His ire seemed insatiable.
He sneered down at her. “I’ll take it all from here.”
Now, seeing a possible commendation in the capture of a trespasser, he wanted to take it all from here?
She leaned in toward him, narrowed her eyes. “You can take one thing. A knee to the jewels. You want it?”
He huffed a sharp breath.
“Then get out of my way.”
He spat. “You—”
Before he could touch her, she gestured a flame cloak over her entire body. It flared to life, wreathing her in protective fire, ready for battle. She wasn’t exactly the notorious Flame of the Crag Company, but she’d more than earned her four-bar master chevron. If he wanted a fight, she was ready. And he’d lose.
She strode into his path, her shoulder colliding with his. His black mage coat caught fire there, and he beat at the flames. She looked over her shoulder at the paladin. “Follow. Luc, Jacqui, you, too.”
Taut as a harp string, Kieran stood aside as the paladin, Luc, and Jacqui moved past.
Luc outran them to the open Tower doors, and spilled the light from within. At the entrance, she dispelled her flame cloak.
When the paladin raised his hands, her muscles contracted, but he only removed his helmet.
The light of the Tower’s sconces revealed a handsome visage: mid to late twenties, a few years older than she. Close-cropped brown hair and eyes a familiar dark blue, the color of the Shining Sea in a storm. A scar slashed through his left eyebrow. And like all paladins, he was clean shaven, but his lack of facial hair did nothing to diminish him; it only complemented a decidedly masculine jaw.
She turned away. He may have a handsome face, but she’d seen handsome faces before. Falling for their appeal rarely ended well. Especially when they belonged to unattainable men who’d sworn a vow of celibacy.
In her periphery, he scrubbed a hand through his hair and then rubbed his neck.
Low on the right side below his jaw, there was a scar about the width of a blade. Another just behind his ear—an exit wound. Healed, but poorly.
It couldn’t be.
No, it was him. From five years ago.
Chapter 2
It was him. The paladin from five years ago. There was no doubt about it.
Trying to stay calm, Rielle instructed Luc to deliver the weapons to her quarters. The paladin’s gaze trailed after them.
Perhaps he didn’t recognize her. He had been, after all, on the brink of death.
Five years ago, she’d assisted the paladins in the Viscounty of Signy. One of them had died saving her and the hostages—Sir Bastien Proulx.
And she’d never forget the young paladin who fought Sir Bastien’s killer and nearly died in the attempt. Blood pouring, red and frothy. Gurgling. Eyes like the Shining Sea pleading for life. He would die. She’d known he would die. But she’d had to attempt healing, although she’d never successfully healed anyone before. She’d hummed “Winter Wren,” somehow lowered her inner barriers, whispered the incantation... Healed him. Healed the gaping wound in his neck. But she’d lacked the skill to fade the scar.
The same scar before her now. He definitely didn’t recognize her.
His eyes met hers. Caught staring, she briskly ushered him to the Tower’s center and ascended the spiral steps to the top floor, where the Proctor’s quarters were located. Eight floors.
Eight long floors.
The man himself hardly ever left his quarters, but everyone else in the Tower had to make the climb.
Panting, she emerged on the Proctor’s level and checked on her captive. The paladin stood calmly, unhampered by the several flights of stairs he’d just climbed—in full armor. He didn’t bother hiding a smile.
“Do you need to rest?” His eyes danced.
Smug brute. He dared taunt her, his captor? Was she wearing a sign today that said, Try me? She squared her shoulders. “The Proctor’s quarters are just ahead.”
“What’s he like?” he asked, his voice deep, smooth, yet with a subtle roughness like lindenwood bark.
“Powerful.” Cruel. Unyielding. A massive, sanctimonious pain.
The massive doors opened, and she came face to face with the Proctor’s apprentice, Bernadette Dufort. The daughter of a Courdevallan baker, the dun-haired Berny had traded her chores for Rielle’s kitchen duty from time to time. Berny averted her tear-streaked gaze.
