“Is she good?”
“Yes.”
“Better than you?”
“Faster. Voron taught us both. It was like fighting myself. She’s a killer. If you take away her sword, she’ll pick up a rock. If you take away the rock, she’ll kill you with her hands. She zeroes in and doesn’t let go.”
Suppressed admiration slipped into his words. Elara felt an uncomfortable pinch.
“Aside from fighting Voron, it was probably my best fight,” he said.
“You fought Voron?”
“I killed him.”
She stared at him. “Why?”
“Roland wanted him dead.”
So his second surrogate father ordered him to kill his first surrogate father. And he obeyed. Either he was truly a monster or…
“Did it hurt when you killed him?”
“He wasn’t exactly in his prime.” Hugh smiled, but his eyes didn’t. It hurt, she realized. It hurt, and it haunted him still.
“Voron was bound to Roland the same way I was bound,” he said.
“How?”
“Roland pulled the blood out of my body, mixed it with his, and put it back.”
She stared at him. “How is that possible?”
“Roland’s magic is ancient. He is capable of wonders. The blood brings with it certain powers. Blood weapons. Blood wards. Long lifespan. Healing is mine alone. I was born with it. Some things I learned like any other mage can learn. But blood powers come from Roland. When Roland killed his wife, he expected Voron to come back. We all did. When he didn’t Roland purged him the way he purged me.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“When I found Voron, he was an old man. He had aged. He could no longer make a blood sword. He couldn’t use magic. He still had his skills, but his body betrayed him. I had waited a long time to meet him. There was a conversation I wanted to have. But he wouldn’t talk to me, and I killed him quickly, because it hurt to look at him.”
Is that what would happen to Hugh? “You haven’t aged.”
He grinned at her. “Give it time.”
They walked some more.
“I knew how that damn trip to the Black Sea would end from the start,” Hugh said. “Violence, magic, and fire. An old power got involved and broke open the mountain under the castle to release the magic of a dormant volcano. It melted the castle from the inside out. Solid stone ran like a glowing river. Beautiful, in a way.”
“What happened?”
“I knew I had to kill Lennart, or Daniels would never leave him. We fought. I broke his legs. He broke my back and threw me into the fire. The whole thing was idiotic.”
Volcanic fire powered by magic that melted stone. He should’ve been instantly burned to a crisp. “How did you survive?”
“I teleported out. Had a water anchor in a vial around my neck. There wasn’t much of me left. Roland put me inside a phoenix egg for three months. Took me another two to get my strength back.”
He’d spent three months in excruciating pain. He’d said it so casually, as if it didn’t matter.
“If it wasn’t for Lennart, I might have convinced her. She wavered.”
“I don’t think she did.”
Hugh turned to her. He didn’t want to speak about it in the first place, but somehow Elara was pulling it out of him and once he started, he couldn’t stop. The void was ripping him apart, and still he talked.
“You said she was a killer,” Elara said. “An orphan. Her real father was a mystery. Her adoptive father made her hide.”
“Your point?” he asked.
Elara tilted her head to glance at his face. “Roland took care of your needs. He probably taught you, right? Provided you with money? You were his right hand.”
“Everything I got, I earned,” Hugh told her. “I worked and bled for it. Everything he asked, I did. No matter what it cost.”
Daniels was Hugh’s only major failure. He never knew he was only allowed one.
“But you got whatever you wanted, right?”
“Your point?”
“She was an orphan, living on the run, probably hungry, poor, always looking over her shoulder. You were exactly like her, but you had everything, and she had nothing. Hugh, you’re an astute, experienced man. Put yourself into her shoes. You were both trained by Voron. You both lived your lives in Roland’s shadow. You worshipped him, and she feared him. Of all the people on this planet, you are the ones who truly know what it’s like to be Roland’s child.”
“Except I wasn’t his child.”
