees. We had enjoyed our private clearing as much as we savored each other's bodies.
    The sudden noise of a crowd pulled me from the reverie of remembering our last bout of love making. I had walked into the southern bazaar. A few hundred people stood in a roughly constructed line where Nia soldiers were distributing bread and vegetables. No one seemed to notice my presence or care that I observed them. Even the large group of Losher soldiers that passed up and down the crowd paid me little heed as I wandered around the bazaar clearing, trying to discern the logistics of the line and food distribution process. They must have figured that a lone man could not do any damage against an army that had successfully sacked a city.
    I was looking forward to proving them wrong.
    "Hey friend," a voice called out from behind me. I turned to see a large man with a ripped shirt and gravy-stained pants addressing me from the doorway of a tavern.
    "Yes?"
    "You thirsty? Got us beer in here if you got money." He smiled a toothy grin.
    "I have some. A beer sounds good." The various highwaymen and robbers I had slain on my way here all carried coin, and I might be able to gain more information about the state of the capital in a tavern. I walked toward the door and the man stepped aside to let me pass into the dark building. The inside stunk of bad body odor, blood, and vomit. The room was about sixty feet wide and deep, filled with twenty-one men hunched around dusty tables. They whispered to each other guardedly and sipped mugs of sour-smelling brew. Most of them wore hooded cloaks