“What’s wrong?” Rielle reached for her, but Berny twisted away.
“It’s the cap—” Berny shook her head and held back a sob. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” She ran toward the stairwell and disappeared in a hasty shuffle of steps.
“Berny—” Rielle called out, but to no avail. She furrowed her brow. Bernadette Dufort was one of the most composed mages—and people in general—she had ever met. It would take something catastrophic to unsettle her. What had affected her? She’d have followed, but not with a captive in tow.
All the more reason to deliver him to the Proctor. With a deep breath, she led the paladin into the foyer toward another set of doors. She knocked hesitantly.
“Enter,” came the gruff reply.
Her shoulders slumped. Perfect. In a wonderful mood already.
The Proctor’s receiving room was warmer than the Tower’s cool stone walls allowed at the beginning of autumn. The sconces were enchanted with not just light spells but warming spells. The old man must have been feeling the cold at the ripe age of seventy-two.
Exotic Sonbaharan rugs woven in priceless Zeharan red, ultramarine, kermes, and other invaluable dyes graced the cool white-marble floors. The furniture, made of rare and exquisite purple heartwood, only graced the rooms of the Grand Divinus, monarchs, and Proctors.
Bookcases lined every available wall, some double stacked and stretching fifteen feet to the domed ceiling. There, a fresco included all eleven schools of accepted magic—elemental, illusion, force, transmutation, spirit, conjury, healing, cantus, lucency, shadowmancy, and augury, as well as the three schools of forbidden magic, sangremancy, necromancy, and mentalism—all engaged in war against one another.
The Dark Age of Magic. It was what the Divinity called the ancient time of the Archons, who had ruled covens of witches fighting one another for territory and dominance, before the unity of the Divine bound all mages together under the Grand Divinus and the Divinity of Magic.
This representation of the Dark Age of Magic graced the Proctor’s quarters of every Tower of Magic, an ever-present reminder of the Divinity’s importance. If only that reminder had taken.
She sighed inwardly. Rather than remaining united and focusing on making a difference, most of the Tower’s master mages spent their time deadlocked over which feuding faction’s tenets had the most merit.
Perhaps they needed more than a fresco to remind them. Maybe a look outside at all the people who needed mages to help them.
Or a song. A really catchy song.
Finishing up some scrawling in a book, the Proctor leaned over a table with his back to them, then turned. Authoritative in his heavy black mage coat bearing the illustrious five-bar chevron of a magister, he boasted a head full of gray hair and a mouth framed by lines and a well-kept beard. Tonight, he wore an unequivocal frown, the expression he usually wore in her presence. He held a piece of parchment before him.
“My lord?” the paladin asked.
No! Don’t annoy him. She elbowed the paladin without a hint of subtlety, a move she regretted as tremors radiated up her arm at the collision with his armor.
The Proctor laughed. He actually laughed. A chill snaked up her spine. When had she last updated her will?
“Six,” the Proctor said in a lofty tone. “You defeated six of my subordinates tonight, Sodalis.” He used the Old Emaurrian address for paladins. “Your training has served you well.”
She knew better than to trust that tone. At least the paladin had the good sense to remain silent.
The Proctor turned a frown on her. “And you, Magos
? What were you doing outside?”
Divine’s flaming fire. It would’ve helped to come up with an alibi.
Who’d been out there? Luc, Jacqui, Kieran, Rainier—
Rainier. She’d completed missions with him in the past, and they’d obliged each other with resonance from time to time. She chose her words with care. “I went out to see Rainier, but no one was guarding the inner gate. When I looked out, I saw a skirmish, and I went to help.” Simple.
At the soft metal clink, she gritted her teeth and eyed the paladin peripherally. He’d tilted his head toward her.
Don’t ruin this for me.
The paladin remained quiet, a mere twitching in his clenched jaw.
The Proctor glanced at the parchment. “Are you certain? Is that the reason for your midnight jaunt, Magos?” When she nodded, he heaved a sigh. “And yet, Rainier isn’t often on the night shift. What is the reason for your jaunts on those nights?”