Daniels hated her father. She fought Roland on every turn, while he’d spent decades serving him. But Daniels was blood and that mattered more to Roland than anything Hugh had done. Like the prodigal child, when Daniels was found, she eclipsed the decades of his service without trying simply because she was Roland’s daughter and he would never be his son.
“Try to think like her for a moment,” Elara said. “You knew her father in a way she never did. You knew Voron and you likely had him longer than she did. You have so much in common. Then you killed Voron, whom she must’ve loved; tried to kill Lennart, whom she loves; and then tried to force her to go back to the father she hated, even though you, of all people, knew exactly what waited for her there. The betrayal was catastrophic.”
Hugh felt a vague unease. The void spun around him, making it harder to think. He pushed it aside and focused. A memory came to him, he and Daniels fighting in the castle at the Black Sea. She’d won that fight and trapped him with her sword. He’d had to submit. He’d said, “Uncle.” But there was a hint of something there, when they fought. Rage poured out of her, powerful and seductive. That red-hot boiling rage. It turned him on. He wanted to keep fighting her. He wouldn’t have stopped until one of them was dead, and she knew it.
Her face flashed before him. Daniels had looked horrified. And then she almost fled.
The recollection disturbed him. He groped for the connection to Roland, for the clean feeling of surety that clarified all his doubts, but it wasn’t there. He was on his own.
Hugh locked his teeth, sorting through his memories, going through Daniels’s facial expressions. He remembered the last one best, the time he had starved her, trying to force her to submit to her father. She had this look of resignation on her face as if she had given up on him ever getting it.
She never saw him as a man. He was never in the running; he had known that from the start. He was either an extension of Roland or…
It hit him like a ton of bricks. Daniels saw him as a sibling. She probably didn’t even realize it.
On some level he had always understood it. It wasn’t the woman he had wanted. It was what she represented. He wanted her acceptance. He wanted her to admit how good he was. He would’ve seduced her to get it and then rubbed Roland’s face in it. One way or the other, the bastard would acknowledge him then.
Validation. So simple.
At the Black Sea, Lennart had played a ruse, pretending to be interested in another woman. It was a moronic tactic, one that always backfired, and it took a lot of work to cut off all possible escape routes until Hugh forced Lennart into that path. Hugh had quite enjoyed watching it play out at the time. It seemed odd, when Hugh thought about it now, as if it had happened to someone else. It had made Daniels desperate. It had made her vulnerable.
How the hell did he miscalculate so badly? It was painfully obvious now.
“I should’ve played the brother angle.” He didn’t realize he had spoken out loud until he heard his own voice.
“Come back to your true family?” Elara asked.
He nodded. “It would’ve been so easy too. ‘Look at everything you sacrificed for Lennart, and here he is, sniffing after the first attractive shapeshifter girl that fluttered her eyelashes at him. You’ll never belong with them, but you belong with us. We are your true family. He’ll never understand you, but we will. I will. I know exactly what it’s like. Come with me, and you will have a father and
a brother who love you above all others.’ Damn it! I could’ve had her.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Why the hell didn’t I see it?”
“Because you wanted something from her, Hugh,” Elara said, her voice gentle. “And it made you blind. What did you want?”
“Doesn’t matter now.”
He wanted acceptance. If not from Roland, then from her. He would never have it now, and when he thought about it, the ball of conflicting crap those thoughts dragged in their wake was too complicated to deal with.
“Should I worry about this Daniels coming here to kill you?” Elara asked. “If I were her, I’d hunt you to the ends of the Earth.”
Hugh struggled for a moment with the paradox of someone worrying about him. “No. Her hands are tied. She claimed Atlanta as her domain the night Roland exiled me. If she leaves, he will attack.”
“So she sacrificed revenge for her people.”
“That’s the way she’s wired.”
“Do you still want her?”
She’d asked the question so casually, so perfectly flat. Hugh glanced at her. She looked at the road ahead, her face relaxed, but it was too late. He’d caught that one tiny note of female jealousy in her voice.
