Forbidden Fruit Read online

  Whatever Imogen had set in motion, Carys had to stop. Otherwise, there would be no way to avoid a war that would tear Eden apart.

  “Then that settles it,” Garret said with a nod. “We will ride to Bisog.”

  “There is no way Carys is going to Bisog.” Errik laughed.

  The whispering grew louder. Swirling through her head as the men faced each other. Her anger built with each accusation they hurled at one another.

  “The houses in Bisog are bound by oaths to the High Lord of the district,” Lord Errik argued. “Now that my father’s dead, they are sworn to me. I will take control of their guardsmen and lead them into Eden under the princess’s banner.”

  Her heart pounded. The wind pushed against her chest, drowning out the words.

  “And once she’s in your district surrounded by your swords, you’ll take control of Carys as well. Over my dead body.”

  Garret reached for his sword. “That can be arranged.”

  “Stop!” she shouted as Errik drew his sword. Fighting each other about who could be trusted—when she didn’t know if either could be.

  Wind gusted and swirled on the top of the hill in front of them. And that’s when she saw them. Six men on horseback with steel brandished, cresting the hill and bearing down toward them.

  “Run, Larkin!” Carys unfastened her cloak so she could reach into the pockets of her gown. The wind caught her cloak and pulled. Her fingers closed around the hilts of her stilettos. Errik and Garret moved in front of her with their swords drawn, ready to fight the four charging men.

  Carys cocked her right arm back to throw when she heard the twang of bows. She lifted her eyes and spotted two of the men at the top of the hill notching new arrows in their longbows. They fired again—in the direction Larkin had run. Urging her horse forward, Carys picked her target and let one stiletto fly. Despite the cold and her weakness, her aim was true. The man dropped the bow in his hand as the stiletto buried its long, sharp point deep in his neck.

  Steel scraped against steel not far from her. Someone let out a war cry that ended abruptly. Carys couldn’t turn. She kept her eyes on the man before her—who had just let another arrow fly.

  “Look out!” Errik shouted as his blade slashed through one attacker.

  A horse screamed. She heard Garret call to Errik as she drew back the other blade and let it fly. The wind gusted. The stiletto missed the attacker’s throat and dug deep into the hollow of his cheek. Carys saw his eyes widen just before he fell from his horse.

  “Carys!”

  She turned. Her friend was standing under a tree. Her horse was nowhere to be found. Garret fought with one of the two remaining brigands on the ground. Two others were dead by Errik’s hand. The other attacker was still mounted and thundering toward Larkin. And Carys had no other weapons with which to protect her friend.

  Wheeling her horse, she urged it forward, desperate to reach Larkin before the man with the sword.

  Then Errik was there atop his own horse. His steel flashed. The man clad in brown and gold parried, then looked up at Errik’s face and shouted, “It’s you!”

  The attacker dropped his blade to the ground just as Errik swung his sword again and buried it in the man’s neck.

  “Larkin,” Carys yelled, sliding off her horse. She caught her friend in a tight embrace before pulling back to look at her. “Are you okay?”

  Larkin swallowed hard as she nodded. “I’m fine.” She looked down at the ground near where she’d been standing. At her feet were several arrows—their shafts cracked in two. “I thought I was going to die. But—none of the arrows hit me. They just . . .” She looked at Carys with wonder. “It’s like they just stopped. They’re broken.”

  Anger swirled in Carys’s thoughts. Then it was gone. She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. “The arrows must have been in the cold for too long. The shafts must have splintered.”

  Errik cocked his head to the side and studied her before sliding his bloody sword into his sheath and dismounting. “Bad luck for them. Good luck for us.”

  “I’ll take that kind of luck any day,” Garret said, crossing to Carys and Larkin. Not once did he look at the men whose blood was draining into the snow. He pulled off his cloak and draped the thick garment around Carys’s shoulders. “But you and I both know we have another force to thank for our lives.” He whispered into her ear, “We have much to discuss, Your Highness.” A shiver went up her spine as he turned to the others. “And our luck continues because these men are no longer in need of their horses. Would you care to join me in taking charge of our new mounts, Errik?”

  Errik smiled. “Lead the way.”

