Derric, however, had never been content to ignore damaging truths.
Jon stopped, letting the silence pervade while reality set in, clenching his fist. “What else is there to do? Nothing? Let her get taken? Let her suffer? Let her die?”
He threw his arm out, sweeping the knapsack and everything else off the table.
Bracing his hands on the wood, he wanted nothing more than to crush it to dust.
“I have to do something,” he snarled. “She’s out there, somewhere, probably hurt, needing help... my help—”
“The paladins can cover more ground.” Derric’s calm never broke. “They can look for her.”
Jon clenched his teeth, his shoulders tense. “No. It needs to be me.” She needed him, now more than ever, and he would not—refused to—let her down. “ ‘Let the heavens fall upon my head if I defend not the innocent, help not the weak, redeem not the suffering,’ ” he said, quoting a line from the Order’s oath. “I haven’t forgotten. Have you?”
Derric heaved a lengthy exhalation through his nose. “Perhaps you have. Paladin Grand Cordon Guérin can order an entire company of paladins to look for her if necessary, but only one man can lead this kingdom. Not just one woman, but a nation of women—and men, and children—are relying on their king. Those fires out there”—Derric waved his arm toward the city proper—“aren’t just burning in buildings and streets, but the in hearts of your people, consuming them as surely as wood and thatch. Will you abandon your land—your people—to chaos so that you can search for one woman?”
His land? His people? He’d been king only a few hours, only to one order of men who desperately wished it so, but he’d been a paladin nearly all his life, handling what kings and generals would have deemed inconsequential matters, wherein one or a couple or a few lives hung in the balance. Those lives mattered. Rielle mattered.
He slammed a frustrated palm on the table. Abandoning his new responsibility as king to go after Rielle? “Yes.”
Derric exhaled a sigh behind him.
No, it wasn’t how he’d been raised, but he could only live with one decision, and ignoring Rielle’s disappearance wasn’t it.
Footsteps caught his attention.
Brennan stood in the doorway, wincing, but his brow set in determination. “I think I may have a solution.”
Chapter 70
With some reluctance and a dull throbbing at the back of her head, Rielle opened her eyes, squinting to mitigate the harshness of the rising sun’s blinding rays. Behind a golden cloak, the sky was a brightening coral. Bobbing with the grainy wooden planks beneath her, she blinked twice at the sight of a billowy indigo sail catching the wind, a design featuring two crossed cutlasses its sole decoration.
The mark of Kezani pirates.
“Surprise.”
Rielle tried to raise her arm to cast, but no magic came. And her arm refused to cooperate. She rolled, trying to move her arms apart, the clink of chain links signaling the futility of her efforts.
Arcanir bonds.
The shadowmancer laughed, satisfied and loud. The woman who’d attacked Jon in Bournand. Shadow. She leaned against a crate, casually eating an orange, her ash-gray eyes serene. “No, Favrielle, I’m afraid not. Dangerous creatures are sold shackled.”
Sold.
The word cut through her mind. Rielle tensed, trying to hold back the shudder that threatened to ripple through her. She turned her face away, leaning her back against the mast and gathering her legs under herself. Stubbornly, she looked out at the water.
No, Shadow would derive no more satisfaction from her.
“Nothing to say?” Shadow popped a segment of fruit into her mouth. “Or have you resigned yourself to the fate that awaits you?”
No need to acknowledge the questions. Her fate would reveal itself in time regardless; beyond being defeated by a single strike, she refused to humiliate herself any more.
She could have laughed—for all the long, exhausting battles she had fought and survived, she had at last fallen prey in an instant to nothing but a sneak attack.
It seemed that the Divine was not without a sense of irony.
“Are you not curious why you are here?” Shadow’s harsh tone betrayed her growing impatience.
Of course she was curious. But silence was power.
By now, Brennan, Olivia, and Jon would be aware of her disappearance. Finding the cavern at the end of the dungeon was a certainty. She brushed her thumb against her index finger, assured that she had removed the Sodalis ring. If Jon found it, he would know what it meant.
