Court of Shadows

by Miranda Honfleur

  Olivia slid to the floor next to Jon, ripped open his bloodied overcoat and shirt, and placed a palm on his chest, glimpsing his pale skin and blue-tinged lips.

  Rielle wept, slurring cried words—

  “He’s suffocating,” Olivia blurted to her. Blood had filled his lungs, and she spelled it outward, pushing it to flow through the rest of his body, pushing and pushing, pumping it out, redirecting what his heart had overflowed until the episode passed and his heart resumed normal function once more.

  His eyes opened wide as he gasped, spasming, his hands wrapping around her arm, and their gazes met. His brows drawn together, he scrutinized her face as if he’d just awoken from a deep slumber, as if he didn’t yet know the world around him.

  “You’re all right, Jon,” she whispered to him, taking his big, callused hand in hers. “You’re fine. You’re alive, and you’re all right. I’m here.”

  Color returned to his face, the redness fading from his eyes as she healed him, as his breathing evened out. “Ri—” he whispered, and coughed.

  “I’m here, Jon,” Rielle choked out, then covered her mouth. “Great Divine, I thought—” She dragged herself closer with trembling arms, then reached for his shoulder.

  He covered her hand with his. “Is he—?”

  Rielle’s eyes flashed. “We defeated him. He’s—”

  “Unfortunately,” a firm, loud voice rang out—the Grand Divinus, “you’ve broken the rules of the duel.”

  Dragging her gaze from Jon, Rielle fixed icy eyes on the Grand Divinus. She braced a hand on the blood-slick floor and struggled to her feet, Brennan helping her up.

  Holding the Grand Divinus’s gaze, she bowed slowly, in perfect form, steeped in blood, the charred remnants of a body and rubble from the ceiling lying not five feet from her. “With all due respect, Most High, these are the Magister Trials. There are no rules.”

  Perched on her golden throne, the Grand Divinus narrowed her eyes, grinned joylessly, and rested an elbow on the armrest, her head on her hand, her eyes still locked with Rielle’s.

  Neither of them broke.

  “Come on,” Brennan whispered gently in Rielle’s ear. “Let’s go.” He wrapped her, held her, but Rielle wouldn’t look away.

  Tensions were high. The next words could ripple to the world’s farthest reaches. Stoke conflicts. Start wars.

  Jon tried to sit up, but Olivia pressed him down with her palm.

  “Go, Rielle,” Olivia whispered, unmoving. She glanced at Brennan, who nodded.

  Whispering in Rielle’s ear, he dragged her away, out of the hall, those icy eyes of hers never looking away from the Grand Divinus. Open challenge.

  Jon growled beneath her palm and pulled it aside. Now was not the time to take sides, not until the trials were over. His brows low over hard eyes, he was not pleased.

  Well, neither was she. She sat back on her heels as he propped himself up on an elbow.

  Raoul and Florian approached, but he held up a hand and labored to sitting on his own, taking deep, heavy breaths. Bracing himself on his sword, he rose to his feet.

  Having bled so much, he wouldn’t be able to stand on his own power for long, but he refused his guards. Steeped in blood, he collected his weapons, handed them to Florian, then paused to incline his head to the Grand Divinus, who responded in kind.

  Maintaining that posture had to have hurt, had to have been exhausting as he’d lost so much blood and taken so many injuries, but he’d done it anyway. He always pushed himself to the limit, beyond the limit, when he set his mind on something.

  He pulled one of his guards aside and directed him to personally see to removing every drop of his blood from the great hall, and to send “the young woman” to him if she so agreed.

  The young woman—the one who’d arrived with his opponent?

  What in the Lone had he been thinking? Challenging that man, taking charge of the young woman who’d arrived with him—?

  And did he have any idea the political disaster that had just unfolded here?

  The king of Emaurria had agreed to a challenge, and although stepping in to protect one of his subjects had been admirable, duels were bound up in codes of honor. The duel had been ended for him. The world would know that Emaurria’s subjects didn’t respect or trust their king, and that unrest ran deep in the kingdom.

