Dulce's Champion (Jaguars of Brigantia Book 1)

by Lisa Daniels

The startled expression on the man’s face etched itself into her mind. “I—I—I can’t imagine.”

  Dulce nodded, then turned and started heading to where she had been staying since leaving the capital.

  Zax’s voice behind her was much louder, “I suppose I should thank you. Which one are you?”

  Closing her eyes for a moment, Dulce couldn’t help but bite her lip because that was the one question she had dreaded. Everyone knew the names of the seers who once served the nation. Turning her face, she knew exactly how he would react if she gave her name. Instead, she simply responded with, “Trust me when I say you really don’t want to know.”

  The man’s voice sounded suspicious, and she took in the mistrust that was clear on his face. “Oh, I see, you must be Harmony. Out trying to put humans in their place and—”

  Dulce’s mouth spread into a thin line. Entirely unwilling to let the man talk so ill of her teacher, Dulce clenched her teeth. “No, human. I was trying to spare you from feeling guilty, but clearly I should not be taking your feelings into account anymore as you have no concern for mine. No, little man, I am Dulce.” With that she spun on her heel and began walking away as fast as she could. It was not necessary for Dulce to be a seer to know how the interaction would end once he knew who she was—everyone knew who she was in Ishtar.

  “The Dulce?” The man’s voice was fading as she had moved quite a ways from him as she walked rapidly away. She knew what the man wanted to say, and sure enough she could just make out his apology as she walked away. “I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

  Shaking her head, Dulce kept walking, having no words for whatever the man felt he should say. For her, it was always the worst part of being a seer—people knew more about her life than she wanted them to know. It was only after she had crested the top of the hill and began to walk down that Dulce finally felt like she could breathe. Placing her hand on her chest, she closed her eyes, which meant that she missed the shadow moving along the hill with her.

  When she opened her eyes, Dulce looked up at the sky, letting her feet take her toward the next place where she needed to be. It had not been a complete lie that she had needed to escape her home for a little while. Dulce had wanted to enjoy the evening before facing the Unwashed. She had not been as cautious as she would have been a few years ago because at this point she wasn’t sure she wanted to keep going. The seer could have packed up and moved because she knew when they were coming, having encountered one of them less than a week ago and read his future back then. Visitors were not common at the cemetery, and she had really just been confirming her suspicions when she approached him. The future Dulce had seen neither shocked nor scared her. Looking into his eyes and seeing her dead body was almost a relief. It was only knowing what she was expected to do that pressed her to live through each day, and finally drove her to go into town one last time.

  When things had started to sour, she had been the first to volunteer to stay and work to calm the humans, knowing it would mean her death. That had been about a year and a half ago. If she had not been tricked into leaving, she would have gladly been one of the seers to stay behind to help and die. But Stella had ensured that her close friend had made it out; it was Stella who would be lynched instead. There was nothing Dulce could do to help her because seers had limited magical abilities and no physical strength. The agreement with the jaguar shifters had been mutually beneficial as they had been on the verge of extinction at the time. Where the seers could determine future paths and outcomes of different actions, the jaguar shifters had a unique blend of physical strength and agility. However, they did not have any magical talents beyond shifting. Tiger shifters would adapt the abilities of the mystics they accompanied; assassins were agile with their own brand of magic, giving them freedoms that neither of the other cat shifter types had. Jaguar shifters were limited to their strength and prowess. But the shifters had started to disappear when Ishtar began to crumble. Without their champions, seers lost a lot of their strength because on their own, they were easy targets.

  Dulce’s best friend had once been a jaguar shifter, and he had died a little over two years ago, just as things really started to turn for the country. When Darinon had died, Dulce had become despondent and self-destructive. She had taken every dangerous task, every potentially fatal assignment, yet she always survived. She was the only one to survive. It had earned her a reputation for being a champion of Ishtar. When she had disappeared a little over a year ago, many people thought she had died, and her friends were fine with letting that be the story so that Dulce would not be hunted down. It had left her alone and with nothing but her regrets, uncertain how long she would have to continue with her miserable existence.

  It was really the curse of a seer. She could always tell everyone else’s future but her own or any cat shifter’s. For whatever reason, all cat shifters were outside of a seer’s visions. Dulce had not seen Darinon’s death, and so she had sought her own without success. The once cheerful and gregarious woman had become bitter and reclusive over the last year, a change that no one else had witnessed.

  As she neared her home, contemplating letting the Unwashed finish her off, Dulce was taken by surprise as a figure emerged from the shadow of one of the large tombstones. Her eyes wide, she turned to see a menacing figure moving gracefully toward her. The low, smooth voice caught her entirely off guard, and she could not help but smile.

  “You shouldn’t have gone out,” the figure said, his movements quickly closing the gap between them.

  Chapter 2

  A Former Love Interest and a Farewell

  “Ignacio,” Dulce’s smile widened as she threw her hood back. The figure stepped into the light, just a foot away from her. The assassin’s hands rested on two daggers, and his face was still half covered by the large monument to someone long dead, and even to Dulce he looked terrifying. His mouth was drawn in a tight line, and his light green eyes bore into her. She took a step forward, closing the distance between them. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  His eyes took her in, and a thin smile spread across his face. “It should not be a pleasure to see me.”