Hope filling her chest, she stroked her bare thumb.
“You left something behind.”
Rielle moved her hands out of view. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t as though Shadow could go back for the Sodalis ring anyway.
“Perhaps you think your king will come for you,” Shadow said, “but he will not.”
Rielle turned away once more.
“No, see, you left him a rather heartfelt letter insisting you can never be together, that he forget you while you put some distance between the two of you.”
Letter? Shadow had... had left a forged letter?
“He may make some inquiries for a few days, but make no mistake—he will ascend the throne and forget you between the thighs of many women. Then, he will wed a queen or a princess as kings do.” She laughed and tossed away the last bit of orange peel.
No, Jon would never just accept that and forget her.
“How long will he wait for you, believing you abandoned him, when every jewel in the Emaurrian court will vie for his favor?”
No, no—
She shook her head. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t ever—
“You would do well to abandon your hopes. Your masters will not care about your desires, so you should resign yourself to serving theirs.”
A seagull, the waves, the endless stretch of blue—
“You should steel yourself,” Shadow teased, “and prepare to live the life you deserve.”
Deserve?
Perhaps after all she’d done, everyone she’d killed in fureur, she did deserve this. Pain, confinement, retribution. Perhaps it pleased the grand scales of judgment. Justice.
But shackles, a life of punishment—it was too easy. Like Gran’s offer to do nothing, it was far too simple to account for the lives she’d taken. At birth, she’d been given something. A power. But it did not belong to her alone; it belonged to every innocent life she’d ever taken, and to every innocent life that needed saving, and it roared with the deafening voice of the Divine—roared its demand of atonement.
That was her path. And neither Shadow, nor anyone else, would keep her from it. Not while she drew breath. She smiled.
Shadow pushed off from the crate she’d been leaning against and approached with all the menace of a mountain cat. She drew her hand up and slapped Rielle across her face.
“Damn you, demon. You have the audacity to smile after you killed my husband?” She drew an obsidian blade and brandished it. “This dagger is all that was left of him.”
The soulblade. Rielle wriggled her ankle—the soulblade she’d tucked into her boot the morning she’d departed for Monas Amar was gone.
All that was left of him?
The soulblade had belonged to someone else, a man she’d killed? She stared at the blade, its shimmering black surface catching the light. Her inner barriers trembled. Weakened. She winced.
Firelight on a serpentine edge like black glass. Laurentine. Liam. She’d tried so hard to forget it that she almost had.
The man with the dagger, when she was thirteen, when Laurentine had been attacked—“You mean to avenge that man? That torturer? Death was too good for him.”
Another strike to the face.
Rielle’s cheek stung, but she steeled herself. “Your husband attacked my family and tortured them. His death is on his own hands.”
Shadow crouched down to eye level, toying with the soulblade. “You burn
ed him and his men, right along with your own family. Your father, mother, sisters, brothers, your household... On whose hands are their deaths?”
“It was an accident.” An abrupt reply. Those words came too easily. Saying them anew brought back a shudder. “But the man who’d held that dagger, the man who’d intentionally captured and hurt my family, tortured my brother—he deserved far worse than death.”
Shadow held the soulblade up to Rielle’s neck, its sharp edge against her skin. “So do you. How many have you tortured and killed? You think intent matters to the dead?” Her words were no more than a growl. “I should kill you right now.”
Rielle tensed, holding back a shudder. After all that this woman had orchestrated, after ignoring the opportunity to end it in the cavern, there was no way that mere killing would satisfy her now.
“Do it,” Rielle challenged, “so that I won’t have to listen to your wagging tongue any longer.” She stuck out her chin, hoping against hope that she held still the tremble weaving through every inch of her.
Clenching her teeth, Shadow pressed the edge harder against her neck.