  Or they’d know Rielle had intervened for love, and the king’s alleged mistress placed her desires above the kingdom’s wellbeing. Both he and Rielle had made a mess here that would ripple consequences for years, or even decades.

  Scowling, she grabbed his hand and, without a word, dragged him out the doors. In the hallway, she caught a doorknob and gestured toward the dark room inside.

  She glared at him as she shut the door, facing him, bathed in his own blood and barely standing. “Do you have any idea what you just did?”

  He braced himself on the nearby table in what looked like a small library. “One of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done?”

  Frowning, she shook her head. “Jon, you have no idea who he was. That could have caused an international incident that—”

  “He introduced himself,” Jon said coldly, anchoring a hand on his hip. “I know exactly who he was. A sick bastard slaver that needed to be put down. Hard.”

  She exhaled a quivering breath. “I know what he cost you. And it’s Rielle. I know,” she said. “But you accepted a duel, and one of your subjects interfered in the outcome. Your reputation has been tarnished on the world stage. Do you have any idea—”

  “Is he dead?” he asked, voice low, deep.

  She gaped at him.

  “Then it was worth it.”

  She scoffed, shaking her head. “Really? Will you think so when no other country wants to treat with you because you have no honor?”

  The dim evening light caught his eyes, and their glimmer of amusement. “No country wants to treat with me now. It wasn’t as though they were lining up to help us with the Immortals.”

  She took a step back, taking slow, deep breaths. They would have to control the damage, get ahead of the news—

  “He held her captive, Olivia,” Jon said, barely audible. “Just to survive, she acted on his every wish. Because of him, our daughter is dead. I’m not sorry I fought him, and I’m not sorry she ended him. If that means I have no honor, then as you say… ‘to hell with that.’”

  He swayed on his feet and braced more of his weight on the table, and she rushed to support him, slinging his heavy arm over her shoulder.

  Everything he said made sense, but the world didn’t know about Rielle’s enslavement, or about the child they’d lost. And she was certain neither of them wanted it known.

  “Throwing my own words back at me,” she said with a sigh, leading him toward the door. “You just have to say all the right things, don’t you?”

  “How else can I compete with one of Emaurria’s most brilliant minds?” he said with a dimpled grin.

  “Mm-hmm,” she patronized. “We still need to find a way to mitigate this to the rest of the world.”

  He winced, and she eased him into a chair. She’d have to tell his entourage about the blood here, too. Even a drop could be exploited for sangremancy—not officially allowed, of course, but one could never be too cautious.

  And he’d have to rest, replenish his blood, and—

  “Rielle already gave us the answer,” he said, breathing heavily. “Magister Trials. No rules. The Grand Divinus had said it herself.”

  It could work. It would be seen as an excuse, but what else did they have?

  She rested a hand on his shoulder, still sticky with blood. “Our enemies will think the kingdom weak, if a subject stepped in to save her own king. What about that?”

  His eyes gleaming in the faint evening luminance from the windows. “The first to test that theory will regret it.”

  There wasn’t an ounce of defeat in him. Good. He was willing to fight for Rielle, for his lost child, for Emaurri
a.

  It was only one step further to get him to fight for himself.

  “Jon,” she said, waiting until his eyes met hers, “I think I may have found a way to save your life.”

  Chapter 32

  Leigh followed with Katia and Ambriel as Ruvel picked a path through the forest toward the light-elven camp. The darkening skies obfuscated the deadfall on the ground, and Ambriel guided him aside, around a fallen branch.

  “Old man,” Katia chided in a singsongy voice.

  “Katia, do shut up,” Leigh replied. “I can see well enough. Ambriel just wants to make sure I don’t mar this beautiful face by tripping.”

  Ambriel half-laughed. “Also, I don’t want to have to carry you anywhere. You’re deceptively heavy.”

  Katia yelped as she tripped, but caught herself.

  “Ha!” Leigh snapped.

  Ruvel paused and shushed them, with Ashta, Merian, and the other light-elf slowing. They hefted their bows, eyeing the darkness ahead.

  “Something’s wrong,” Ambriel whispered.

  “There should be two scouts here,” Ashta hissed back to them, with a sweep of her twisted hair.

