Blade & Rose (Blade and Rose Book 1)

by Miranda Honfleur

  Before she could stop herself, her eyes feasted on the many battle scars on his body, devoured the labyrinthine pattern of his paladin sigil tattoos. They began on his back, continued over his shoulders and arms, across his chest, down over his abs and along his hips, teasing into the waistband of his braies.

  She shouldn’t have stared, but the view was excellent. As a grin claimed her face, she tried to shake it off and cleared her throat. Propriety. Professionalism. Poise.

  Jon turned to her, hesitation slowing his movement and matching the uncertainty in his eyes. At last, he raked his fingers through his short hair and sighed. “Forgive me.”

  She glanced at the adjoining door, rent from its hinges upon the floor, and suppressed a smile. She’d seen many things, but never a man break down a door. “Try knocking with a little less force next time.”

  A brief smile flashed across his face, teasing a dimple at the corner of his mouth. He shook his head. “If I interrupted anything—”

  “You didn’t.” When he gave her a doubting look, she added, “Leigh and I aren’t involved.”

  He drew his eyebrows together. “No?”

  “No.” She approached him and bent to retrieve his sword, which lay between them, then paused. “He was about to leave.”

  “Was he?” He narrowed his eyes.

  The implication was clear, and she couldn’t fault him for his assumption. Leigh would never try to force himself on her, but Jon certainly didn’t know that.

  By the Divine, why did he care about her a whit? She hadn’t given him a single reason to. He was a paladin, and she a mage. Their orders were diametrically opposed, and so were they.

  And yet...

  Forsworn paladin. A paladin no longer.

  When she raised her chin, her breath caught as he eyed her, starting at her bare feet, traveling up her legs and to her face. A chill rippled its way up her lower back, and a whisper of silk breezed against her wrist; she was still in her nightgown, in her bedchamber, with a half-naked man.

  As he closed the distance between them, she didn’t dare move but to swallow. His eyes intense, scrutinizing, he leaned in, close enough for her to feel the warmth radiating off his skin. It was so quiet that she could hear his every slowing breath.

  Silence, heat, and nearness wrapped her tight, and Divine help her, she’d forgotten to breathe. A ragged exhalation trembled from her lips. His scrutiny continued, but now, his heavy-lidded eyes asked a different question, darkened from stormy blue to midnight.

  She held out his sword between them. His fingertips grazing hers, he accepted it, that same curious spark humming between them. He cast his gaze downward—down her nightgown—then corrected himself and looked away. Anywhere and everywhere else.

  That was for the best.

  He found her robe on the floor behind him, picked it up, and held it out to her.

  She hastily threw it on. “So... do you eavesdrop regularly,” she asked, “or am I special?”

  He exhaled a laugh, raised his scarred eyebrow, and then righted the chair Leigh had sent flying. “The walls didn’t keep much out.”

  “Neither did the door,” she joked, as he gathered some of the shoes on the floor.

  Holding an armful of shoes, he grinned as he tried to add to the lot he held. “Terra have mercy, mage... how many shoes do you need?”

  “Always more than I have,” she murmured, and they shared a laugh. She crouched to help with the shoes, and the laugh faded slowly. Pleasantly.

  When had she last laughed like that? With Leigh, maybe. Long ago, before the scorn and coldness that had parted them. And before that... With her parents.

  The cool, salty breeze from the shores of Laurentine stirred the meadows of her memory. Papa laughing as he played with her and her brothers and sisters in the courtyard, big and loud and raucous... and Mama’s soft smile, quickly hidden with a bowing of her bashful face. Small memories. Painful memories. All she had left of them.

  It’s in the past.

  Together, she and Jon collected the books and everything but the shattered goblet. It remained, broken. “I appreciate what you tried to do.”

  He took the books she’d gathered, stacked them with his own, then placed them atop the desk. Among them was her now two-piece copy of Immortal Creatures of Legend.

  He surveyed the damage. “I hate to see a book so wronged.”

  She shrugged. “It couldn’t be helped.”

  In the silence, she couldn’t help but stare at his scarred eyebrow. When he caught her looking, she asked, “How did you get that?”

