She swallowed, fighting back tears of her own. Happy. What would happiness look like without him? Did such a thing even exist?
Glass shattered from behind. Shards flew from the massive windows.
Jon covered her and hissed. A trail of shadowed smoke sped past them into a dark corner. Shadow.
Air and fire. Flame in her right hand, Rielle gestured a wind wall with her left before herself and Jon, then reached into the sangremancy ward she’d laid around the bedchamber.
Blood darkened Jon’s hair and his neck. A cut to his head?
He rolled to the bed and pulled his arcanir dagger from under it. As long as he didn’t disturb the activated ward, it would work.
Shadow was trapped, and somewhere in these shadows.
Jon searched the dark. Rielle fixed her attention on the shadowy corner, visualizing the sangremancy ward around the room, a crimson haze that lined the edges, forming a triple rectangle. “Yol.”
She collapsed the first, farthest perimeter of the sangremancy curse; unless Shadow killed her or used Jon’s arcanir dagger, she wouldn’t be able to leave its confines. “Show yourself!”
The shadowy smoke flew for the windows. Shadow collided with the ward and fell to the floor, quickly rolling away.
Jon lunged for Shadow, his blade meeting another. They traded blow after blow.
“There’s nowhere to run.” Rielle set fire to all around her, everything contained in the ward’s boundaries. Jon, with his sigil tattoos, would be safe. She pulled on the bond—maybe Brennan could get here in time from the gardens.
Darkness flew from Jon and darted about the confines of the sangremancy ward.
From behind a smoky, sinuous shield of shadow, laughter flowed from the corner, amused and hearty. Barely discernible, Shadow stood encased in it. “You think you’ve outsmarted me?”
Jon darted for her, his blade parried, but he’d grabbed Shadow’s hair.
She slashed it and rolled away, a streak of black.
“Yol.” Rielle collapsed the second perimeter of the ward. Even tighter confines. “We have.”
“You think so?”
Burn. With a gesture, everything within the second perimeter blazed. Burning wool, silk, and wood made it difficult to breathe. Flaming bed posts collapsed. Smoke fled through the shattered windows.
Dark red drenched Jon, from the wound on his head. But he searched the blackness.
Shadow stepped out of her corner and circled from the bed in the direction of the fireplace; it didn’t matter where she went. Once activated, there was no breaking the sangremancy ward without killing the caster or using arcanir.
Rielle matched her step for step. “Rat in a cage.” She spelled a torrent of fire at Shadow, unending, unyielding. “And I’m stronger than you.”
Her fire would win; she was no longer a shackled prisoner on a ship, and there was no room for subterfuge here, in her box.
Jon tackled Shadow. They hit the floor within the third perimeter.
“Yol.” Rielle collapsed the final, tightest perimeter. She, Jon, and Shadow were confined in a ten-by-ten-foot square. Until Shadow lay dead.
He forced the dagger toward Shadow’s face, but she managed to turn it aside and slip out from under him, stabbing his hand into the floor with her blade. He hissed and yanked the blade free.
Rielle followed Shadow with her torrent of fire, but Shadow raised her shadowmancy shield and responded with her own force of shadow—pushing against the wind wall, costing anima, requiring ever-intensifying focus.
But against fire, it would cost her. And cost her dearly. Shadow circled, moving toward—
Toward.
Her fire unrelenting, Rielle glanced in the direction of the fireplace, but Shadow lunged for her instead, dispelling her force of shadow.
Her ankle burst in agony.
Shadow’s hand closed around hers—
The one with the Sodalis ring. With its sage-tinted center. Its arcanir center.
And pushed it toward the tightest perimeter.
It broke.
Then the second perimeter broke.
No! Rielle formed a circle of stone on the floor and collapsed it, crumbling into the room below. Shadow clawed at the Sodalis ring.
Jon lunged for Shadow but caught only air.
Dark smoke, Shadow surged to the window.
The farthest perimeter broke.
“No!” Rielle ran to the window and caught herself on the broken edge, searching the night. Nothing.
Gone.
Shadow. And the ring.