The sting of a cut. Divine, she’d miscalculated. Fatally. A cut from the sangremancy-cursed blade into the intended target’s flesh would kill instantly.
Is this the end?
A loud exhalation and a Kezani expletive later, Shadow yanked the dagger away.
The wetness of blood trickled down Rielle’s neck. I’m cut.
She held her breath; death would come, quick and certain.
But nothing happened.
She let herself exhale. A soulblade was enchanted so the shallowest of cuts would kill one target instantly and one target only. And she was still alive.
I’m not the intended target.
“No.” Shadow shook her head vehemently. “You will suffer as I have suffered.” She examined the serpentine blade, and sunlight glinted off its surface. “When I discovered your guilt, I resolved to exact the same price you took from me.”
Rielle froze; she’d killed Shadow’s husband, but didn’t have one herself. “The same price...?”
Shadow leaned in and brandished the dagger. “I could have cursed you with this dagger, could have plunged this into your chest and felt the life leave your body, but that would have been too easy.” She sheathed it. “No... With this dagger, I cursed the one you love above all others. You will be helpless and far from home, and I will kill him.”
Jon. Rielle threw herself forward with all of her strength, cursing at the chains that stopped her short of Shadow, seething. Instinct had drawn upon her magic, but none came. The ache of emptiness throbbed in its place. The arcanir had fulfilled its purpose, nullifying her power.
Not that she had anima to spare.
Grimly, she realized that, along with her magic, Brennan’s control of his Wolf had gone. Her capture had not only led to her own bleak circumstances but also a dangerous risk to him and those around him.
For a moment, Shadow just watched her, the corners of her mouth turning up.
Rielle stiffened; what secrets had her face betrayed that the woman before her mistook for defeat? “This isn’t over.”
“No, it’s not over until your lover’s life seeps from his body. Blood for blood.” Shadow headed to the edge of the ship’s deck. She kicked over the side in one smooth movement, grabbing hold of a rope ladder.
You will burn for this.
Shadow had enslaved her and threatened to kill Jon. It was circumstance alone—the arcanir chains—that kept Shadow breathing. If she hurt him in any way—
“I will destroy you,” Rielle vowed.
Shadow laughed. “You will want to. More than you can fathom. And that brings me such satisfaction.” With a final smile, she descended, the give of the rope ladder the only sign she’d landed on a waiting pinnace.
Rielle thumped her head against the mast. She’d escorted the last of the Faralles to Monas Amar, saved Olivia, and helped break the siege of Courdeval, but she couldn’t do a damned thing to stop Shadow from killing Jon.
When she imagined Shadow bound for the palace, bound for Jon, she thrashed in her chains, her hands filled with quaking purpose. She yanked at them, drawing against them with all her strength, pushing against the mast with her feet, so hard the arcanir cuffs grated against her wrists. What she would give, what she would do to be free, only long enough to—
A moment later, darkness blotted out the sun.
A large boot smashed her shoulder against the mast. Gasping for breath, she followed the thick, leather-wrapped leg up to a tall man’s bearded face beneath a wide-brimmed, decorated black hat.
“Cease your racket,” he said, in a harshly accented voice. “You are bound for the market alive... but not unharmed.”
She glared up at her captor, trying to discern the lines of his face under the shadow of his hat.
The boot connected with her face. She fell to the deck, the wind knocked from her lungs. Scrambling for breath. Trying to reach up to cover her pounding jaw only to be stopped by the chains.
“Looking into your betters’ eyes like that will earn you lashes where you are bound.” He stood over her while she breathed hard.
When he finally strolled away, she shifted closer to the mast, curling her legs up to her chest, trying to shut out the cold and unfeeling wind, the rocking of the ship beneath her, and the sunshine, cruel in its unabashedly bright cheer.
Chapter 71
Brennan crumpled the message in his hand as he rode through the Azalée District of Courdeval. So someone had arrived at Victoire. His eldest sister, Nora, was in Vauquelin with her two sons, and the younger two, Caitlin and Una, were at Maerleth Tainn with Mother. That left one Marcel in his family.