  The minute the two were gone, Larkin stooped down and picked up a broken arrow shaft. Fear filled her face. “This wasn’t luck. Was it, Carys?”

  A lie sprang to Carys’s lips. After years in the Palace of Winds, surrounded by people scheming to gain influence and power, speaking untruths with conviction was, for Carys, akin to breathing. But this was Larkin—someone who had her own life turned upside down just because she dared be Carys’s friend. Larkin should, at that moment, have been traveling to her wedding. Instead she was on the run.

  Carys owed her the truth, even if it meant scaring her even more. Hearing the stories of the powers of the old seers was one thing. Seeing them—living them—was quite another.

  Carefully, she said, “It wasn’t luck, but I . . .” She felt the confusion inside her build anew. The whispers returned. She clenched her fists, and her breath caught in her throat. The trees bent and she pressed a hand against her stomach—and took a deep breath to clear her mind. “I don’t understand what’s happening. The wind is . . . in my mind. It saved my life during the trials, but I don’t understand what it is or how to control it.”

  Or if it could be controlled. Stories claimed that it could, but her brother hadn’t believed the seers had this kind of power. His faith, for lack of a better word, rested only in what he could see with his own eyes and test with his own mind. He convinced her the stories were complete fabrications. She never studied them. She had no idea what wisdom they might hold.

  “You’re scared,” Larkin said.

  It wasn’t a question, but Carys nodded anyway. “Since the trials, I’ve heard voices I can’t comprehend. I keep thinking I’m going crazy because I can’t understand what they say. The wind cannot speak. Not to me. I’m not a seer. So how can this be?”

  “How do you know?” Larkin asked. “What makes you believe it’s the wind that calls to you?”

  “How could it be anything but? How could I mistakenly believe I had some kind of affinity?”

  Larkin gave her a long look. They didn’t discuss Carys’s secret, but it sat between them just the same. The Tears of Midnight and all they had done to her, body and mind. Larkin held out a broken arrow shaft. “I don’t know what is happening, but I believe there is a reason for it. Just as there was a reason for us becoming friends.”

  “Maybe . . .” Carys frowned as Larkin slipped the broken shaft into her pocket. “I’m just grateful you are safe. And as long as we get you to your betrothed and his family in Acetia, you will stay that way.”

  Acetia was far to the north, but if they found a group of merchants, it might be possible . . .

  “No,” Larkin said firmly. “Your brother is convinced that I was involved in a plot to assassinate him. If he hasn’t learned of my betrothal yet, he will soon. How long do you think Zylan and his family would live if they protected me?”

  “Then I’ll find somewhere else for you to hide until it’s possible for you to be reunited with him. You are not going to be safe if you stay with me.”

  “I did not become friends with you because it was safe,” Larkin snapped. “And winner of the Trials or not, you are my Queen. Whether you wish me to or not, I will stand at your side and defend you with my last dying breath—as I know you would do for me and for the rest of Eden.” As if to prove it, Larkin dropped into a dee
p curtsy and in a voice filled with certainty said, “Your Majesty, I pledge myself to your service. When the night is darkest, I promise to be a light to help you find your way.”

  Tears pricked Carys’s eyes. The words weren’t the typical ones spoken to swear fealty, but the passion behind them sealed the vow as certainly as if it was said in the Hall of Virtues before the Throne of Light. Yet, they made clear Larkin’s intent to be her champion. To be, in her own way, a knight in Carys’s service.

  Swallowing the lump in her throat, Carys took Larkin’s arm and helped her stand. “I’m supposed to vow that I will never ask you to betray the seven virtues of our kingdom. But considering I’m going to return to Garden City in order to unmask traitors and take the throne, I’m not certain I can do that.”

  Larkin stood and gave a hint of a smile. “I’d be happy to push your brother into a dung heap if given the chance.”

  “No offense,” Carys said, feeling the anger that had been growing with every passing day vanish like smoke. “But that’s something I might have to do myself.”

  Larkin nodded with mock sincerity. “As you wish, Your Majesty. Would you like me to retrieve your stilettos?”

  “I have already done so,” Errik said, sliding off a chestnut brown stallion and starting toward Carys. “But feel free to take anything else from our fallen friends that you think we might have use for.”