  Ruvel held up a hand, and everyone went quiet. “Shouted orders in the distance. There’s a battle.”

  “Take us there. Now,” Leigh said in Old Emaurrian, then spoke the candlelight spell incantation.

  Ruvel led the way, and they rushed through the dense forest. Fallen branches and dead trees blocked the way, and Leigh spelled them aside with Katia as they ran.

  Bellows broke from the distance, screams, and guttural hissing, and he sent the candlelight spell ahead. The stench reached him first.

  Its illumination glowed over fierce light-elven faces shooting arrows and moving, always moving, as a mass of shambling bodies flooded over the forest floor, breaking like waves through the trunks, trampling over tents and chairs and injured light-elves, stifling their screams. The undead.

  “Cover me,” Leigh snapped to Katia. He cast a repulsion shield past the farthest light-elf, widening it and widening it.

  Loosing an arrow, Ambriel shouted over the cacophony of orders and shrieks, and light-elves pulled into a center that Leigh enclosed in a repulsion dome.

  Roots braided up from the ground, capturing the undead in place as the light-elves shot them.

  Arrows wouldn’t stop them. They needed to be dismembered.

  “Blades,” Leigh hissed, as bodies pressed against his repulsion dome, piling and pushing. He’d have to destabilize it, push them back.

  Ambriel drew his sword and dagger, as did some of the other light-elves who had them, and slaughtered their way through the undead. Katia kept rooting them and hooking them with vines and wood as needed.

  “Get ready,” Leigh grunted, and fed more and more magic into the repulsion shield, strengthening it and strengthening it, keeping it compact, feeding it power until it nearly burst, and he pushed it backward, destabilized it, shattered it and the undead against it back several feet in an explosion of limbs and bodies.

  Everyone froze, and before the reinforcements could climb over, he spelled an attraction ring in the middle of the pile of bodies, drawing in all the undead on it and around it, holding them there. He kept feeding it power, drawing and drawing, then cast another repulsion shield before himself and the light-elves, matching its power to keep them pushed back as he drew the undead in.

  Branches curved toward the attraction ring, pine needles and twigs ripped free and pulled in, and trunks of younger trees leaned in, groaning and creaking as bodies squelched and cracked.

  A foul stench suffocated the air, and a sapling burst from the ground and flew into the attraction ring, where a hill-sized mass of decaying flesh and broken bone imploded, forced against itself into a smaller and smaller mass.

  “The caves!” Ashta shouted in Old Emaurrian. “Behind them!”

  A candlelight spell flew from Katia and past the mass of flesh, over more shambling bodies being drawn into the attraction ring, and then a dark entrance in a cliffside.

  Leigh weakened the attraction ring, fisted in his right hand and only strong enough to hold the mass together, then advanced, pushing the repulsion shield with his left. He strengthened it as much as he dared, enough to slowly push the mass and the attraction ring toward the cave.

  Step by painstaking step, he pushed and pushed, as Ambriel dismembered stragglers at his right and Katia captured them with winding wood to his left.

  Finally, he pushed the mass into the cave, and tapered the power of the attraction ring while compacting the repulsion shield, strengthening it, and directing it inside. “Collapse it, Katia! Now!”

  Blades dancing, Ambriel protected her while she wove with her fingers and contracted them. As a great rumble quaked from the cave, Leigh dispelled the attraction ring, pulled the repulsion shield just before them, and a blast of dust puffed across it, breaking across its surface as rock tumbled to the ground, the tremors taking them off their feet.

  Leigh held the repulsion shield, keeping the debris and dust from hitting them, until the ruins of the cave settled. He dispelled at last, watching the collapsed entrance in the darkness.

  When silence finally claimed the area, Katia whispered the candlelight incantation once more. Ambriel rose and offered a hand to Leigh, pulled him up, and then helped up Katia. He was bloodied, but unhurt.

  Behind them, Ashta, Ruvel, and a stern-faced woman assisted the injured, all of the light-elves numbering about fifty. Ambriel approached his daughter, rested a hand on her shoulder, and scrutinized her for injuries.