  “No matter how much time passes, you are always a welcome sight.” Dulce reached up and patted his young-looking face. Ignacio’s hand twitched, then it quickly moved up and snatched her hand away from his face. His eyes were a little wistful as he released her hand. With an apologetic smile, Dulce stepped back. Motioning with her hand to the little building that looked as much like a crypt as a place of residence, she said, “I don’t have much, but you are more than welcome to join me inside.” Knowing that he was going to refuse, Dulce didn’t worry about telling him about the danger waiting inside.

  “That would be very unwise, Dulce,” he moved forward a little, the moonlight fully washing over his face. Dulce’s eyes drank in the familiar sight, but she also noticed how the years had changed him. The assassin’s appearance was much more like the other assassins now, and it was clear that he had experienced many of the difficulties of his people. It had been a fate that she had once tried to save him from, and she had fallen in love with him. Such a union would have cost her everything, but at the time Dulce had not cared about the wealth or elegance of her life because it had been hollow. Being banished would have been worth it.

  Then he had declined, telling her that he did not want a union stemming from pity or any other emotions besides love. When she had persisted, he had become upset, and for the first time Dulce had seen the honest emotions of a panther shifter, raw and untamed. It had left her heart broken because he said while he refused to kill her as his contract had required, he did not love her and never would. Two days later, Ignacio had apologized, but he had never allowed himself to be alone with her again afterward.

  Looking at him now, Dulce felt a twinge of pain for the past. He had been right. She had pitied him, and the love she had felt was tied more to that desire to save than it had been to him. Internally, Dulce laughed at herself and how na�
�ve she had been when she was young. At the time, she had thought herself so much more experienced, even though she was only about half a dozen years older than Ignacio, and she had been his first contract. In reality, Dulce had been to fewer places and seen far less even back then than the assassin had, but she had equated years with experience. The last 30 years had taught her just how foolish she had been as everything she had was taken from her. Thinking that his words hinted at an avoidance of any repeat events from their past, Dulce shook her head and smiled up at Ignacio. “You don’t need to worry about any tongues wagging with our meeting here. The dead are blessedly known for their discretion.”

  This got his mouth to twitch, and a sincere smile flitted across his lovely features. Immediately, he folded his arms across his chest as if to counter any levity by showing he was not there for pleasantries or laughter. Dulce sighed, “Relax, Ignacio. Whatever I may have said, it is all in the past now. You were quite right, and I have sorted out my feelings well enough to know that I had no right to make the claims that I did at the time. I still care about you, far more than is probably healthy for me,” her eyes flicked down to the daggers resting at Ignacio’s hips, but she remained calm, “but I’m not going to start professing anything to you other than my undying friendship for as long as you will have it.”

  Ignacio sighed, another rare example of emotion from him. “You always know how to make me drop my façade. It would probably be best to continue to avoid you since you still seem to have that unique ability, but…” His eyes moved around, then settled on the place that she had indicated earlier as hers. Clearing his throat, Ignacio motioned in the opposite direction. “I think it is best we take a walk. If you do not mind.”

  Dulce gave him an honest smile, “Did you not just say that you should be avoiding me? Please, don’t torment yourself on my account. I am doing quite well these days.”

  There was a flash in his eyes as Ignacio looked at her, trying to figure out if she was being sincere or if she had gotten a lot better at lying. Knowing that he would be not be able to navigate a conversation with the seer if he was emotional, the assassin stuck to what he knew. “I came here to visit you, and at the moment I have even more incentive to ensure that you are elsewhere for now.”

  Dulce raised an eyebrow at him as Ignacio’s eyes darted toward the small structure. Giving a little laugh, she patted his arm. “A walk sounds lovely, but as you have already realized, I have other guests, and they are getting a bit restless.” He frowned, tightening his mouth into a familiar line at her words. “Come, there is a charming little path leading to a rather lovely hill overlooking the town. On a clear night like tonight, it is absolutely breathtaking.” She grabbed his elbow and started to lead him toward a small path away from her home. Ignacio’s eyes watched the dark structure, but he did not resist as she pulled him away.

  Once they were on the path, Dulce released Ignacio’s arm, and they walked in silence for a while. She was trying to give him time to collect his thoughts and initiate the conversation on his own terms, but her patience had already been a little too frequently used that evening. They had not gone a mile when she found herself pressing him for some details of his unexpected visit.

  “I feel certain that you aren’t here for a nice stroll or reminiscing about the past. Are you perhaps here to analyze me again?” Dulce looked back at the assassin to see his reaction because she knew that his reaction would give her the answer. If she was going to die that night, a part of her hoped that it would be at his hands. It would be far kinder than what awaited her. His eyes were sad as he looked at her, almost hurt. Holding up a hand before he could say anything, Dulce said, “It seemed a more likely reason than anything. I don’t know how much you know about what has been happening here, but we seers haven’t exactly been making friends of late.”

  The response was hesitant. “There is a contract on you, but there isn’t an assassin that will take it. Even Caspian laughed it off.”