  As Larkin hurried off, Errik pulled the long, silver blades from beneath his cloak. “Things might not have gone so well for us had the bowmen not been stopped so quickly. It’s a relief to be traveling with one so skilled.”

  Carys looked down at the blades then into the handsome face of the foreign dignitary who had helped her when she needed someone to trust. And she had trusted him, but that was before he assisted her escape through the tunnels below the Palace of Winds.

  He should never have known about the tunnels’ existence. How had he discovered the passage out when she, who had spent so much of her childhood roaming those lost tunnels, never had? Her body’s craving for the Tears of Midnight had made it impossible to demand answers before. But she was growing stronger, and now that the danger had passed, she could see the attack on them with greater clarity.

  “Are you feeling all right, Your . . . Carys?” Errik asked, stepping closer.

  In the distance Carys saw Garret speaking to Larkin as her friend examined another of their enemy’s bows. “I’m . . . not sure.” Carys wrapped her hands around the hilts of her silver weapons and took them from Errik’s grasp.

  “Is there something I can do?” He took another step forward and put his arm around Carys’s shoulder. “You must be tired.”

  Carys leaned against him, felt the warmth of his body relax against hers. Then she pictured the man Errik had killed. A man who laid down his weapon because he recognized Errik.

  She took advantage of his ease and jabbed the point of a stiletto into his side. His body went still as she quietly said, “I’m tired of the people I trusted with my life lying to me. So it’s time to tell me how you found the escape tunnel under the palace, and after that you will explain how you knew the man you just felled.”

  “Carys, you have to trust me . . .”

  “No.” She dug the tip of the stiletto through his shirt and felt him gasp as the steel pricked his flesh. “I don’t. But you did aid me in my escape so I will allow you to explain. You are not a Trade Master.”

  “No. I am not from Chinera.”

  “Then where? Who are you and how did you come to the Palace of Winds?”

  “Technically, I have no true home. My family has shed blood, broken oaths, spurred others into war and betrayed one another to regain the power they believe is rightfully theirs.”

  “You speak in riddles.”

  “I speak the truth.” He paused. “I grew up in the castle of Dragonwall, but it was never my home.”

  “Dragonwall. You mean Adderton?” The kingdom to the south had been at odds with Eden since long before Carys was born.

  “There is more.” He sighed heavily. “What was left of my family took refuge in Adderton a hundred years ago when they fled through those same passages that carried you to safety. My ancestors fled—while their brothers and sisters were being slaughtered by yours. My name is Lord Errik of the Family Bastian.”

  Bastian.

  Carys’s head spun. Her great-grandfather had cut down the Bastians in order to be King. The Bastians had sworn revenge against them at all cost and had, through Eden’s last fraudulent seer, killed her father and brother and turned Andreus against her. If given the chance, the Bastians would kill him, and her, too.

  Her cloak fluttered as she turned. “I will do you the honor of looking you in the face as I dispatch you for this treachery.”

  “There is no treachery. If I wished to betray you, Carys, I could have done it long before now. I could have left you to die as your brother did or killed you quietly when you begged in your sleep for someone to end your pain. I am not like my cousin, the seer. Imogen came to reclaim the throne for my family. I am not with them. I want none of that.”

  Don’t listen, she told herself. Kill him now. But his words and his face held no fear, no sign of deceit, only conviction. It stilled her hand from spilling his blood then and there onto the frozen ground.

  “What do you want?” she demanded. “If not the throne, why did you come to Eden?”

  “I came hoping to find a way to make peace. Instead, I found something more important.” His eyes met hers and held them fast. “I found you.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JOELLE CHARBONNEAU has performed in opera and musical theater productions across Chicagoland. She is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Testing trilogy as well as two adult mystery series. Her YA books have appeared on the Indie Next List, the YALSA Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers list, and state reading lists across the country. Her newest standalone YA thriller, Need, has been optioned for a feature film and is currently in development.

  www.joellecharbonneau.com

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  BOOKS BY JOELLE CHARBONNEAU

  Dividing Eden

  Eden Conquered

  Into the Garden

  Forbidden Fruit

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  COPYRIGHT

  FORBIDDEN FRUIT. Copyright © 2018 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Digital Edition APRIL 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-245589-5

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-245589-5

  10987654321

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