Blood seeped from her hands onto the broken glass. After four months of torture, after losing her freedom, her child, almost her own life and Brennan’s—all of that, only for Shadow to escape now? Before she could get security for Jon, and vengeance?
Shadow had to pay in blood for everything she’d caused. Because of her, Sylvie was dead, and she couldn’t just get away with it.
Pain radiated through her jaw, teeth clenched too tight, and she tore away from the window, extinguishing all the flames in the room. Everything within the second perimeter was destroyed.
Everything was ruined. Four months of torture had been for nothing. Sylvie’s death. Brennan’s near-death. Her own.
Jon stood with his hands on his hips. There were no words for how utterly she’d failed him. She dropped her head in her hands.
Arms closed around her, and she allowed herself a lengthy exhalation.
“It’s not safe… I failed.” She breathed in. Breathed in the metallic odor of blood. She wrenched away.
The side of Jon’s head was black with blood, trailing down his neck and into his robe.
“What on earth—” She reached for his head and examined the side, just behind his ear, for the wound—
No, the piece of his flesh missing.
“How are you still standing?” she breathed as he staggered to one of the armchairs before the fireplace. She followed him and whispered the healing incantation, closing the wound as he clenched his fists, then healed his hand. Olivia would do a better job of it later.
“Did a shard of glass hit you?” She turned the second armchair to face him, watching for any signs that he deteriorated as he leaned back into it.
He shook his head, reached for the healed wound, and stroked it. “Shadow cut me.”
Rielle frowned. Shadow had cut him?
She glanced at the window, the missing glass. It was massive. Both she and Jon had stood with their backs to it. Unaware, they had given Shadow plenty of time to execute precisely what she’d wanted to achieve.
Clearly Shadow hadn’t needed to attack them in the gardens. She’d gotten past the guards, crossed the grounds, and had known an updraft incantation—a thing unheard of.
Jon had lunged to cover her, to protect her, and hadn’t evaded the attack. Shadow could have killed him, but she’d cut him. Only cut him.
Rielle eyed the wound, missing flesh about the size of a cuivre. Hair.
She furrowed her brow.
Flesh.
Blood, flesh, skin, hair, fingernails… The essence of a person. Sangremancy. She gripped the chair’s arms. Divine, there were any number of sangremancy spells Shadow could cast… She could have Jon in agony for years, decades even. She could deprive him of every one of his senses. She could kill him in the most brutal of ways, all without even laying a finger on him.
Jon was still in danger, and forever would be, as long as Shadow lived. And Shadow wouldn’t pay for what she’d caused, for what she’d done, or for her looming threat. There would never be another chance like this. Ever.
It had all been for nothing.
Blinking away tears of rage, she scanned the bedchamber. The ruins of the bedchamber. Only the walls and some furnishings outside the second perimeter had survived.
Lifelessly, she studied the mantle, where Shadow had feinted, all in a ruse to use the Sodalis ring against her. And steal it.
So caught up in the end of her and Jon, she hadn’t had t
he presence of mind to understand the detail that would have secured his life.
Above the mantle, a portrait smirked down at her, a stupid girl who thought she knew everything but would be too blind to see the truth before her very nose.
She was still that stupid nineteen-year-old chit, believing the world was hers, that she knew all there was to know. A fool. She rubbed her forehead too hard.
The door to the bedchamber flew open.
Her wind wall sprang from one hand and fire from the other.
“It’s only us.” Olivia rushed in, a swath of emerald-green silk, closely followed by Brennan.
Rielle dispelled her magic.
Olivia froze just inside, her mouth falling open as she surveyed the room: its scorched floor and furniture, its missing window, its gaping hole in the floor, and its drapes fluttering in the wind. Her gaze snapped to Jon. “Are you all right? Is your—”
“I’m fine,” he blurted, fixing her with a steely, unwavering glare.
With a grimace, Olivia nodded. “Why aren’t your guards in here?”
“I… ordered them not to enter,” Jon said with a sigh.
Brennan pushed past Olivia and hurried to Rielle’s side, resting a hand on hers on the chair’s arm. “Are you all right?”
