Blade & Rose (Blade and Rose Book 1)

by Miranda Honfleur

  Pain burst from every part of her, what felt like a kick in the chest expelling her breath, leaving her struggling for air. Everything went white. Agony crawled from her limbs inward, paralyzing. She tried to get up, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. What had—?

  Beneath her, Jon convulsed and wheezed.

  The copper tang of blood filled her nostrils. She reached out for him, avoiding his arcanir, and muttered, “With Your Light, Divine, grant my will, / Illume the flesh, reveal all ill,” a healer’s diagnostic spell. She inspected him through her hand, his every injury outlined with the Divine’s light in her mind’s eye.

  Broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and after removing his helm, a cracked skull—she couldn’t handle any more. Her hand was sticky with blood, his or hers or some mixture thereof—

  Her rudimentary knowledge of healing magic would have to serve. Using non-innate magic required incantations. She’d never mastered dulling pain, but flesh and bone she could stitch together.

  Not bright enough. Her anima wasn’t bright enough.

  She didn’t have enough to heal them both entirely and retain something for potential threats. No, rather than repeating the incantation until his whole body healed, she would heal each injury individually to conserve anima, saving bruises and small cuts for later.

  “This will hurt.” She extended a trembling hand to unfasten his sword belt, and urged the leather between his teeth, then placed her hand on him to heal his skull fracture and whispered the incantation. A soft white glow from her hands permeated his body.

  His reaction was instant and violent. He ground his teeth as bone shifted and fused together beneath his flesh, as she forced the swelling to subside. It was excruciating. She knew that firsthand. Yet his reaction indicated he was still conscious. A good sign.

  “You will live,” she croaked, her own voice hoarse and weak. With a twinge of prickling sensation, she healed his ribs, his arms, his legs—and most of the broken rest of him, anima flowing from her to him.

  She faltered and collapsed. Her body rebelled, and a wave of crippling pain flooded her.

  Adrenaline had delayed the realization. Broken bones.

  Head turned away from him, she vomited what little she’d eaten that day, reeling from the dizziness of movement. She took his sword belt and wedged it between her own teeth, then forced herself through the healing, starting with her head and working her way down until her legs were healed. The leather barely survived.

  She reclined once more, her pain-addled mind vaguely recognizing rough stone tile beneath her. They were in a ruin; one of its crumbling support pillars must have collapsed and led to the ground giving way.

  Next to her, Jon stirred, perhaps at last coming from the daze of crushing pain, and cautiously tried to sit up. No, don’t move yet. He wasn’t fully healed. She reached out, searching for his shoulder. He drew in a sharp breath, and she winced.

  Found it. With a quick diagnostic spell, she saw all that still required healing and breathlessly muttered the incantation Olivia had taught her.

  “Sundered flesh and shattered bone, / By Your Divine Might, let it be sewn.”

  Anima left her weakened body and wove the magic, repairing his shoulder. He ground his teeth in a horrible creak.

  His major injuries healed, she relaxed despite her remaining soreness. After the broken bones and the ordeal of healing without pain management, bruises and a few cuts were tolerable. The aching vacancy of her nearly dark anima, however, was harder to ignore.

  There was a soft pressure on her shoulder, and she started. It was Jon’s hand.

  “You healed me.” His voice was quiet but filled with awe.

  Meaning to wave off his awe, she realized one of her hands still gripped his wrist and gasped.

  She’d never let go.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Maybe step lightly next time,” she grumbled, and he laughed softly.

  He gave her shoulder a light squeeze, and then the darkness of the unknown pervaded. In the silence, she looked inward in meditation, and her dimmed anima ached for completion. The suffocating pressure of a thousand hands closed in on her presence, pushing, pressing, yearning.

  Spiritseve was close. The anxiety of the earth mounted up to the night when the Veil was at its thinnest, less than two months away, and the dimmer her anima, the more she could feel it if she attempted meditation. After using so much magic unnatural to her, her anima was dim. She never allowed such a risky condition to persist and was disinclined to let it persist now.