  With a smile, she took his hand and said something in Elvish. He sighed, nodded, then turned to the stern-faced woman. In the candlelight spell, she had the same platinum-blond hair Ruvel did, only hers was long and tied in thirds down her back, with the sides of her head shorn. Her linen clothes were spattered with blood and stained with dirt. This had to be Ferelen, Ruvel’s mother and the queen of this clan.

  The only indication of her status was her sash—dyed a deep green.

  Ferelen clasped Ambriel’s arm, then glanced in Leigh’s direction before striding toward him.

  He bowed, as did Katia. “Your Majesty, we come to—”

  “No,” she said immediately. “You do not bow.”

  He straightened, eyeing her carefully. Normally royals enjoyed the bowing.

  “Nor you,” she said to Katia, who did the same. “You have both helped save my people. You do not bow.”

  Well, that was certainly a fine welcome. Leigh cleared his throat. “Your Majesty—”

  “Ferelen,” she corrected, her clear eyes bright in the candlelight flame. She turned back and shouted some instructions to Ruvel in Elvish, who nodded and began delegating. “We are unfit to host you properly, but you are welcome among my people.”

  He nodded. “Thank you. We have come to establish trade and peaceful relations between your queendom and the Forgeron Coven of witches,” he said, gesturing to Katia, who introduced herself.

  “We have had some dealings with stupid and cruel humans,” Ferelen said, an edge riding her tone, “but you are not they.” She held out her arm to Katia, who clasped it. “We will gladly trade with you, as friends.”

  With a bright nod, Katia thanked her, and Ferelen led them to a small fire her people had built while they bustled around them, treating the injured, building tents, running water from the nearby stream.

  “How long have you been facing the undead?” Leigh asked carefully.

  Ferelen lowered herself to the ground, sitting cross-legged, and they all sat around the fire. She heaved a sigh, fixing those farseeing eyes on the ruins, a great exhaustion settling in the lines of her ageless face. “Weeks. The groups break off in waves from a larger mass. We travel throughout the forest and traced them here—they emerge from that cave. We’re safe now. But there’s a witch of great power in the mountains. An uncontrolled witch.”

  Uncontrolled… In fureur. If there were so many undead
, that meant the Beaufoys hadn’t dealt with the necromancer, or had been unable to, or worse.

  Ava. Was she safe? He shifted.

  There would be no more leaving things to chance. No more leaving Ava’s safety to Axelle and Della.

  “I will handle it,” he said. “Tell us what you know.”

  Chapter 33

  Rielle sat wordlessly in the carriage as it jostled over the cobblestone streets while Brennan stared at her from the seat opposite.

  Brennan leaned his head back against the juddering carriage, and heaved a great, exasperated sigh. A sliver of dried blood arced across his neck and down into his shirt, although its whiteness was untarnished beneath his black overcoat, as if he’d dressed after combat.

  He’d been hurt…?

  She jumped out of her seat to examine his neck, running her fingers along its smooth skin while dried blood crisped away.

  He caught her between his thighs as she knelt against the carriage’s tremors, his hands bracing her shoulders.

  “What—what happened to you?” she asked.

  He opened one eye. “Ah, you noticed.”

  Finally seemed to be the word he left off.

  “I think I found a way into the Archives,” he said evenly, “but I triggered a trap. Poison.”

  “Are you all right? How do you feel? Faint in any way, or—?”

  “It didn’t kill me, obviously, but it was enough to weaken me, break my Change, and members of the Divine Guard decided to… deal with me.”

  She dropped her face against his abdomen. Divine, he could’ve—if he hadn’t been a werewolf, he could’ve—

  His arms closed around her. “It’s all right. Olivia found me, and I killed the two guards who’d… done that to me. So don’t worry. No one will know it was me. Your mission is safe. You didn’t even have to lift a finger to help me.”

  “That’s not what I—” she stammered. “That’s not fair,” she shot back. “Farrad showed up. Farrad, Brennan, of all people.”

  He exhaled lengthily. “I’m sure Jon spilling his guts all over the floor had nothing to do with it. Not one bit.”