Court of Shadows

by Miranda Honfleur

“Come,” she said, nodding to the tables. “I’m sure you’ve had a long journey. Let’s sit.” Moreover, since he was a conjurer, she’d have a captive source of strategies for the final trial.

  Daturian advised her on Mac Carra over ale and stew while she, Marfa, and Olivia nursed mugs of hot cocoa. It was extravagant, really, considering it came only from a single monastery in Ferrante, and was one of the kingdom’s most expensive exports. But today, she didn’t care. The final trial was tomorrow, and a long sip of the creamy sweetness soothed her nerves a touch.

  “A deep-freeze shield,” he said, “keeps any constructs from getting to you, or any other spell, and leaves you free to attack. Why aren’t you using it constantly? I hate hydromancers just for that.”

  A deep-freeze shield froze anything entering its perimeter, but its efficacy varied depending on what intruded, so she’d rarely used it—and it dimmed a lot of anima, more than her usual wind wall or flame cloak.

  Marfa tapped her palm on the table twice, then tipped her head up toward something behind Rielle.

  “Magister Trey, I don’t believe we’ve met,” Luca Iagar drawled over Daturian’s shoulder as he turned a chair around and straddled it.

  Daturian ignored him completely and shoveled stew into his mouth. Typical. And entertaining.

  As Luca dropped into the seat, Marfa hissed at him.

  He held up a palm to her. “Hello again to you, too, beautiful.”

  Marfa’s eyelids drooped over her eyes as she gave him the deadest look Rielle had ever seen.

  She laughed. “I don’t think she likes you.”

  “Tch,” he said, smiling and rolling his eyes. “I’m an acquired taste. Like a fine wine.”

  “Or fermented cabbage,” Rielle offered.

  “I’m going to stick with ‘fine wine.’” He rested his arms atop the chair’s back. “So what brings you here?” he asked Daturian.

  “Not you.” Olivia sipped her hot cocoa and shared an amused look with Marfa.

  “The trials, I gather.” Luca nodded sagely. “Yes, yes, no doubt you’re interested in how they’ve gone. Well, you’ve come to the right person.”

  Olivia laughed, her green eyes twinkling. “When it comes to conversation, it seems a second person is entirely optional for you.”

  He laid his head on his arms and grinned at her. “Well, it’s not all bad. It made you smile, didn’t it?”

  Olivia glanced away, but her mouth still twitched and her cheeks reddened, just a touch. “You lost… Why are you still in Magehold?”

  He shrugged. “Why not? I’ll see who wins the trials. My money’s on Mac Carra.”

  Rielle grimaced. “Thanks. Very nice of you.”

  “No sense in nursing false hopes, yes?”

  When she snorted, Daturian slung an arm around her neck. “Don’t count out Spitfire. Especially not when she’s had my advice.”

  Completely humble as always. She feigned a smile, but he only stuck out his tongue at her.

  “What?” he asked, with a smug look. “Unless you don’t want it?”

  “No!” she replied, bolting upright and grinning. “I want it. Teach me, oh wise magister.”

  “That’s more like it.” A joking nod.

  “I’ll stay till the trials end,” Luca continued to Olivia, unperturbed, “then I’ll see who could use a healer that looks as good as he heals.” He winked at her.

  Marfa scoffed. “Idiota.” She drained her hot cocoa.

  “I’m sure that means ‘I completely agree,’” Rielle said with a wink back at Marfa. “I’ll let you know if I hear—”

  The door to the inn opened, and Brennan ducked inside, black-cloaked and sullen, his gaze sweeping the tavern to land on her… and then on Daturian, and finally on Luca. He grimaced, then jerked his head aside.

  “Ah, that’s my cue to pretend I was never here,” Luca murmured, before kicking his leg over the chair with a flourish and leaving.

  Marfa breathed in, then as she looked over her shoulder, a growl rumbled in her throat, and Brennan’s gaze locked with hers.

  “It’s all right, Marfa,” she said, and reluctantly, Marfa turned away, mumbling under her breath, then grabbed her empty cocoa mug and stomped away with a toss of her forest-green coat.

  “I think I’ll have that chat with Iagar about healing magic,” Olivia whispered, then followed Luca.

  Brennan approached the table, his steps sure as ever, and paused just before her, his imposing form towering over her and Daturian. His hazel eyes were grave in their focus.

  He lowered his eyelids, that fraction of displeasure, as his lower lip moved, chewing a choice word or two as he speared Daturian with a glare.

  “I’d heard the Marcels were so well bred,” Daturian said drolly, around a spoonful of stew. “Guess manners weren’t included.”

  With an irritated sigh, Brennan looked away from him and held out a hand. “Let’s speak somewhere more private.”

  * * *

  Brennan followed her from the table, where she’d left that mage—the one who’d insulted their family. He could’ve skinned him for that alone, but the mage had also had an arm about her shoulders. A mistake that would have cost him, had it been any other time but now. And Rielle—she was wearing the ring. Jon's ring.