  He glanced out the window. “Broken bottle. Apparently the usual greeting when faced with meddling paladins.”

  “Are they ever anything else?”

  “Says the mage interrogating me.”

  She pursed her lips. If he considered this an interrogation, what would he think of what happens in the Tower’s dungeon?

  He turned away from the window. “There are still a couple hours before dawn.” His voice, smooth and deep, resonated within her, a sultry echo of notes that melted away her composure.

  He headed back toward the apprentice quarters but paused and gave her a quick once-over. “Get some rest, mage.”

  “You, too.” At dawn, their mission would begin, leaving behind broken doors, numerous shoes, torn tomes, and a shattered goblet.

  He picked up what remained of the door and brought it to its proper place in the doorway. With a faint smile, he disappeared through it with the soft knock of wood rested gently against wood.

  After putting out the light, she snatched Olivia’s last letter from her desk, backed up and, when her thighs hit the bed, fell back into it. She stared at the canopy above. While there was still time before dawn, there was no way she would be able to sleep now.

  She gripped the letter tightly. Days... Just what had happened in Courdeval? Was Olivia all right?

  I’ll find out. No matter what, I’ll find out.

  Chapter 5

  Rielle took in the musk of damp earth and fallen leaves. A comfortable breeze met them on the road. A perfect day for riding.

  She nodded. All too often, her autumn missions came with matching autumn storms, smothering everything with a shroud of cold and damp. Not today.

  She’d dressed warmly nonetheless: her immaculate winter master coat in her chosen color, white. Full length and hooded, it was made of the finest wool, but with velvet flowing around the stand collar and down the front, a single row of piping along the edges, and the master mage’s four-bar gold chevron on each sleeve.

  Fully armed, armored but for his helm, and cloaked, Jon looked as he had the night before but for a certain sportive gleam in his eyes.

  Trouble. He was either in trouble or trouble himself.

  Paladins often traveled alone. Why did Jonathan Ver require protection? His trespassing meant he didn’t follow orders well enough, and perhaps his High Priest hadn’t trusted him to go to Monas Amar. Nanny duty, for one paladin?

  And why had the Proctor approved stops in only two cities? Bournand and Melain?

  She chewed her lip. The smaller towns and villages along the way didn’t have Temples of the Divine, with adepts and masters cloistered there to offer protection and resonance. But Bournand did.

  And there was, of course, Gran in Melain, who would provide shelter and warriors if needed. Staying with Gran would be safe.

  So Bournand and Melain offered them support, which meant the Proctor might have anticipated resistance. And limiting the stops to those two—with the temple and Gran—meant he might have anticipated threats in settlements lacking an allied presence.

  Something—or someone—threatened Jon. But what? And why? The Proctor ripping her from the Tower on a mission like this while offering no answers warranted some digging.

  Through the mountains, they passed steep, rocky cliff faces, bare but for shrubs dotting the rock, and ibex carefully navigating the terrain. The tree-lined road was quiet but for a couple mer
chants bound for the Tower and a few Broadsteel mercenaries on patrol for the Divinity. The area saw some outlaw activity from time to time, for which the Divinity retained Broadsteel.

  Most passersby cast curious looks at her and Jon—a mage and paladin pair was indeed unusual—but only one look lingered. Launce, a swaggering Broadsteel mercenary and sometimes-lover. She hadn’t seen him since his contract with Broadsteel to secure the Tower village had ended four months ago. He’d reenlisted, then. Shooting her a loaded gaze from beneath wind-tousled dirty-blond hair, Launce stroked his stubbled chin. Not much for conversation, but the man knew his way around a woman’s body.

  And it was as she needed it to be: physically satisfying, with no risk of developing an attachment to someone she could lose. Whose loss could trigger the catastrophe of fureur.

  Launce tilted his head to greet her, a mischievous glint in his eye. She knew what it meant: Find me when you return.

  Flushed, she nodded and turned away, only to catch a smug glance from Jon.

  “Friend of yours?” he teased.

  She pulled her shoulders back, raised her chin, and focused on the road ahead between her horse’s ears. If his intention was to embarrass her, then he’d be sorely disappointed.

