The Traitor Queen (The Bridge Kingdom, #2)

by Danielle L. Jensen

For while pain was an old friend, and discomfort almost a way of life, to be confined to what sights his own mind could conjure was the worst sort of torture. Because despite his most fervent wish it were otherwise, all his mind wanted to show him were visions of her. Lara. His wife. The Traitor Queen of Ithicana.

“My aunt believes you to be cleverer than you look, but I’m beginning to question her judgment.” “Did you just call me stupid?” “If the shoe fits…”

And it was all the result of her lies, her deception, her manipulation. The woman he’d fallen in love with didn’t exist—she was just a mask Lara had chosen to wear for a time. He didn’t know her. Didn’t want to.

“Lara!” He screamed her name. “Fight!”

It was a slow climb out of the murky darkness. The longest climb she’d ever made. Through blackness and sadness and terror, chased by all the villains who had haunted her life, not the least the villain inside herself. Grasping and reaching and struggling. But then she heard his voice. Her name. Heard the only command he’d ever given her. Lara opened her eyes.

But he was alive. And so was she.

“I heard you call my name,” she whispered. “I heard you order me to fight.” “First damned time you ever listened.”

But she remembered. Remembered him telling her that he loved her. That he needed her. That he wouldn’t let her go.

“I swore to fight by your side, to defend you to my dying breath, to cherish your body and none other, and to be loyal to you as long as I live.” Picking up her knives, she slid them into their sheaths with twin thunks. “And that means where you go, I go, too.”