  Had it been the case before their fall, she would not have had the anima to heal them both. With a shudder, she retreated and shook off the feeling. She wouldn’t willingly meditate again until Hallowday. “I need resonance.”

  And there was no one to offer it but Jon.

  “I...” He hesitated. As a forsworn paladin nevertheless dedicated to the Code, he’d probably be unwilling.

  “I’m not a healer,” she bit out. “That was costly. My anima’s dim, and who knows what we’ll face in here?” She gestured around the dark ruins. “I need to be at my full power. I need resonance from another mage. And in here, you’re all there is.”

  He slowly shook his head. “I’m a paladin. I have sworn—”

  She heaved an exasperated sigh. “I’m not about to rip your clothes off and tackle you!” She snarled. “It’s a touch. A simple touch, that’s all. Would you have us die because you refuse to even touch me?”

  With a sharp exhalation, he ran a hand through his hair. Unsettled. “Resonance, I... I don’t know how.”

  Then he would have to learn. Teaching it to him and using it would cost them time, but the security of having her anima at full brightness was worth the risk. The protests of her aching body ignored, she rose to her feet. “Stand.”

  He didn’t move right away but eventually stood. Despite her dim anima, she cast a candlelight spell so that they could see each other.

  She jumped back with a horrified gasp. His face was streaked with dirt and blood, his hair matted with dark red, and his armor suggested he might have just crawled out of his own grave.

  In a way, she supposed he had. “You look terrible.”

  “So do you.” He closed the gap between them and ran concerned hands over her white mage coat, inspecting every tear, every injury. Paladins relied on mundane medicine for healing, and he clearly had some training. His inspection descended down her body. Her instinct was to pull away, but at the stern crease of his brow and the determined gaze beneath it, all she could do was swallow.

  When he dropped to a knee, pulled aside a bloodied corner of her coat, and inspected a cut on her upper thigh, she froze and leaped away.

  “I’m fine.”

  “That wound could become infected if we don’t treat it soon.”

  Obviously. They didn’t, however, possess any supplies to treat it, and she hesitated to dim her anima any more unless she was certain it could be brightened.

  “After this, I’ll make sure every cut is healed.” She gestured to his armor. Arcanir interrupted a mage’s spellcasting ability when in direct contact, and it deflected direct spells. If she came into contact with his arcanir, their resonance would be interrupted. “This won’t work if you’re in contact with arcanir. Take off your armor.”

  He cocked an eyebrow but begrudgingly did as she bade.

  When he had stripped down to his clothes, she reached out, holding her hand over his. “May I?”

  He grimaced. “If you must.”

  Off to a fantastic start already. Grimacing, she placed her hand on his. “Close your eyes, and try to look inward.”

  He closed his eyes, and so did she. He would need to reach his own anima first, in order for her to accompany him. Their contact would allow her eventual access to it.

  “Envision a black sky, shimmering velvet with only the moon to light its darkness. Like the wind, you are floating through it, whisper soft and ethereal. You feel the cool air on
your skin, and you smell water. Your gaze follows the moonbeams down beneath you, settling on the illuminated waves of a radiant sea,” she said. “That sea is your pool of anima. Descend to it, into it. Do not be afraid. It is life to you, breath to you, and you are safe and most alive deep in it.”

  Soon, she saw him free-falling before a black canvas and felt the same falling sensation. She gasped when he hit the wet, silvery surface of his bright anima, feeling the cool, watery energy on her own skin.

  “This is your anima.” Reaching it sometimes took months for novices, and for Jon to find it instantly, he must have possessed unusually strong focus. “Now, for us to brighten each other’s anima, I’ll think of you and you think of me.”

  The resonance would both restore her and marginally deepen her anima—and his—permanently raising the potential of its brilliance.

  As expected, she felt pulled, as if he’d taken her hand and fallen back. An invitation to connect. He was a quick study indeed.

  She pulled back, and their psychic links slid languidly against each other until they caught. Forged a connection. She gasped.

