“I clean his wounds daily as you bade me do. Fresh bandages. He seems appreciative. Is he a Vallè?”
“No. He is not Vallè.” There was a barely noticeable laugh in his voice. “But I would have you two become close.”
“If you wish it.”
“Still, even though you are to become his friend, no matter how charming he can be, the Spider is not to be trusted.”
“If you say.”
“The Spider will kill Hammerfiss someday. He will make an attempt on my life too. There is no telling what schemes Black Dugal has cooked up for him. But it amuses me to see how things play out.”
Aeros went silent for a time. Then he said, “There is a man named Hawkwood. A Bloodwood. An assassin like the Spider. Hawk and the Spider, they were once called. Embroiled in many intrigues with Black Dugal. They even call Black Dugal Father, though he is no man’s father. They think me ignorant to their plotting, Spider and the Hawk. But I am not fooled. I have my own spies.”
He dropped into silence again. She continued to rub his back. “Yes,” he finally said, his voice soft, conspiratorial. “You shall become the truest of friends with the Spider.”
“If it please you, my lord.”
“Hawkwood vexes me too. Spades claims to sometimes feel his presence. What do you make of that? Does Spades have prophecy in her too?”
“I don’t know.”
“Spades claims Hawkwood was in Ravenker. That she sensed him there. Said that it was Hawkwood who likely crushed the skull of the Spider. Of course the Spider won’t admit to it. I must know what happened. The boy Nail was there. But could he have injured the Bloodwood so grievously? Perhaps you could get some of these answers out of the Spider for me, Ava.”
“As you wish.”
“Splendid,” he said. “You will make a splendid spy. Perhaps I will rename you Little Miss Splendid. Or Splendidwood. Or perhaps some other nonsense.”
“If you like.”
“I’ve told you how devoted my father is to my mother, have I not?”
“You have. Their names are Aevrett and Natalia.”
He looked back at her, noticeable surprise on his face. “So you do listen.”
“And never was there a marriage more strong than theirs,” she followed. “Or so you’ve said.”
“Alas, their marriage is an example I have fallen woefully short of. Of course I am not married, nor have I any children. So it is a virtual impossibility that I can commit any sort of infidelity. But I will become betrothed someday. All the noblewomen in Adin Wyte and Wyn Darrè have been killed. No alliance can be gained there. Perhaps I will take Jondralyn Bronachell to wed. I hear she is most beautiful. And Jovan has a younger sister, Tala. I like that name. Aeros and Tala. It sounds good. Does it not?”
“It does.”
His conversation seemed to be jumping all over the place. And that notion filled her with dread. She’d learned the hard way that when the White Prince got in a scattered, unpredictable mood like this, things would soon get rough. She had zero notion what form his coming anger might take, what depraved abuse he would heap upon her.
But she would not let him rape her anymore. Even if it meant her death. I have the knife! Less than twenty paces away in a gold censer atop the table in her own water closet.
“Does the thought of me with some other make you jealous?” he asked.
She let his question linger, stroking his back more slowly, deliberately now, working the warm water and fragrant soap into his skin. “If . . . if you want me to be jealous, then I will be—”
“I want you to feel what you feel,” he said waspishly. “I could very well wed this girl Tala Bronachell someday. Does that pain you?” His tone was full of anger now.
“Some,” she finally answered, wincing with disgust as she did so.
“Are you jealous of Spades and Jenko?”
“I do not think of them. Ever.”
“Probably best. Their sessions are not heavenly like ours. I imagine they rut like dirty dogs in heat. Who wishes to think of that?”
“I said I do not think of it,” she muttered. Yet that was a lie. Every time Jenko and Spades were brought up, Ava pictured them together in her mind. Her imagination was like a constant rusty dagger clawing at her heart.