The untouchable goddess of the castle. Would wonders never cease?
Elara turned to him. “Hugh? I need to know if you will take off looking for her if you get a chance.”
Sure, you do. You shouldn’t have shown your hand, love.
“It doesn’t matter now. It’s in the past.”
“Is it? Is Roland in the past?”
The void opened its mouth and swallowed him whole. For a moment he couldn’t even speak, then the thing that drove him into battle reared its head and he tore free.
She was waiting for an answer.
Perceptive and smart, his dangerous harpy. His lovely wife. Elara had thought about it, about him. There was a spark there. All he had to do was blow on it and feed it, and he would get her. If their fights were anything to go by, he was in for a hell of a time.
“Roland no longer matters,” he lied.
“If Roland and Daniels don’t matter, neither does the Pack.”
The woods ended. They turned down the street to the smithy.
“So much effort to keep me from blowing up your deal. I have to give it to you, you really tried. Good show.”
She bared her teeth at him. “If you pick a fight with the Pack tomorrow, I’ll kill you and bury you in those herb beds back there.”
“That’s my sweet harpy. Come on, let me see those claws.”
“I mean it, Hugh.”
“Is it Hugh now? Not Preceptor?”
She eyed him. “I’ll call you Preceptor when you’re done with your immature tantrums.”
He laughed.
Elara looked into his eyes, her gaze searching. “What is it you stand for, Hugh d’Ambray?” she asked.
He reached for the answer. It eluded him for the moment. “Good times and loose women.”
Elara rolled her eyes and peered at the smithy. “What are we doing here anyway?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the sketch of the warrior. “We’re going to ask your best smith how hard it is to make this scale mail.”
He already knew the answer, but he wanted confirmation anyway.
She sighed.
“Come on, then, wife. Put on a happy face.”
“Ugh.” She reached over and slid her fingers into the crook of his elbow.
“Good God, control yourself, woman. We’re in public. At least wait until we’re in the bedroom.”
“Your corpse will grow lovely goldenseal.”
He laughed again and walked her down to the smithy.
Hugh stood in front of his bedroom window, leaning on the windowsill. Night breathed in his face, cool and soothing after the day’s heat. Early October had been surprisingly hot. He’d left the door to his rooms open, and the night breeze swirled past him, sucked out the door, down the hallway and into the depths of the castle.
Things used to be simple. Too simple.
He was a man who killed one father, failed the other, and left a trail of destruction in his wake four continents wide. When he looked back now, he saw bodies. It never bothered him before. He’d felt vague pangs of guilt, but never this.
It wasn’t natural. That was the only explanation. If he felt all this shit now, he would’ve felt it when he was doing it. He should’ve been bothered. That part of him had been suppressed and he wasn’t the one doing that suppressing.
An absurd urge to find Nez gripped him. Did he feel this? Was his leash longer? Was he allowed guilt?
“What is it you stand for, Hugh?”
Fuck if I know.
He wanted the bottle tonight. More than anything. He wanted to get drunk and forget all of it.
He heard footsteps behind him. “You called?” Lamar asked.
“Come in.”
The tall lanky man came over and leaned against the desk.
“Tell me what happened after my exile.”
“I thought you didn’t want to know.”
“I do now.”
Lamar pulled a cloth out of his pocket, took off his glasses, and cleaned the lenses. “The same night Roland exiled you, he went to Atlanta. There was a bargain. Lennart gave up the Pack. In return Roland agreed to a hundred-year peace with Daniels.”
“He separated her from her power base.”
“Yes. Once I was out of the picture, he began the systematic purge of the Iron Dogs. Anyone loyal to you became a target.”
“What about Atlanta?”
“Roland began building on the edge of it.”
“He was baiting her,” Hugh said. “He can’t help himself.”