All right… She nodded. Aside from the pain of defeat, she was unhurt, but she was far from all right. Her greatest enemy had lived to fight another day.
“Thanks for coming,” she said softly, covering his hand with hers.
Jon peered at their hands and looked away.
Not now. She didn’t want to hurt him. She was about to pull her hand away, but…
No. Jon needed to accept it was over. Accommodating his jealousy would only encourage his feelings.
Olivia came to them and touched Rielle, probing. “Your foot!”
She crouched and pulled the skirt of Rielle’s gown aside to reveal a soot-covered, bleeding, bruised foot. It was already swelling. How had that happened? In the scuffle with Shadow?
Rielle shrugged.
Jon knelt next to Olivia. “What happened?”
“Tell me you kicked her out the window,” Brennan crooned next to her, smirking.
Rielle elbowed him. “I wish.” She shook her head as Olivia healed her. “No… I just… I”—she frowned—“lost.”
Brennan gave her a sympathetic look. Warmth and relief engulfed her leg and spread throughout her body—Olivia’s magic.
“I noticed you… redecorated the place,” Olivia mumbled as she finished.
“Shadow took some serious burns, but she escaped.” Rielle took a deep breath. “I failed.”
Wincing, Olivia rose. She took Jon’s head in her hands. “Jon, did you know a patch of your hair is gone?” She urged him to the armchair, and he turned it to face Rielle’s and sat.
“Balding already?” Brennan remarked. He dodged Rielle’s elbow deftly.
Jon grimaced at him while Olivia tended to him, her magic glowing white.
“Fashion statement?” Brennan pursed his lips and cocked his head. “I don’t think it’ll catch on. Not flattering at all, I’m afraid.” He knelt and picked something up off the floor. Burnt hair, by the looks of it. Shadow’s?
Jon looked at Rielle, eyes heavy lidded and gleaming, and he leaned back in his chair, sprawled, resting an ankle on his knee. For all the charred debris around him and the simplicity of the seat, it may as well have been a throne. His unabashed gaze, his raised chin, his dominant pose—no part of wasn’t regal. “Shadow escaped, yes… But tonight wasn’t a total loss.”
Even steeping in blood as he was, the intensity in his gaze made her shiver.
“There was the free haircut,” Brennan murmured.
Olivia chuckled softly and leaned back. “Finished. No scar, and your hair will grow back.”
“Fashion faux pas avoided,” Brennan said.
Jon didn’t look away from Rielle. “You’re welcome to stay at court as long as you desire,” he said, his voice deep, smooth like a caress, skin on skin, intimate, “in the palace, if that is your wish.”
Her breath slowed, her heart thudded in her chest, and a throb began in her blood—by the Divine, he wasn’t going to give up. He knew the effect he had on her. No matter what lay between them, she would always, always desire him. He knew it, and he now used it against her. If she stayed here, even to protect him, she would find herself in this room again no matter how bleak their future was.
Distance. She needed to put distance between herself and Jon.
Swallowing, she shifted in her armchair and rose. “I… I think I need some fresh air.” She glanced at Brennan. “Join me on the balcony?”
He nodded, following her as she headed for the broken doors, pushing their ruins open to head outside.
“There’s already fresh air coming in through the giant hole in the wall,” Olivia called behind them.
Missing the point, Olivia.
Outside, Rielle grabbed the balustrade and closed her eyes, breathing in the cool night air tinged with smoke.
Brennan took his place next to her on the balcony, his arm nearly touching her shoulder, his hand on the railing nearly touching hers, but just shy. “So your enemy escaped. You burned down the king’s bedchamber. And now?”
She inhaled a slow, steadying breath, then narrowed her eyes, hunting the darkness. “Now I hunt Shadow until I defeat her.”
“We hunt.” He opened his other palm to reveal the burnt hair. Shadow’s, no doubt.
She wouldn’t turn away Brennan’s help; they’d defeat her together.
“I hoped you’d say that.” She covered his hand with hers. “We make for Bournand to see Feliciano, the spiritualist there, and track her down.”
“No need for that. There’s one at Victoire.”