Father.
And he had words for Father. Especially after recognizing Phantom and the map in Melain’s smuggler tunnels, and after what the captured Black Mountain Brigand had said. Father’s ill-advised coup d’état plans needed to be clipped before they could flower.
And if Father knew anything about Rielle, today he would answer.
Few people moved about the cobblestone roads. During the regicide, in addition to the Faralles, many of the courtiers had met their ends, which meant many empty villas in Azalée. The Order had secured the capital, and Courdevallans trickled back into their city, but few survivors, it seemed, called this district home.
The ample linden trees of the Azalée District now bore golden crowns, a macabre echo of the flames that had destroyed it. Indeed, heaviest among the district’s scents were the choked stench of wet ash, the too-sweet smell of old death, the putrid complexity of varied viscera, and the rusted metal of dried blood.
Finally, Victoire came into view. Sided with stone and with decorative half-timbering, it was the grandest and largest villa to be found in Azalée, the natural order of things for a Marcel’s property. Its round stone center tower alone, topped by a conical roof, dwarfed the Alaire family villa nearby. Apt, as the Alaires had always been small men with small minds and small fortunes. At least compared to the Marcels.
As he rode up, a groom and a manservant, liveried in black and gold, ran out to greet him. The scrappy young groom bowed low and took his horse by the bridle.
“Lord Brennan,” the elderly manservant—whatever his name was—stammered. “We weren’t expecting you.”
Of course not. With Trèstellan Palace so empty of courtiers and household staff, who would spy for Father? Without spies, word was scarce. And without word, so were expectations.
He scowled at the doddering manservant and dismounted. Fear. The oldster reeked of fear. Was Father in one of his moods?
Removing his riding gloves, Brennan narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t realize I needed to provide notice to visit my own family’s property.” He shoved the gloves at the manservant.
The man accepted them and bowed lower. “Of course not, my lord! I wouldn’t dare even suggest—”
Brennan waved him off, neatened his black broc
ade doublet, and stared down the entry doors. “Take me to my father.”
The man bowed profusely, his bald pate shining in the afternoon sun. “Yes, my lord. Please, follow me.”
Brennan followed him into the villa. The place had come out of the siege nigh unscathed, and inside, it appeared the same as it always had. No one would have dared loot property belonging to the Marcels—Father’s memory was perfect. And long.
The hazel trees and leaves carved into the moldings, sconces, and banisters came to life as they never had. As he climbed the stairs, he closed his eyes and traced the simple, rounded, double-serrated hazel leaf pattern on the banister. The Lothaire villa, Couronne, had similar carvings, but of honeysuckle.
Rielle. He’d thought of little else for two days. Where was she?
Was she even alive?
He pulled his fingers away from the banister and curled them into a fist. The Crag prisoners he’d questioned had reported one ship in port, but no one knew its name, its colors, or where it made berth. Jon had provided him a squad of men to canvas the docks and question the returning Courdevallans, but it was the height of stupidity to rely on hope when action was available.
Tomorrow he’d question the mage. Jon had finally granted his permission to interrogate the man and elicit answers by any means necessary. Brennan’s face hardened. He would ask questions, of course, but the primary purpose wouldn’t be answers; it would be a lesson in consequences. The consequences of betraying the woman he—
He straightened his back.
The woman he planned to marry.
After he was through with Leigh Galvan, no one would dare move against her but with a lethal case of masochism.
And by the time he was done, he’d know the name of every accomplice, the specifics of every plan, and he’d give the mage no information with which to manipulate. It wasn’t his first interrogation.
Any means necessary. He wouldn’t leave Rielle in the hands of mercenaries, pirates, whatever lowlifes had dared abduct her. Every second she was gone, who could say what she suffered? If anyone threatened her, scared her, hurt a hair on her head, he would—
Blade & Rose (Blade and Rose Book 1) Page 60