“For a while he played father of the year, but Daniels never trusted him. Eventually he kidnapped one of her people, a polymorph named Saiman. She came to visit Roland at the fort he was building and demanded Saiman back. He refused. They screamed at each other in the language of power. She called him a usurper. Stoyan was there on the cross. He didn’t understand most of it, but he said the day was bright and sunny, and by the end of it, the sky turned black and lightning struck the ground. When they were done, she got Stoyan and got the hell out of there.”
It sounded like something Daniels would do. Subtle like a runaway bulldozer.
“She defended you,” Lamar said.
Hugh turned to him.
“You said you wanted to know. Stoyan memorized that part. He thought you would want to know one day.” Lamar reached inside his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.
“Read it to me.”
“‘You were everything to him. He committed all those atrocities for you and you stripped him of your love, the thing he cared about most.’ ‘Hugh outlived his usefulness. His life had been a series of uncomplicated tasks and eventually he became his work.’”
A simpleton. That’s how he saw me. And she understood.
“‘He was raised exactly like you wanted him to be.’ ‘He was like a fallen star. I melted it down and forged it into a sword. It’s not truly his fault, but the world is becoming more complicated not less. Some swords are meant to be forged only once.’”
The void turned to fire around him.
I am a sword. A weapon. Okay. But you’ve made me into a really sharp sword and I know how to cut you.
Lamar took a step back and swallowed. “Are you alright?”
“What happened next?”
“Roland brought an army. Not his main force, the secondary divisions he had spaced out through the region. Daniels turned the Atlanta Chapter of the People.”
“Of course she did. Ghastek is her Legatus?”
“Yes. How did you…?”
“Ghastek is terrified of death and Daniels can bestow immortality,” Hugh said. “What happened with the battle?”
“They fought. Roland assaulted the Keep. It was the crudest assault known to mankind.
”
“Don’t tell me he formed up his troops and marched them to their fort.”
“He did exactly that.”
Moron.
The word sliced across his nerves like a red-hot blade. He’d just called Roland a moron in his head. The pain echoed through him, but the world kept spinning.
“The combined forces of Atlanta massacred his army,” Lamar said. “Daniels and Lennart tried to kill him. He fled.”
His brain chopped through the words trying to make sense of them. “He fled?”
“He did.” Lamar smiled. “Teleported out.”
A chance. Daniels had a shot at the title.
His mind ached, reeling from the red-hot pain.
“Daniels is pregnant,” Lamar said quietly.
“Is it Lennart’s?” He already knew the answer.
“They’re married, and she doesn’t seem like the cheating type.”
“Roland’s worst fear,” Hugh thought out loud.
“Why?” Lamar asked.
“Roland’s magic is like a science. It’s systematic, it’s logical, and it has laws. It supports all of the cornerstones of the scientific method: the observation, measurement, experimentation, and formation and testing of theory. He views it as a civilizing force. Shapeshifter magic is ancient and wild. It relies on instinct. It predates Roland’s systematic approach. He derides it as primitive, but he fears it and he’s drawn to it because he doesn’t understand it. He’s fascinated by witches. His daughter is half a witch and now she’s conceived a shapeshifter child.”
Understanding shone in Lamar’s eyes. “He’s afraid his grandchild will surpass him.”
Hugh nodded. “He’ll do anything to get his hands on that kid. Except that he’s thinking a generation too late. It’s not the baby he needs to worry about. It’s the mother.”
“What does it mean for us…” Lamar frowned.
“My wife allied us with the Pack. The Pack is allied with Daniels. That moves us from Nez’s Personal Amusement column to Weaken Roland’s Enemy. We have two choices: we can sever all association with the Pack or we can openly declare ourselves their allies.”
Lamar rubbed the back of his head. “Pick your enemy time.”
“Betraying the Pack buys us time.” And will make Elara nearly unmanageable. “Standing against Roland now complicates things. Tomorrow the Pack people are arriving. Nez will force the issue. That’s the way he thinks.”
Iron and Magic Page 16
