Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
a p r i ly n n e p i k e
Destined
Copyright © 2012 by Aprilynne Pike
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First Edition
ta m a n i p r e s se d h i s f or e h e a d aga i n st t h e
chilly windowpane, fighting back a wave of exhaustion.
Sleep wasn’t an option, not while the only thing between
him and an angry Winter faerie was a thin line of table salt.
Tonight, he was Fear-gleidhidh twice over.
The old word was one he normally wore with pride. It
marked him as Laurel’s guardian, her protector. But it had a
richer meaning, one that went beyond the more traditional
Am Fear-faire. Fear-gleidhidh meant “warden,” and Tamani
was charged with not only keeping Laurel safe but making
certain she accomplished the mission Avalon had given her
as a child.
Now he played prison warden too.
He looked over at his captive. Yuki’s chair sat on the
scuffed linoleum in the middle of a circle of white, granular
salt. She slept, her cheek resting on her knees, hands cuffed
loosely behind her. She looked uncomfortable. Beaten.
l au r e l f ol l ow e d y u k i’s e y e s to sh a r , w ho
stood as still as a statue, his face betraying nothing.
It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. Not Shar, who had been her
unseen guardian since she first left Avalon.
So why isn’t he denying it?
“Tell her,” Yuki said, straining against her chair. “Tell her
what you did to her mother.”
Shar’s mouth stayed closed.
“Shar,” Laurel begged quietly. She wanted to hear him say
it wasn’t true. Needed him to say it. “Please.”
“It was necessary,” Shar replied at last. “We didn’t choose
them. They just lived there. The plan had to work, Laurel.
We had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Laurel whispered, her mouth
suddenly dry, her chin quivering with anger. Shar had poi-
soned her mother. Shar, who had been watching over her
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Laurel rolled down her window, letting the wind caress her
face as Chelsea drove through the empty, darkened streets.
For nearly half an hour Chelsea said nothing further about
their short bout in the apartment or her ill-timed appear-
ance, and Laurel appreciated the effort her friend must have
put into keeping quiet. Silence certainly did not come natu-
rally to Chelsea. She was probably dying to rehash their visit
with Yuki, but all Laurel wanted to do was force it to the
back of her mind and pretend it had never happened.
“Hey, is that . . .”
Chelsea was already pulling over when Laurel realized
that the tall guy walking down the side of the road, sil-
houetted by the streetlight, was David. His eyes were wary
as the headlights f lashed across them, but recognition—and
relief—dawned as Chelsea pulled her mother’s car alongside
him.
“Where were you?” Chelsea demanded when David
crouched to peer through the passenger window. “I drove
all over the place.”
David studied the ground. “I stayed out of sight,” he
admitted. “I didn’t want to be found.”
Chelsea glanced over her shoulder in the direction he
had been walking. Toward the apartment. “Where are you
going?”
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