Julian stops fighting, stops feeling the piercing cold. His legs stop treading water. He stops pumping with his free arm. Stops or can’t?
Stops.
She is barely holding on to him. But he doesn’t let go of her.
Wrapping his arms around her, he presses his face to her freezing face.
Shae, I beg you, don’t leave me behind. Take me with you. I can’t go back. Don’t leave me behind, Shae, Julian pleads as their entwined bodies sink into the black abyss of the Southern Sea.
If I die, I will never know how my story ends.
Please, Shae.
I don’t want to go back to the world I made with my own two hands.
About the Author
PAULLINA SIMONS is the author of Tully, The Bronze Horseman, and other beloved novels. Born and raised in the Soviet Union, she immigrated to the United States in the mid-seventies. She has lived in Rome, London, and Dallas, and now lives in New York with her husband and a dwindling number of her four children.
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Also by Paullina Simons
FICTION
Tully
Red Leaves
Eleven Hours
The Girl in Times Square
Road to Paradise
A Song in the Daylight
Lone Star
The Bronze Horseman Series
The Bronze Horseman
Tatiana and Alexander
The Summer Garden
Children of Liberty
Bellagrand
The End of Forever Saga
The Tiger Catcher
A Beggar’s Kingdom
NONFICTION
Six Days in Leningrad
COOKBOOK
Tatiana’s Table
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
I Love My Baby Because . . .
Poppet Gets Two Big Brothers
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A BEGGAR’S KINGDOM. Copyright © 2019 by Paullina Simons. 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.
Cover design © HarperCollins 2019
Cover photograph © Jason Hynes/Getty Images (ocean); © Mark Owen / Trevillion Images (hands)
Originally published as A Beggar’s Kingdom in Australia in 2019 by HarperCollins Publishers Australia PTY Limited.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Digital Edition JULY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-209818-4
Version 06222019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-209817-7
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