A Touch of Stone and Snow (A Gathering of Dragons, #2)

by Milla Vane

“She was here,” Riasa said, stirring the fire with a stick before lifting her gaze to his. “Then ran when we told her Koth’s prince came.” Pain slashed through him, the hot agony of a gut wound. She had run from him. But Lizzan did not run from anything. She had stood her ground against wraiths and lies. Yet she had run from him. It was as if he’d stepped through a mist and into a hazy world that made no sense. As if in a fog, he looked to the others at the fire, the boy prince and the girl warrior. They watched him with such steady and sympathetic eyes that he did not know who they saw. Not a huntsman or even a feral prince, but a man utterly lost. “Should we have detained her?” Riasa asked. Like a criminal? His voice was a painful rasp when he told her, “Lizzan has done nothing wrong.” Slowly the woman nodded. “She claimed that she was unwelcome at home because she did not die when she was supposed to.” At the mere thought of her death, new agony wrenched through his heart and he shook his head. “She only spoke a truth that no one wanted to hear. She is Koth’s shining jewel and was tossed into the mud.”