  Bells tinkled as a pair of goat-herders shepherded their animals across toward the herb-rich meadows. So much grew here. She’d picked violet rocky thyme there, and intense-blue gentian flowers, rosy pink clusters of catchfly, mauve trumpets of pimpernel willowherb, and sweet-smelling mead wort. Plants whose cuttings she’d carefully rooted in water and then potted to keep her company in the long cold of winter.

  Hopefully Jacqui would mind them as she’d promised.

  In the dull stretch from the mountains, the questions about Jon only tempted her more. The Proctor had offered precious little explanation about her charge’s situation. She looked over her shoulder at the Emaurrian Tower of Magic, the solitary white turret tearing into the azure sky over the Marcellan Peaks.

  “Missing your hocus-pocus already, witch?” A smile played on his face.

  “Witch?” she cut. “I thought even the least educated of our people would know the difference between a witch and a mage. But I suppose you can’t be blamed for the lackluster education provided by the Order.”

  His mouth fell open.

  Good.

  He closed it and collected himself. “I did learn the difference. Mages learn magic at the Divinity’s Towers, while hedge witches are sole practitioners outside of the Divinity’s influence... All magic practitioners were once witches,” he said. “But it seems the Tower doesn’t teach the art of a good insult, does it, witch?”

  She narrowed her eyes. Even if all practitioners of magic were once called witches, before the civilization, order, and wisdom of the Divinity had sophisticated them, as a mage it still rankled to be called such, and few dared.

  Especially if they preferred their backsides unburnt.

  She forced a grin. “Who needs insults when I have all the ‘hocus-pocus’ I need to handle you—and then some.”

  His lips twitched in a mocking almost-smile. “If you’re plotting to kill me, at least try to hide it. It’s bad form to taunt your victim.”

  She shot him a scowl, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Feeling a bit insecure, are you? Even with all that shiny arcanir?”

  He scoffed, but no retort came. Before the silence could reclaim their ride, she said, “I have a question.”

  “Don’t you mages use a crystal ball for that kind of thing?”

  She heaved a sigh and shook her head. “Right, yes... I forgot mine at the Tower, along with my cauldron and broomstick, so why don’t you indulge me?” She flashed him a brief, pert grin. “Tell me... although I’m bound to heed the Proctor, what binds you to your High Priest’s commands, now that you’re no longer a paladin?”

  He stiffened, tightening his grasp on the reins, then glanced at her. The humor in his eyes faded, and he contemplated his navel. “I was aware of what I was sacrificing, and I swore vows to Most Holy Terra. That commitment and that sacrifice don’t just disappear with a piece of paper.” A muscle twitched in his clenched jaw. “Monas Amar is where discharge proceedings are finalized. Where discharged paladins”—he paused—“return their arcanir, their new status processed. But when I arrive, I hope to persuade the Paladin Grand Cordon to reverse the decision.”

  “You want to return to being a paladin?”

  Members of the Order had so little freedom; she couldn’t fathom wanting to adhere to such a lifestyle. To her eye, Jon looked about twenty-six or twenty-seven, yet had lived so little for himself. The Sacred Vows of piety, poverty, sobriety, and celibacy made for a modest life.

  “It is all I’ve ever known.” His voice slumped, deep and low. “And it is all that I am, even now.”

  There were some mages at the Tower who had been born there and had rarely set foot outside its property, nor desired to. Sometimes a person grew so comfortable in his box that he no longer dared pursue what lay beyond.

  He’d provided one answer, at least: a troublesome man wouldn’t want that life. So what kind of trouble was Jon in, or what trouble awaited them out there?

  “So why this mission?” She drew her eyebrows together. “Why did the High Priest ask to have you escorted to Monas Amar?”

  Lost in a wistful stare, he took hold of a gloved finger, where his Sodalis ring had been the night before. “Derric raised me from infancy. He knows that if I could, I’d come see him immediately and demand answers instead of traveling to Monas Amar.”

  “So he requires a mage to shepherd you?” Something didn’t fit. “Do you know what you’re accused of?”

