Prisoner of the Iron Tower
Chapter One
PRISONER OF THE IRON TOWER
Chapter 1
W Astasia Orlova leaned on the rail of the Tielen ship that was carrying her back home to Muscobar across the Straits. Cold seaspray blew into her face, her hair, but she did not care.
She was bearing Count Velemir’s ashes back to Mirom. It was Feodor Velemir who had brought her to Tielen on the pretense that wreckage from her brother Andrei’s command, the Sirin, had been washed up on the shore. She had gone, eager that there might be the faintest glimmer of hope that Andrei was not drowned but lying injured in some remote fisherman’s hut, only to find that it had all been a ruse to display her charms to the Tielen court and council, to persuade them that she would make a suitable bride for Prince Eugene.
Well, Count, she thought, gazing into the rolling sea mist that hid the coastline of Muscobar from view, you have paid the ultimate price for your treachery. You used me heartlessly. You lied, you twisted the truth to further your own ends, and now you are dead.
But even now she was not sure she believed the evidence of her own eyes. What she had witnessed in the snowy palace yard had ... read full excerpt from: Prisoner of the Iron Tower ebook
