The Taming: Book 3 in the Tribe Warrior Series by Imogen Keeper (romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

corner. He checked, not that he had time, but the damned thing was always thirsty. He tipped some water into it, moving fast.

Nor was she in the formal dining room.

Or the regio’s garden.

Nor out on the cliffs.

He checked in the main hall. It seemed like everyone in the whole cassia was there, except for Klym.

His mother and sister sat in a quiet corner.

“Where is she?” he asked them.

Janna’s eyes were red-rimmed, and she was holding Klym’s holo-cam.

“Where is my wife?”

His mother made the same dour face she always made.

“Answer me!” he said, but it came out closer to a shout and echoed in the hall. Everyone was silent. Staring. But no one spoke.

His mother shifted beside him. “Pijuan is coming here, right now.” Her voice was as controlled and steady as always. “He plans to take Klymeni.”

“He’ll have to kill me first.”

“Nothing would make him happier.” She glared at him, those hard eyes, the wrinkled, dour face. “Klymeni is gone.”

“Gone?” he hissed.

“Gone. Left the cassia. Heading back to Argentus.”

Tor roared and kicked a chair. It flew through the air, over a table and through the open wall of windows that ran the front of the house. Birds squawked angrily.

“You’d have died keeping them from her,” his mother said with her preternatural calm, which only made his blood boil. “And if that happened, Pijuan would step in as regio. It’s exactly what he wants.”

Breathing hard, shaking with the effort to control himself, he whispered, “Where is she?”

“Safe.”

“If anything happens to her…”

“She is safe.”

He didn’t even hesitate or pause, he turned on his toe and stormed through the hall, past shocked and surprised people, out to the front of the house and the line of hovers that sat there. He would find her. He would drag her back to the cassia and chain her to the bed until she admitted that she wanted to be with him.

He’d made it less than five steps, when the sound of approaching hovers split the air.

Looking up at the sky, shielding his eyes from the sun, he saw them. Not one. Not ten. Hundreds of hovers filled the sky.

Black and hulking, humming their insistent whine, and emblazoned with the bold insignia of a pair of crossed swords.

The Alliance.

Their humming filled the air, sticking in his ears.

His mother had been right.

The people of the cassia filed out, drawn by the noise.

One after another, the hovers landed, and Polizei filed out, armored, weaponed and moving in sync. The Alliance’s central army was robotic in their training and efficiency. Tor eyed them. They trained hard, but few of them were bloodied. Unlike the local armies, the Alliance didn’t participate in raids, nor did they engage the Argenti in space.

Their sole job was to maintain order on Vesta.

Pijuan hopped off a hover, his hand on that stupid decorative sword, and stood at the front, his button eyes amused.

There were hundreds of Polizei. He’d come prepared for a war.

36

How much?

KLYM, with a scarf covering her hair, huddled beside Staria as she pounded on the window of Itta’s shop.

Overhead, hundreds of hovers whined their way through the sky, in the direction of the Roq. She shuddered, imagining what would have happened if Layanna hadn’t warned her. She imagined herself, incarcerated, questioned, tortured. She imagined Tor, bleeding on the ground.

A light flickered on at the back of the closed shop.

Itta’s body stood in silhouette before she hurried to the door. “Selissa, did you come to collect your outfit? It’s ready.”

Klym forced her tongue to operate and her feet to move into the shop. Staria followed, locking the door quickly.

Even though it hurt deep down in her heart to do it, she lifted her mother’s pearls. “I came to ask you how much you’d be willing to pay for these.”

Her mother would understand. She had to. The laughing, smiling woman whose death had destroyed her father, she’d understand.

37

He loves her

TOR BLEW out a long stream of hot air that did nothing to calm him down. It was like fanning a fire. Fury burned along his blood, fury at his mother, fury at Pijuan, fury at Klym, fury at himself for leaving her alone for three days.

His mother stepped up beside him. “If she’d been here, you’d have died defending her. Look at them all. You couldn’t stop them.”

He gritted his teeth, his hand clenching around his sword.

“She said she found someone who could take her home.” His mother slanted him a look.

Who the hell would get her? Spiro? Tor had been so sure she would come around, but then the riots had happened, and when she’d come back, he’d been so angry, so scared for her. He should have begged her to stay, or tied her to his bed, never let her go.

Pijuan smiled broadly as he approached. “Everyone says the Roq is impressive, but this is something.” He whistled, gazing up at the cassia.

Tor imagined ripping out his small intestines, so vividly he could see the rainbow of colors and smell the stench.

“Some of the tammin vines should be pulled back, though. It’s a bit much.”

Tor clenched his jaw. The weight of regio had never felt so heavy. He wanted to find Klym and take her away from Vesta, go back to Araa-Ara and stay there forever. But he couldn’t do that. Because he was the regio, and his life wasn’t his own anymore.

“Come now,” Pijuan said. “Don’t be shy. Where is the errant selissa?”

Tor just stared back at him, imagining a hundred different ways to kill him.

“Be honest.” Pijuan leaned in closer, and whispered, “Is she the selissa? I mean, she can’t be unless she’s actually your wife.”

Tor’s ears roared, and it took force of will not to pull Miannya from her sheath and let her sing. Surrounded by Alliance Polizei as he was, it would be suicide. “What do you want, Pijuan?”

“To speak with the Argenti woman.”

“You’re not welcome in this hall. You’re trespassing.”

Pijuan tutted and pulled a digi from his hip. “The high court just issued a new