  “Caspian? Really? And here he has a reputation for not caring about anyone as long as the price is right.”

  “It is not a reputation he deserves, but I think he finds it very amusing.”

  Dulce stopped walking and turned to look at the young shifter. “Are we talking about the same Caspian? Is this something you have heard or something you have come to believe based on your own experience?” Caspian was perhaps the most famous, or infamous assassin, and he had earned a reputation that only a foolish magic user would ignore.

  Ignacio simply smiled, then changed the subject. “I actually came to speak to you for a very… personal reason. And on the way to see you I was given a more urgent desire to see you because some of what I have heard was rather disturbing and very much out of character for the Dulce I know.”

  Dulce’s melodic laugh rang through the trees as she turned and began walking toward the hill. “If it is something personal that you need to discuss, I am all yours. If you have any inclination to bring up anything about me personally, then I will say that I am flattered, but it is entirely unnecessary. My sisters have already made certain to banish me to safety and misery, so there is no reason to be concerned on my behalf.” The bitterness and anger that she had felt for the last two years began to puncture the otherwise happy and unexpected reunion. Realizing that even Ignacio would be able to pick up on it, she plastered a smile on her face and turned to show him that she was alright. “It is very sweet of you to worry, but I can assure you that you have no reason to worry for me. And I am very delighted that there may finally be something I can do for you.”

  Ignacio looked at her, his footfalls entirely silent as he tried to read her expression hidden in the shadows of the trees. The bitterness in Dulce’s voice had startled him, and he suspected that she was now trying to mask that for his sake. Her reassurances that she was alright were clearly a lie, although he wasn’t sure what that meant. She had always been difficult for him to understand, a woman who not only wore her emotions on her sleeves, but seemed to want everyone to be happy. The woman in front of him resembled the Dulce he had known, but there was clearly something that had changed.

  Feeling somewhat guilty about his original reason for visiting her, he began with an apology, hoping that might catch her off-guard enough to make her open up about how she was really feeling. It wasn’t too hard to do as he was feeling rather guilty watching her. “I am truly sorry for the things that I said back then. Even if I was right, it was cruel. I have since learned that there is a difference between being honest and being unfeeling, and I was in the wrong.”

  Dulce turned. She blinked at him a few times, her expression unreadable. It was startling just how much she had changed in 30 years, as back then such an admission would have triggered a strong emotional response of either happiness that he was being sincere or tears from her own guilt. Instead, the admission was met with a blank look that seemed to stretch on for too long.

  Finally, a sad smile spread across her face. “What you want to discuss must really make you so uncomfortable that you would take such an indirect route to get there.”

  Ignacio began to stammer, “I just… I thought I owed—”

  Dulce waved her hand and turned to continue walking along the path. “No, you are clearly trying to broach the subject carefully. I can assure you that after 30 years, I can handle whatever it is you need to discuss. It cannot hurt me after everything else.”

  “And what has happened to you?” His voice was gentle as he asked.

  The responding laugh was mechanical, completely different to her previous laughter. Dulce did not turn to look at him as she responded, “My dear Ignacio, all you need to do is talk to anyone in the illustrious country of Ishtar to know that. My life has been on full display for everyone for over 20 years now. I even heard a charming nursery rhyme about my life just this evening. If there are any questions you have about my experiences, all you need to do is stop by any tavern and find out. I’m sure it will be much more interesting than my own
version.”

  “I am asking the only source I would trust for the truth.”

  The coldness of Dulce’s voice was clear as she responded, “Then you will be disappointed because I will not relive any of it. Not even for you.”

  “Has it really been that bad?” Ignacio had heard a few things, but had been unable to believe that any of the rumors had been true. “The woman I know—”

  “Ceased to exist two years ago.” She spun around and looked at him. “Surely you did not seek me out to ask me how I have been for the last 30 years. You saw where I live, and I have no doubt that the number of seers currently dead or imprisoned has reached the ears of every magic user and shifter in Salona and Marlyon, though I doubt the meaning of it has sunk in for them yet. Surely you noticed the decline in seer contracts, so many of my sisters being dead now, there are far fewer to kill.” Dulce’s expression was not one that Ignacio recognized—anger. “You did not come to see me for my health, so please get to the point because I have no desire to relive anything with someone who has been completely uncaring all of these years. You don’t get to stroll back into my life and pretend that I matter now.” There was a cruel edge to her voice that Ignacio had never heard before.

  He looked down. “I can now understand how you felt all those years ago, and I am truly sorry that I did not save you back then. Clearly, not saving you then has resulted in something far worse for you than the life you were trying to save me from living.”

  There was a derisive laugh, and she turned and moved up the hill. “And I am starting to understand your aversion to my advances. I do not and have never needed to be saved.” Realizing that she was going too far, Dulce took a breath and apologized. “I am sorry. It has been a rough couple of years, and you happen to have caught me after a rather unpleasant evening. You did not come to be chided or rebuked, and here I am ruining a perfectly nice reunion. I sincerely apologize because you certainly did not deserve any of what I said. Come, we can talk up there.”