Deny, deny, deny. “I haven’t the slightest—”
“Save your excuses. You’ve finally been caught.” He didn’t look at her.
She swallowed. He knew about Brennan? Did he know what Brennan was? What she did every month in that forest?
No, give him nothing. “I am confused, my lord.”
The Proctor peered at the parchment, then regarded her and the paladin with narrowed eyes. “Do you not know each other?”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Five years ago, she and Leigh had mentioned in their report that she’d saved a paladin in the field, but she hadn’t known his name. She still didn’t.
Did the Proctor guess this was he? Imply she’d been meeting with this paladin?
For what purpose? She glanced over at her alleged accomplice.
Accomplice to what? Why would she be meeting him in the forest?
After a brief hesitation, the paladin met her gaze. He looked her over before correcting himself, then turned away.
Young, handsome, forbidden.
The Proctor thinks this man is my lover. An illicit romance.
Another illicit romance.
Given her past, the motive fit. Damn it, damn it, damn it!
“No.” She frowned. “If I knew him, my lord, why wouldn’t I have let him defeat the guards and escape?” Her shoulders tightened.
The Proctor creased his brow and shook the parchment. Did he hold the report from Signy five years ago?
Before she could say anything more, the paladin took a slow step forward. “My lord, I swear to you this woman and I do not know each other. In any fashion.” He cleared his throat. “If I may speak further, my lord, I believe I can clarify this situation.”
The Proctor nodded. She, too, was interested in what he had to say.
The paladin stood to attention, firelight playing in the reflective surface of his armor. “I am Sir Jonathan Ver.” The name designated him as an orphan raised at Monas Ver, one of several Order of Terra monasteries in Emaurria. “Since I took my vows at eighteen, I have been a Sodalis of the Order of Terra and followed the Code of the Paladin. Normally, like all men of my order, I give the Tower of Magic a wide berth, but I received a message from the High Priest of Monas Ver. In my haste to return there, I was careless and disrespectful. With utmost sincerity and deference, I apologize for my reckless actions.” He lowered his head.
“A message?” The Proctor echoed her own curiosity.
“Forgive me, but it is private.”
“I can respect that,” the Proctor replied, much to her surprise and disappointment. “And why didn’t you submit to questioning at the gate?”
The paladin’s face tightened. “I needed to get from Villecourt to Monas Ver. Quickly. There was no time for questioning.”
Quickly... He’d had to cross the Tainn Mountains. The next pass was at Maerleth Tainn, several days’ detour. The quickest route was through the Tower’s pass, but the paladin had gotten greedy, trying to avoid questioning.
The Proctor canted his head. “Did it not occur to you, Sodalis, that we would catch you?”
Ha! She grinned, but when the Proctor’s gaze turned on her, she covered her mouth and coughed quietly.
“Forgive me for saying this, Proctor”—the paladin relaxed—“but I saw no reason why I wouldn’t be able to fight my way through. The mages have forgotten who we are. What we can do. And cutting through the Tower’s gate was the fastest available route to Monas Ver.” He scowled pointedly at her.
She stifled a half-laugh. He would have made it through... until she’d spoiled his plans.
“Monas Ver,” the Proctor repeated slowly. “Tell me, Sir Jonathan, is Derric Lazare still the High Priest of Monas Ver?”
He knew a High Priest of the Order of Terra by name? She closed her gaping mouth.
The paladin’s bearing broke for a moment. “Yes,” he answered. “May I ask how you know Father Derric, my lord?”
Because a respectable High Priest would never deign to associate with a hedonistic mage, even a venerable Proctor?
The paladin turned to her briefly. Had she snarled aloud?
“We grew up together.” The Proctor stared in reverie for a moment. “I will contact him shortly. Have a seat.” He gestured to the chairs studding his table and disappeared into another room.
Have a seat? The Proctor left prisoners standing. This paladin had transformed from prisoner to guest with the mention of one High Priest’s name? What, did knowing this “Derric” suddenly excuse this paladin breaking through the gate and thrashing six mages?