  The azure pool of her own magic rippled with a silver aura, its edges shimmering—Jon’s doing. The ripple widened, a vibration spreading throughout her entire body, a steady drumming echoing off her inner barriers, intensifying, resonating until it hummed through her veins, radiating pleasure. Gradually, heat built inside to blazing, and her body heated up to match, relaxing, easing, slave to the resonance.

  A sharp exhalation—his—made her shiver, the motion rousing the heat inside.

  The vibrations were strongest at their point of contact—her hand on his—rapturous origin, but soon pleasure inhabited her entirely, from her head to her feet. Every hair follicle brimmed with electricity, a pleasant hum that made her mouth water.

  Even the tips of her fingers and toes tingled with a pulse of power that shook her to her core.

  She moaned. Overwhelmed with pleasure, her flesh contracted, the feeling so good it hurt, and she cried out. Strong arms held her in a tight embrace, close to his muscled chest, their bodies flush together at every possible point of contact. She breathed deep, blood, earth, wood, smoke, the very essence of him, her knees buckling but for his hold.

  Holding her hand—the touch that had initiated this revelation in pleasure—he wrapped an arm around her waist, twisting hers with it. Closer. Deeper. More.

  If he drew their joined hands farther up her back, it would hurt her arm, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  Upon her head, his every scintillating breath tickled a warmth from her crown to her spine. The resonance still tingling between them, she pushed her hips against him and relished the ecstasy of closer contact. His low groan gave her chills, his fingers shifting and kneading the flesh of her hip with unmistakable want. Somewhere inside him was a chained lover begging to be freed. She longed to engage him fully.

  Power oscillated between them, overwhelming her with wave after wave of spiritual pleasure that only fed a different desire. A lusty exhalation escaped. He moved their joined hands to her face, slipped his hand free of hers, and lifted her chin. Just as his warm breath heated her mouth, so incredibly close to his, their resonance broke.

  His hand parting from hers had broken their connection.

  Like a hot coal, he released her, instantly breaking all contact. He held his arms clear of her and out to his sides, then took several decisive steps back. Wide eyed, he stared into the empty space between them. The color drained from his face.

  She hunched over, unable to control her trembling body, trying to recover from the strongest desire she’d ever felt. Not even when she’d used sen’a, the pleasure-enhancing drug derived from the poppy, with Feliciano, had resonance felt so good. Her anima had nearly brightened to full radiance—a small measure permanently greater after the resonance—but it should have taken much longer.

  It was the Magical Imperative—it had to be. The unseen force that brought mages together was taunting her with what she could never have.

  Jon wanted to return to the Order.

  Yet that reminder was but a ripple to the raging waves of his resonance.

  Torture. The rest of the mission would be torture.

  Chapter 12

  Jon breathed raggedly, his mind racing with forbidden thoughts. He blinked and shook his head, hoping to clear it. Before him, Rielle doubled over and panted, her arched eyebrows raised and her beautiful face flushed. The way her chest heaved, slow and deep—Terra have mercy—was hypnotic, and even as he cursed himself, he struggled not to look.

  All these years, he had managed to repress the corruption of magic. Always. Now he very keenly knew why. His blood raged through his veins like pure fire. He forced his eyes to take in the dusty rock around him, the crumbling walls, the rib-vaulted ceilings. Broken stone lying like shattered vows. “What... was... that...?”

  “The resonance—” she stammered, her voice tremulous.

  Her lower lip, how it quivered as she breathed, full and soft and pink under the glow of the candlelight spell. He could think of nothing else.

  The floor. Look at the floor. He diverted his gaze, dropping it in a slow path down her chest, her waist, her generous curves—how warm and yielding they’d been. His fingers curled, and his hands tensed. Placing them firmly on his hips, he gave them a distraction.

  “Is it always so... intense?” He’d never felt anything like this in his life. Ever.

  She stiffened, still gasping for breath. “Intense, yes, but not like that.”