  He let out a deep breath. “I intend to find out more at the monastery.”

  That was no answer. What was he not telling her? A plethora of possibilities flew through her mind. Had he turned away from a paladin’s duties? Failed to dispense justice? Deserted? Harmed an innocent?

  No, he didn’t seem the type. Had he broken one of the four Sacred Vows? Had he drunk ale, wine, mead...? Acquired a treasured trinket? Turned to a different religion? Spent the night in the arms of a lover?

  She stole a glance. When she’d first seen him five years ago, healed him, he’d been handsome enough—not that she’d had time to study him as he lay dying—but all the time since then had given his pleasing features a hard edge, lent a certain rugged appeal. He was probably no stranger to women’s attention, and could he resist indefinitely?

  Still, in the Proctor’s quarters the night before, Jon had vehemently denied breaking any of his vows. Perhaps the discharge was unfounded after all. She weighed the odds but didn’t ask him outright. The silence between them grew and remained until the daylight dwindled.

  They sated their hunger on the road with bread, cheese, and cured meat from their packs and some greens she’d picked—dandelion greens and the young leaves of lady’s mantle. At dusk, they made camp among the fragrant silver spruces and Emaurrian larches of the Tainn Forest. As Jon built a fire, she set up a geomancy ward around the perimeter to warn her if anything large crossed into the vicinity of their campsite. Then she tended to the horses while he pitched their tent.

  At least he helped. Her days as Leigh’s apprentice had her setting up camp by herself while her master sat at the campfire she’d built.

  When a quiet settled, she looked around in the dark, her fingers twitching a moment. At home in the Tower, she would have been watering her plants now, tending them. Hopefully Jacqui wouldn’t over-water them, especially her peace lilies and bellina orchids. The bellinas were particularly temperamental.

  A tent stood in the light of the campfire while he rummaged through their packs and pulled out two bedrolls.

  He laid them down and disarmed for the night. Once finished, he hesitated a moment—she ducked behind her horse—and then he entered the tent.

  A cold autumn wind made her shiver. She focused on the nearby shrubs, staring at the ripened purpl
ish-red fruit of the common spindle, its lobes split open to reveal its bright orange seeds. Bold. Brave. Forthcoming.

  With a deep breath, she checked the horses and the perimeter ward a final time, and when it started to rain, she spelled the fire to protect it and headed for the tent. A pause before the entrance to gather her composure, and she pulled the flap aside.

  In the light of an oil lamp, he unrolled a bedroll, the other still bound and off to the side. When she came in, his gaze darted to hers for a moment, and then he resumed his task.

  She sat and pulled off her boots. After picking up the remaining bound bedroll, he headed for the tent’s opening.

  “Goodnight.” He went outside.

  Sleeping out there, in the cold and damp? The tent was large enough to sleep three. Was he really so wary?

  Shaking her head, she changed out of her clothes, which smelled strongly of horse, and into a roomy tunic and soft breeches.

  Rain pattered overhead. Wind battered the canvas tent, and she shivered.

  If she was chilly in the tent, Jon must be freezing.

  She tossed and turned to her side as the rain pelted the canvas, as the cold bit.

  “Divine’s flaming fire,” she grumbled under her breath. With a heavy sigh, she rose, then pulled aside the flap.

  Soaking wet, he sat on his bedroll before her spelled fire.

  “It’s cold tonight. Too cold to sleep outside.”

  His stormy eyes met hers, and she returned inside. There. She’d said it. If he wanted to be stubborn and unreasonable and act like his virtue was threatened, he could ignore her comment. But she’d rather he didn’t sleep out there and catch cold.

  She bedded down again and settled, closing her eyes. Silence stretched toward sleep until a soft swishing interrupted. Jon must have entered and fastened the flap against the wind.

  A loud flutter and a breeze—shaking out the other bedroll?—and then a rustling as he laid it opposite hers and slipped into it.

  He’d seen reason, then.

  She could feel him looking at her. Unmistakably.

  He braced himself on his elbow, close enough that she could feel his warmth. “I didn’t mean to insult you. If I did, I’m sorry. Please accept my apology.”