“I’ve a tendency to choose Bloodwoods and former enemies like Mancellor Allen as bodyguards,” he said, the subject changed yet again. “You can only be deceived by the ones you love. Never by those you loathe. You capture an enemy in battle and he expects nothing but misery. But you turn the tables and give him a life full of pleasure and power, then you own him more than you’d own a slave. And having one like that around keeps me focused and alert.” He was almost babbling to himself now, and Ava’s heart trembled. “I desire to keep the Knights Archaic varied because I do not trust my own soldiers completely. If my personal guard is of mixed company, there is always someone distrusting another, and distrust keeps everyone on their toes . . . and loyal to me. For I am the only constant in their life. That is what I am aiming for anyway. Have them paranoid about one another, rather than me. If you take my meaning. It has worked for ten years anyway. Only Gault has been with me from the start. Of course now he has vanished. And now I need more Knights Archaic. I’ve only Hammerfiss, Spades, and Mancellor left. The Spider can no longer be counted upon. I must find two more. . . .”
He left the last line dangling as he went silent. It had been a lengthy and disjointed discourse, and she sensed things were about to boil over. But something he’d said jogged her memory. She had seen some measure of kindness in Mancellor Allen in Leifid. He’d cared for that baby Aeros had drowned. She got the impression that Mancellor was not a bad man. Is there help for me there, with him?
For some reason she wanted to look upon the green angel stone again. And look upon the blue one Jenko had found too. She then thought of the bald knight, Gault, how she’d tried to get him to escape with her. How she’d kissed him. She still couldn’t believe she had let that happen, had wanted that to happen. If they could have escaped together with the ax and stone, all would be different. Even if she and Nail had escaped together. So many ifs. And she could make sense of none of it.
And here she sat rubbing the flesh of her enemy for his pleasure.
“I would make Jenko Bruk a Knight Archaic,” Aeros said, “if I knew for a certainty I had his full loyalty. He continually badgers me about the battle-ax he took from Nail, continually asks if he can but see it again, touch it again, feel the ax’s warm magic in his hands. I’d almost think he was talking of you, my love, the way his cunning eyes light up with desire.” He wiped his hand on the white towel again, turned, and cupped her breast softly under the doublet, squeezing it gently, lust fixed in his dark eyes. “Have I your full loyalty?”
Her eyes darted to the tent flap leading to the next room, where her knife was. I can race in there and have the knife before he can even step from the tub!
“A slave eventually revels in his master’s degradations,” Aeros said. “Wouldn’t you agree, my princess?”
He actually probably believes that. She pulled back, scooting on her knees away from him, and his hand fell away from her breast. The look on his pale face was grim. His dark eyes narrowed as the slithering veins under his pale brow pulsed with fury. “I did not give you leave to move.”
“I do not wish to lie with you again.”
“You do not wish?” Water sloshed as he whirled about in the tub, facing her directly, the bulk of his body still submerged. “Do you not understand the righteousness of my cause? The righteousness of our coupling? Why do you resist me?”
She backed away, still on her knees, trembling. Her eyes flew to the escape route, imagining the hidden knife in her water closet and what damage it could do, vulnerable and naked as he was.
“That you continue this folly angers me,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Please forgive me.”
His posture relaxed in the water. �
�Who has put this foolishness and insolence in your head?”
She bolted for the tent flap leading to the room beyond, reaching the hidden knife foremost in her mind. Aeros jerked out of the water and had her in his grasp in an instant, one hand clenching her wrist, the other around her throat. He pulled her to his chest, his naked flesh warm and wet against her. “See, this is exactly what I live for, what I love. The challenge. The unpredictability of it all. It thrills me. Excites me. Can’t you tell?” His straining hardness pressed against her back.
“Please, no,” she begged.
“I possess you and I purify you,” he whispered in her ear. “Everything I do is holy. Everything I do is for your sake. Can you not see? When you lie with me, I place into you the healing power of the gods. Our heavenly seasons are blessed by both Raijael and Laijon. In them, I take upon myself your pains, your troubles, and your sins. I even take the wraiths within you upon myself. I bear your burdens.”
“Wraiths!” she hissed.
“Yes, in time you will see those wraiths that plague your mind vanish, and your powers to heal flourish. If you have not already.”
Her heart was pounding to the rhythm of his words. Foulness and witchcraft!