  She paused. Her gorgeous lips parted in what looked like epiphany. “Sometimes two mages draw each other much more strongly than others. Such pairs are called complements. I know of some complementary mages, but I’ve never found a complement myself.” She shook her head. “Resonance is fuller, stronger. It can be... euphoric.”

  Euphoric. His blood sang at the mere memory. “Complement... Does it mean anything?”

  She blanched. “It doesn’t have to, no. Sometimes they become working pairs, and sometimes they end up...”

  He held his breath. They end up what? She didn’t finish her sentence, but the heat in his body, the hardness, and fire was answer enough. He wanted to drop and do push-ups until he regained control, but it would invite questions from her. Questions he didn’t want to answer.

  In just a few days’ time, he was losing his restraint. Perhaps Derric’s message discharging him from the Order had affected him more than he’d thought. When he’d received the letter in Villecourt, he’d hardly believed his eyes. Regardless of his current official standing, if he could just make it to Monas Amar with his honor still intact, then maybe the Paladin Grand Cordon could be persuaded to reverse the discharge; someone had lied to Derric, plain and simple, about whatever had gotten him discharged.

  Jon steeled himself. He’d been raised in the monastery among celibate priests and paladins, and he’d been a paladin himself for nearly a decade. Paladins needed only their vocation for fulfillment. He was no different.

  He donned his gear once more. The more arcanir between him and her, the better.

  She unfastened her torn mage coat, swept it open, and examined the cut on her upper thigh through the tear in her trousers.

  Shapely booted legs. Thighs and generous hips. An hourglass waist pulled in by a leather vest. A rounded bust beneath a white linen shirt. Flawless, porcelain skin exposed by her décolletage. Beneath that mage coat, she had been even more stunning than he’d remembered from the night at the Tower. He swallowed.

  She whispered an incantation, and the cut closed, the flesh whole once more, a white scar merely sheened with remaining blood.

  “Come.” She bent, retrieved his gauntlets, and held them out to him. “We need to find a way out of here.”

  He put them on, picked up his helm, and checked that Faithkeeper was secure in its sheath, and for his dagger at his side.

  Under the luminance of the candlelight spell, she walked dow
n the corridor. Carved scrollwork adorned the ancient stone walls around them and the pillars bearing the ceiling’s burden. Half-sunken beneath dirt and rubble, the shattered face of a statue sneered at him coldly from beneath a sculpted crown, a forgotten king curling his lip at their intrusion into his realm. Rielle’s candlelight retreated, and darkness shrouded the broken visage once more.

  As he caught up to her, his steps resounded. “Can’t you just magic us out of here?”

  She stopped, frowning. “There’s no anima in this stone. It was made with arcanir. Trace amounts, I’m sure, but enough to make magic useless.”

  “Hands and a sword make most magic useless.”

  She grimaced. “You could always just pray for a way out.”

  Right. He grinned joylessly. “Do you know how to find an exit?”

  “Yes,” she snapped at him before taking off.

  He passed on the guessing game and accompanied her down the corridor in silence. They came upon a crossroads, where she shined the candlelight spell a few feet into each of the four routes and then faced one of them. She held out her hand and slowly began to wave it. Curling and uncurling her fingers, she wove her wrist in a serpentine motion until a white glow engulfed her hand, its soft light cast against the gray. She turned her palm toward herself and beckoned.

  The faintest swirl of white floated down the corridor to her.

  It looked like an aeromancy spell, based on the illustrations he’d seen in books at the monastery. “Have your black arts solved the mystery?”

  She raised an angry eyebrow but didn’t reply. Instead, she repeated the action in every direction and then pointed to the western route. “There’s some fresh air in this direction... eventually, which means—”

  “An exit.”

  With a curt nod in reply, she shrugged and set off down the western corridor. The path branched, and she led them through an old library with countless shelves of ruined books. Here was a place he could spend hours, to see if it had been worth the fall.

  The fall... When he’d plummeted, Rielle hadn’t hesitated. She’d reached for him despite the danger to her own life and fallen with him. Why? Surely she’d known there was no way for her to keep a man of his size and weight from falling? Why did she risk herself even trying?