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  To be continued…

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  Candra’s Freedom

  Book II of The Golden Key Chronicles

  Prologue

  Standing atop the wide, stone parapet, Rowena closed her eyes and tilted her face to the warm rays of the late summer sun. Helios, the people called him, and though she’d tried to buy into their religion, to her the sun was simply the sun.

  A high wind tugged at her hair and whipped a sheet of white silk into a billowing frenzy behind her. Whenever she passed they whispered candra-scinlæce, the Glowing Sorceress, but most of them were exceedingly superstitious, and they believed silly things. She was merely a woman. No special powers. No secret gifts. No past, no future…no family.

  Light footsteps breached the landing and she softly smiled. Now who had they sent? Who had seen her and raised the alarm? Hopefully her intruder was Gertie. Oh, how Rowena delighted in sending her owlish handmaiden into fits of palpitations with such outlandish behavior. After all, what other joys were there?

  A gasp reached her ears through the whisper of the wind. Rowena smirked, but kept her eyes closed and her legs braced on the stone wall. Yep, that was Gertie.

  “Milady, please,” the handmaiden spoke harshly. “You know how these perilous acts strain my nerves. Should you fall to your death, I would surely follow soon after. The king would display my head on a pike and the commonwealth would spit on the pole for generations.”

  “That’s overstating things a bit, don’t you think, Gertie?” Rowena blinked and peered out over the countryside. From her advantage atop the tall bell tower, every farm in the kingdom sat displayed at her feet, and a whimsical freedom she rarely enjoyed filled her soul.

  Dart screeched aloft a lazy circle astride the wind, falcon wings tipped gold in the sunlight, inviting her to join him in the air.

  “I come bearing news of great import,” Gertie complained. “But I cannot tell you in such a state. You must first climb down.”

  Rowena sighed. When would these people learn? When would they ever, ever learn? She wasn’t some dowdy princess to be locked in a tower with her needlework. She couldn’t stand the thought of one more person telling her what she could and couldn’t do.

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort. If you’ve got something to say, out with it. Otherwise, go away. I’m busy.” If only the wind would pick up just a little more. This event had to be timed exactly right.

  “Fine!” the handmaiden huffed. “No one should bear the load of such a heavy burden. Watching over you has been one terror after the next, and the finality of your demise will successfully do away with my curse.”

  Rowena chuckled. “I love you, too. Now talk or get lost.”

  “A courier just returned from the North. Prince Caedmon has escaped.”

  Her knees involuntarily jerked. So, after nearly two years of waiting, the prodigal son finally returned. Everyone would expect her to be relieved, happy even, but the thought filled the back of her throat with bitter bile.

  No doubt a grand fete would be held in his honor, and she would be put on display, the swooning beauty awaiting her handsome prince. Oh, how terribly romantic. The kingdom would celebrate. Everyone would rejoice. A marriage would most likely follow…and in the privacy of his company, he would try to control her, just like everyone else in this horrid place. He would lord over her and expect she obey his every command.

  Prince Caedmon Austiere. The only person alive who knew the sordid truth behind her arrival.

  The last time she’d seen him he’d pummeled two men. If that wasn’t enough, he was Braedric’s brother. A shiver of revulsion crawled down her spine.

  To her, the prince’s jailbreak meant only one thing. Yet another heavy lock and chain slung around her neck, another prison sentence to endure…

  Well, tough. She’d long since learned how to fend for herself, make her own rules and forge ahead regardless of the consequences. She wasn’t a simpering ninny anymore, ruled by fear, that scared little girl who cowered in his chambers so long ago.

  However Prince Caedmon judged her actions—appalling, fanatical, folly—she simply didn’t care. Let him suffer the same absurd astonishment as everyone else. Let him try, just try to tell her how inappropriately she behaved. She wasn’t about to adhere to such ridiculous constraints. Not anymore.

  She peered down the length of the wall and tightened her jaw when a wave of vertigo made the ground reel some ten stories beneath her feet. Then again, maybe everyone in the kingdom was right. She’d lost her mind and this venture was simply suicide.

  She whipped up her chin. “How soon will he arrive?”

  “By ship two days hence. Now really, Milady, I must insist you withdraw from the wall.”

  “I can’t do that, Gertie.” A gust of mountain air blew the hair back from her brow and the silk snapped and expanded in response. “But do me a favor? If I’m not successful, please give Prince Caedmon my regards.”

  Rowena extended her arms, bent her knees and leapt…

  Available December 12th 2013

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2013

  Copyright © AJ Nuest

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