Chapter 63
Jon stared into the glowing embers in the fireplace. After all that had happened tonight, only one thing haunted his mind: all Rielle had told him.
The words circled in his head like ghosts, lamenting and damning, and he deserved their haunting, their judgment, their punishment. Every second. Nothing compared to what she’d suffered.
A life to protect, from dark days and unflinching inhumanity. No protector, no friend. No sword, no magic. No fists, no words. Only flesh and submission to offer. Self to sacrifice. A life for a life.
Hands and knees on hard, unforgiving floors. Blood, sweat, fears. Unfamiliar hands. A caged mind to tolerate a body made object. For pain. For pleasure. For control. For as long as it would take a lover, a father, to take action. For as long as forever, if not for Brennan Karandis Marcel.
Jon shrouded his face with a hand, blotting out the fire with darkness, the tears he didn’t deserve to shed pushing against his eyes, his will; he didn’t deserve to ease the grief over her suffering, and over Sylvie’s death. A man who hadn’t lifted a finger to fight for them didn’t deserve to lessen his burden over their loss.
It was unthinkable, and it was him.
Rielle strode from the balcony with Brennan at her back.
She paused before him. “We’re going after Shadow.”
Jon rose. “I’ll go with you.”
“Brennan’s coming with me.” She looked over her shoulder at Brennan, who nodded.
“Rielle—”
“Brennan and I will find her together.” She bowed. “We’ll end her, once and for all, together.”
He fought back a wince. So it had come to this. And she was leaving. Leaving the palace. Courdeval. Him.
She wanted space, distance, and he would give her what she wanted. “Terra keep you, Rielle, and your Divine.”
“You, too,” she said, meeting his eyes with a pained gaze, intense, unwavering, watery. She inclined her head one last time, her action mirrored by Brennan, and then she hugged Olivia. “Take care of yourself.”
Olivia squeezed her tight. “Come back in one piece.”
With a half-smile, Rielle nodded, met his eyes one last time, and left.<
br />
Long after the door had closed, he stood there, staring at it. She had enjoyed herself tonight, enjoyed him, and gods above, she loved him—it had shone like the bay in brilliant sunlight. For a moment in time, everything had seemed right.
Yet after tonight, after everything, he had lost her.
She’d refused him, didn’t trust him to secure their future. And why should she, when it was just as she’d said? He’d done everything expected of him as king and hadn’t deviated whatsoever. He had no deeds to show her that could allay her fears, nothing he’d done to lay a foundation for a life together. Not yet, anyway.
And she’d refused his breaking of the betrothal. She would wed Brennan.
Jon dropped back into the armchair. His rigid shoulders ached.
“Did you tell her?” Olivia asked. She sat in the singed armchair next to him. “About your heart?”
“No.” How could he have? When she’d clearly had enough pain, he couldn’t have laid such a burden on her, guilt. It was too much.
When she’d found that scrap of silk, the pain in her face, the agony, had been overwhelming. Perhaps she believed that, with Brennan, she would never suffer it again.
With Brennan, the selfish, manipulative werewolf who’d saved her life. Perhaps his love would win over his selfish nature. Or perhaps it wouldn’t.
Olivia shook her head, chewing her lip beneath a frown. Finally, she sucked in a breath. “She deserves to know. You need to tell her, or… she’ll never forgive herself.”
He brushed a fingertip over the fresh scar on his head. “I’m bound here, but she isn’t. I don’t want her to be. I want her to be free, to do whatever brings her joy. And this… I…” He lowered his gaze. “I would just be another kind of shackle.”
Heaving an annoyed sigh, Olivia eyed the healed wound on his head.
That wound…
Shadow carried a soulblade, had told Rielle it would kill the man she loved.
“She cut me with it, and I didn’t die.” His heart pounded.
“What?” Olivia’s red eyebrows drew together.
“Shadow,” he said, clutching the blackened armrests. “She had a soulblade when last I fought her in Bournand. Rielle said it was spelled to kill the man she loved with one cut.” His voice dropped. “Shadow cut me with it, and I didn’t die.”
By Dark Deeds (Blade and Rose Book 2) Page 66