“Of all people, I must keep you, Ava Shay of Gallows Haven, closest to me.” His chest almost melted into her back, so close was he pressing into her. “In all the battles I’ve fought, all the war I have seen, only Ava Shay of Gallows Haven has ever caused me injury, only you have ever drawn blood. Do you recall?” She did recall: she’d slapped him that first night they’d spent together. She recalled his abhorrence to seeing his own blood.
“In time, insolence like yours gone unpunished can only breed betrayal.” His whispering voice was crawling with threat. “Do you wish to betray me now?”
“It is my bleeding time of the moon,” she lied, his previous injury still on her mind. “I only wish to be clean for you. I was embarrassed. That is why I fled.”
He drew back, turning her to face him, holding her at arm’s length, both excitement and fear in his eyes at her deceptive admission. The lust in his eyes was powerful too. He is enjoying all of this!
“Well.” He forced her head down to his groin. “Are your gums bloody?”
No matter how many times they coupled, the unpredictability of his words always hit her like a punch in the chest. His engorged member was now directly before her. Like everything about him, it was always clean and pretty, shorn of all hair. With one hand, he seized her roughly by the back of the head, pulling her face toward the pulsing thing between his legs. She struggled away from him. But his grip was firm, his fingers knotted in her hair, holding her head steady.
And then he drew a knife from the folds of the white towel on the brass table.
It was her knife. Her wood-carving blade. The one Jenko had slipped her. The one she thought was hidden in the gold censer. She felt its needle tip pressing at her neck as he said, “Try anything stupid and I’ll open your throat.”
Ava drew in a slow, deep breath, trying to push away the despair, her mouth unwilling. But as had been done to her every night since her capture, taste him she did.
† † † † †
Shortly after their coupling, Aeros left the tent.
The White Prince along with Hammerfiss and a large company of Sør Sevier knights, including Jenko, set out north on a scouting mission. Aeros claimed he would be gone for the night and most of the next day and that she should foster no more disloyal or impudent ideas, that she would be carefully watched. Everything Aeros did was irrational. And I was a fool to think I could outwit him.
She needed fresh air. She stole through the tent, bare feet padding quietly past the many cordoned-off chambers within. In a slim cotton shift, she made her way to the front entrance. When she stepped outside, the night was black. The camp slept. The stars twinkled in full force above. Her shift felt light and airy in the soft breeze.
Enna Spades guarded the front entry of the tent. Ava had known that at least one of the Knights Archaic would be posted outside, either Mancellor or the red-haired woman or both. She hadn’t cared. She needed the fresh air. She stepped past the woman.
Spades, tossing a coin in one leather-gloved hand, gave her a momentary glance and then thrust her other hand out, blocking her way with a stiff arm. “I’ll let you stand outside if you wish.” Spades’ voice cut through the night. “But you must not leave my side.” She went back to tossing her coin.
Spades was tall and regal beyond measure, pale skin and high cheekbones, long red hair flowing down her shoulders. The fine bright sheen of her Knight Archaic armor sparkled under her blue cloak. A wooden crossbow and quiver of quarrels were strapped to her back and a sword sheathed at either hip. Ava had never seen the woman carry two swords before. The sword nearest Ava was long, its sheathed tip almost dragging the ground. The other sword was slim and slightly curved with a strange red hilt. The coin Spades flipped twinkled in the dim light of the stars as it spun up and then down and back up again. “Is morning almost come?” Ava asked.
Spades stopped tossing the coin, eyes cast to the east, to the black and craggy silhouettes of the Autumn Range that blocked out the stars. “A couple hours yet before the sun shows over the peaks.”
Ava’s eyes traveled over the vast expanse of the Sør Sevier encampment that receded away into the dark, the smoldering town of Bainbridge a smoky ruin beyond.
“Just look at the mountains of Gul Kana,” Spades said. “I cannot take my eyes off them most days. Ten thousand feet from the shoreline to the very top peaks, they say. It takes my breath away. And they say the Glacier Range above Sky Lochs rises to twenty thousand feet from base to top, with sheer cliffs jutting up along the coastline more than ten thousand feet. One mountain is more than twenty-five thousand feet. Such grand heights seem unfathomable. Have you seen them?”
“The Glacier Range?”
“Yes, and the cliffs of Stanclyffe?”
“No.”