She exhaled sharply. The night was full of surprises. She glanced at the paladin, and he at her, before she turned away. She removed her gloves, then flattened an imaginary wrinkle in her white mage coat.
“Contact? How can that be?” The paladin broke the silence.
There was one way, at least. “By aerarius, a magical communication brazier made of recondite. Does your High Priest have anything like that?”
A user could light it, whisper an incantation and the name of an intended partner who also possessed an aerarius, and it would enable a line of communication between them. Made from the scarce magical metal recondite, aerarii were created long before the Divinity and the Towers, in the Dark Age of Magic.
The paladin creased his brow for a moment but nodded.
So the High Priest of Monas Ver was in possession of an aerarius.
“I never knew it was... Derric didn’t reveal much about his life before the priesthood.”
“You know him well?”
“He raised me.” He offered her a smile and then frowned. “Forgive me, but I don’t know your name.”
“Favrielle,” she said too soon, her mouth acting before her mind could; she didn’t like being called by her given name. She offered her hand.
He took her hand in his and, much to her surprise, brushed his lips over her knuckles in a whisper of contact.
She raised an eyebrow. It was the greeting of a nobleman, not an orphaned commoner—clearly courtesy of his former paladin-master, no doubt a noble. But he seemed sincere.
No. Since she’d deprived him of his sword and dagger, he resorted to unconventional weapons. Charisma. A tower full of mages was too much direct resistance for any one paladin, even given his impressive display at the gate.
“Well met, Favrielle.” A brief but charming smile. He released her hand, but his touch still ghosted across her skin.
She covered her misbehaving hand with the other.
“Call me Rielle,” she corrected gruffly.
The paladin furrowed his brow. She remembered too late that the only polite answer to familiarity was familiarity.
“Jon.”
“Well, Jon,” she said, his name falling uncomfortably from her lips, “it seems we’re in for a long night.”
There was no telling how long the Proctor’s conversation would be, and that would hardly conclude their dealings.
Jon approached the table and pulled out a chair for her. Don’t fall for his fl
attery. She wavered. But don’t give away that you know. She took the seat and thanked him while he unfastened his cloak and carefully slung it over another chair. When he sat next to her, the scar on his neck caught her eye again.
But perhaps it wasn’t him. Maybe it was a different man, with a different scar, caused by a different person.
“How did you get that?” she blurted, indicating the scar with a nod.
A wry smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “Perhaps by asking probing questions.”
So much for etiquette. She stared at the scar, her curiosity overpowering her caution. “A healer could fade that for you.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
His hand went to where his sword pommel would be—but slowly—a contemplative gesture. With the sword absent, he curled his fingers before resting his hands in his lap. “It’s a reminder of someone who died, and someone I have yet to hold to account.”
She swallowed. The Code of the Paladin forbade vengeance. Paladins swore to uphold the Code and, above all, the four Sacred Vows of the Paladin: piety, poverty, sobriety, and celibacy. Priests and paladins of the Order were always denying themselves everything to please their goddess, Terra. “I thought the Order forbade vengeance.”
“It does.”
Whom did he seek vengeance on? If it had to do with that scar, perhaps it was against the man who’d caused it. Evrard Gilles, of the Crag Company.
An apprentice entered, bearing two cups. Her lips pursed, she served them. Tendrils of steam undulated and curled off the black surface, intertwined with heat and sweet spice.
Luxurious Kamerish black tea.
Rielle fought a grimace. If the Proctor had wanted to be polite to Jon, he would have dismissed her. The only reason she was still here was because the Proctor wanted something from her.
So much for her plans to go back on mission.
What torturous task would he ask of her? No matter what he required, her position meant she had to accept. While she was under contract with the Divinity, the king couldn’t make her comply with her arranged marriage contract—to the man who’d humiliated her three years ago and been horrible ever since. Brennan Karandis Marcel. The werewolf.
Blade & Rose Page 2
