Viktor: Heart of Her King by Julia Mills Page A

contained aggression Kat had sensed earlier returned and this time it was coupled with rage. There was something her captor wanted very badly for her to figure out. He wasn’t going to tell her. She had to do it herself. It was just a damn shame Kat had no clue what it was.
    When he spoke, it was little more than a whisper, which added to the menace. “Let’s see if I can refresh your memory.”
    Pulling a leather cord through the collar of his crew neck sweater, a pendant in the shape of a golden apple appeared. He let it dangle at the end of the rope like that was going to help her glean some vital information from a fruit-shaped charm.
    Speaking with an eerie reverence while gazing lovingly at the apple, he asked, “Do you know what this is, Katarina? How important it is to the future of my people? To your future in a roundabout way?”
    All she could do was shake her head. The air was rife with tension. Something big was about to happen. She could feel it in her bones. Big...and horrible...
    “This is the Golden Apple of Discord given to me by the Goddess Eris – ruler of chaos, strife, and discord. I was honored above all others of her followers. Given the power to wield her magic here on earth. The same magic that allows me to do this.”
    From one breath to the next, her tall, dark kidnapper turned into Bjorn Makris, the blonde-haired Nordic looking supermodel she’d had breakfast with before her meeting with Viktor. Closing her eyes, Kat shook her head, praying it was all simply a dream, a very bad dream. There was no way in heaven or hell a man could change his appearance in the blink of an eye. It had to be another side effect of the drugs. Or maybe it was a hallucination caused by the stress of her current situation. Either way, there had to be a rational explanation for what she’d just witnessed.
    Forcing her eyes open, Kat wanted to cry, thought about screaming, and was most definitely sure she preferred blissful unconsciousness to what she was now facing.
    “There it is. The recognition I was looking for,” he said with an heir of superiority that made Kat bite her tongue to keep from lashing out. Maintaining eye contact, the bastard changed back to the man of Mediterranean descent she knew as her kidnapper.
    “This is my true form.”
    He didn’t wait for her to comment. Her jailer let the pendant fall to his chest, picked up his mug, took a sip of his tea, and started talking as if they were old friends. The only difference was the malevolent vibes filling the air around them. It made it hard to breath. This man was dangerous, more dangerous than Kat originally thought.
    “This,” he motioned back and forth between them with his free hand, “had its start in Ancient Greece almost three thousand years ago.”
    He paused and Kat knew it was for dramatic effect but she was still stuck back on the ‘three thousand years ago’ part.
    Add delusional to the list of adjectives when describing this man to the police if you make it out alive...check.
    “Instead of making you listen to me drone on, I have a way for you to see the events of the past that led up to this moment. Look right here.” He pointed to his golden apple again.
    The air around his pendant grew cloudy, somewhat fuzzy and then, as if he’d flipped a switch, images started to flow from it. The images stretched and grew until the people in them were almost life-sized.
    Kat was thrown into the middle of a battlefield. Bodies, bloodied and broken from the skirmish, covered the ground. It was just as Bjorn had said; it looked to be taking place in Ancient Greece. The soldiers protected themselves with circular shields made of wood with bronze inlays that glittered and shone in the setting sun, while thrusting long wooden spears at their advancing adversaries.
    The spears had to be at least seven feet long with incredibly imposing ten-inch metal tips that Kat witnessed ripping through the skin and bone of more Grecians than she could