Free Souls of Aredyrah 1 - The Fire and the Light by Tracy A. Akers Page A

as
the hair bound at his back. In that instant he wanted to kill
somebody, anybody would do, though a few familiar faces came
immediately to mind. If only he could run those faces through with
his sword and make them suffer as much as he had, perhaps he could
breath a little easier, or at least get some sleep. But he knew he
never would, no matter how great the insidious fantasy seemed at
the moment. Tearian law forbade him to even own a sword now. Reiv
grabbed another plant and raised it above his head, then sent it
flying into a table of zinnias. For now, killing plants would just
have to do.
    He reached for another, but realized the
foolishness of his actions. It wouldn’t change anything. He knew
that. And he would be the one to have to clean up the mess. There
were no longer servants to do his bidding.
    “Ruairi, the prince who wanted to slay
lions,” he muttered. “Now Reiv, the slayer of marigolds.” He shook
his head and looked around the messy atrium. Of all places to take
out his frustrations, this had probably not been the best
choice.
    The atrium had actually become his sanctuary
during the past several months, after his hands had begun to heal
and he was forced to relocate there. The plants at least gave him
something to do when he wasn’t working the fields. Before, when he
was Prince and didn’t have to tend to such menial tasks, he had
thought of cultivating plants as woman’s work. But Brina had helped
him start a garden in the atrium on the pretense that they could
work together to develop healing lotions for his hands.
    Between the two of them they had grown an
assortment of herbs and flowering plants, and had tried their
skills at a number of homemade medicinals which Reiv rubbed into
his burns every day. Unfortunately, the medicinals had not had the
effect on his hands he had hoped for. The scars were bad enough to
look at—he almost ¬always wore gloves to hide them—but it was the
lack of sensitivity and decreased mobility in his fingers that
annoyed him the most. Most areas of his hands were all but numb,
the burns so deep that damage to nerves could not be undone. With
exercise he had managed to maintain some dexterity, but his grasp
on things would never be the same. Picking leaves off of plants
didn’t require much strength, but his fine motor skills required
concentration and patience. And it was patience he was most
lacking.
    He stormed over to the mess that littered the
once spotless floor and groaned. If only he had stopped with one
plant, but he hadn’t, and now there were not one but several piles
of dirt, broken clay, and wilting leaves to clean up. He gathered
up a few shards of terracotta and cradled them in his hand, then
flung them back down to the floor, smashing them into smaller
pieces still.
    “Oh, I do not care!” he shouted. “Just stay
there!”
    He marched toward the living area, threw back
the dividing drape, and plopped down onto the chaise in a huff. The
room was usually dark, as was the rest of the apartment. There were
no windows facing the streets on any side of the place, which
suited him just fine. He didn’t care to look out into the streets
anyway. The only light that ever entered any of the rooms was from
the central courtyard. That is, if he bothered to pull back the
heavy drapes that separated it from the rest of the house. Many
days he didn’t bother to pull them back at all, preferring to exist
in the darkness. He didn’t know why he felt that way. Perhaps the
darkness desensitized him. But he had left the drape open when he
stormed into the room just now, and the annoying light of morning
was filtering in.
    He was housed in the outer quadrant of
Tearia, near the Jecta dormitories, the stables, and the buildings
that housed some of the Tearian Guard. The general Jecta population
was not allowed within the walls of Tearia; only employed laborers
and certain skilled craftsmen could even step foot there. Few Jecta
lived there permanently, except for