“The Nordland Highlands of Sør Sevier are rugged and stark and beautiful in their own way. But I stand in awe of Gul Kana’s majesty.”
It seemed a strange admission from someone so bent on destroying the land. Still, Ava hadn’t really thought of it before, the grandness of the Autumn Range. The lofty peaks above Gallows Haven had just been a part of her life.
Spades tossed the coin again. Ava watched, curious. “You carry the coin with you always.”
Spades held the coin out in the palm of her leather-gloved hand. “Do you not recognize it?”
It was familiar. An image of the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. “I’ve only laid eyes upon a few like it before,” she said. “It’s the new-minted coin from Avlonia. She’s so very pretty, Jondralyn Bronachell.”
“So you do recognize it.” Spades snatched the coin away from her, pocketing it.
“Most coins that came through the Grayken Spear Inn were the old ones with the Val Vallè princess, Arianna. We only ever saw but a few of the new Jondralyn coins in Gallows Haven.”
“Well, we aren’t in Gallows Haven anymore,” Spades said crisply.
Ava looked up to the looming Autumn Range. “I suppose not.”
Spades unhooked the slender sword with the red hilt from her hip, sheath and all. She held it out as if wanting Ava to take it. The sheath was made of leather-studded red velvet. And the odd-shaped hilt was actually a heart-shaped ruby set in the sword’s pommel. Even in the starlight, it sparkled with a beauty beyond comprehension.
Ava didn’t know why she was so drawn to it. But she was. Joyfully so.
“A Vallè-worked blade,” Spades said. “Very rare. Plundered from the rubble of Baron Brender Wayland’s mansion. Looks like the baron had good taste in swords, and Vallè craftsmanship.” She held the sword out. “It is now yours. Take it.”
Ava stepped back warily, a sudden tightness growing in her throat, eyes fixed on the sheathed sword with the ruby-red pommel.
; “Did not Aeros tell you I shall be teaching you how to fight with a sword?” Spades asked. “I believe he may have told you the very first day you bedded him.”
“I did not bed him.” Ava felt the anger rise in her. “Rape is not the same as bedding.”
“They are called heavenly sessions.”
“And I spit on your heaven.”
“Regardless.” Spades held the sheathed sword out. “He did tell you I would be teaching you how to fight like a warrior woman.”
Ava knew it was true. “He said as much.”
“And why do you think he would order such a thing?” Spades asked. “Why would he allow me to give you a blade and then train you how to use it?”
He likes it when I try and kill him. “Nothing Aeros does makes sense,” she answered.
“And what god has ever made sense?” Spades asked. “What god has ever been consistent or fair? The gods are a deranged lot. Laijon. Raijael. Those gods that came before. And those gods that will come after.” As the woman talked, Ava kept her eyes on the weapon in front of her. She so desperately wanted to touch it.
“Want to know what it’s like to have a god living beside you?” Spades went on. “Just look to Aeros Raijael, witness the suffering in his wake. The singular majesty of it. Anguish and misery stretching the breadth of Adin Wyte and Wyn Darrè to the western shores of Gul Kana.” Her tone dropped. “And all for what?”
For the pain he can create, Ava thought, her eyes still captured by the beauty of the red sword in Spades’ hands. He leaves naught but torture and suffering in his wake. Ava had posed that very question to Aeros herself. She asked Spades, “Do you even believe in your god, Aeros Raijael?”
“With all my heart.” Spades regarded her with a wry grin.
“It seems perhaps you do not.”
“One can either believe and wield a sword at his side, or disbelieve and perish.”
“Why cause the destruction and suffering of others?” She just could not understand Spades’ logic. “Why must Aeros torment me?”
“Aeros loves war. ’Tis all he knows. It is his destiny. What he was bred for. His relationship to you is like being in war. It is the reason he keeps you around. It is the reason he keeps me around. It is the reason he chooses the Knights Archaic that he chooses. Part of what makes Aeros Raijael the Angel Prince is the danger he knowingly puts himself in with you and me and others. Danger. And triumph. That is his sustenance. Those are the things that make a god feel invincible. ’Tis all a game to him.”
The Blackest Heart Page 29