  Right now, there was something more important, far more important than skinning loose-lipped mages, or arguing over a ring, or anything else. For two days, he’d taken Una’s words to heart, had considered what Rielle might want, what he wanted, and what that would mean in practical terms. Other than checking for her safety from time to time, at a distance, he’d stayed away. Given her space and time to think.

  He’d said all the wrong things… and while he didn’t expect her to have forgiven him, perhaps the sting of the bite had faded. If only just a little.

  She led him upstairs and to a room, and inside, there were maybe a half-dozen scents, chief among them Rielle’s blood, its tang making his mouth water, even against his own reluctance. More scents—Marfa, Olivia, other mages. Arcanir. Thorn lay on the bed, next to a tray heaping with a disturbing amount of dirty dishes and bones picked clean. He inhaled deeply—fresh—only from today.

  Rielle moved a worn chair from the desk to the window, opened it, and struggled outside, wriggled out onto the roof.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Trust me,” she said, and offered her hand.

  He didn’t need her help, but he wasn’t about to turn away her touch. Careful not to burden her with his weight, he climbed out, and followed her up to a roof beam, where she perched.

  “Not very safe up here,” he said carefully. He hated to think of her climbing out here, especially alone.

  She shrugged. “It is if you know the updraft gesture and have quick fingers.”

  True enough. He sat next to her and looked out at the market district below. It was still early in the afternoon, and there were families about, shopping, mothers and fathers with their children, talking, laughing.

  Rielle’s gaze, narrow, intense, was fixed on Divinity Castle.

  “Are you worried about tomorrow?”

  “Anxious,” she said. The breeze caught wisps of her golden hair, blowing them across her face, and she tucked them behind her ear.

  “You didn’t come back,” he said softly.

  She shrugged again and didn’t look at him. “Should I have?”

  No rapid heartbeat, no edge to her voice. She was at ease here, unsettlingly, and had seemed to be having a good time before he’d shown up. Maybe she hadn’t returned because she never wanted to, ever again.

  His chest tightened, but he only pressed his palm into the roof beam harder, until he could almost imagine the exact detail of the wood’s grain against his skin. “I shouldn’t have pressed you. I was wrong. You were right.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What changed your mind?”

  He averted his gaze. It hadn’t been easy accepting what Una had suggested, but he had. Still, looking he
r in the eye when he said it was too far. “For a long time, I’ve wanted to make you mine, Rielle. And as soon as I had you, all I could think about was losing you.”

  Her heart beat a little faster, but she didn’t say a thing, simply sat, waited. Great Wolf’s ass, this was only making things harder.

  “As soon as I began to… worry”—he suppressed a growl—“about that, I wanted to make you mine… in every way. Claiming you, marking you, flaunting you… marrying you… having a child with you.”

  She shivered and looked away. “That’s not the only reason.”

  “No.” His knuckles cracked against the beam, and he rested his palms on his lap instead.

  “I know you want children,” she said quietly. “A whole house of them, you said.”

  That’s where his mind went when he thought about the future, and what it would mean to be happy. He nodded.

  “About… making me yours,” she said, staring at the castle. “You don’t have to make me yours when I’ve already decided to be yours. When I am.” She looked him over with an uncertain once-over. “And the more you try to make me anything, the scarier it feels. Like you want to push me into a smaller and smaller room.”

  “I don’t,” he said sincerely. Not anymore.

  “You did.” She looked away again. “I don’t want to be made to be yours more than I’ve already willingly given. No flaunting me to anyone. No forbidding me anything. No jealous barbs.”

  “I know.” He hung his head and sighed. “I’m… working on it.”

  “That’s not good enough,” she said firmly. “Because while you’re ‘working on it,’ I’ll have to be living it, won’t I?”

  She wasn’t wrong, but he couldn’t promise to change overnight either. He wanted to be less… restrictive, but that was conscious. What he did in the moment—he could try to change, but promising it would all be different immediately would only be over-promising. And lying. “You could call me out on it. I won’t push back.”

  She pressed her lips together and took a deep breath, her brow creased contemplatively. “All right, if we were to agree on the path, what about the destination? What do you see us doing in three years?”

  This was dangerous. She’d already made it clear that her vision wasn’t as set as his was, or even the same.

  “We can’t settle this until we both put our answers out there,” she said gently.

  “You already know,” he shot back. Why was she making him say it when she knew? But when she didn’t speak, he said, “You and me, hand in hand. Running Tregarde, Laurentine, Calterre. Taking care of our land and our people. Ideally raising a family. Keeping the peace together and living a quiet life in our own corner of the world.”

  “That’s a beautiful life, Brennan,” she whispered, and rubbed her shirt sleeves peeking out from her overcoat. “But I’m not sure I can live it.”

  He took off his cloak and wrapped it about her shoulders, warming her arms up through its wool. No words had ever hurt so keenly as the ones she’d just spoken. He had to look away, take a few breaths, before he would speak again. “Then tell me the life you imagine,” he said, and contracted his shoulders against her answer.

  “Whether I make it into the Magisterium or not,” she began, “fighting the Immortals in Emaurria, and the pirates… Doing everything I can, using this magic I was given and the skills I’ve honed, to keep people safe. Even if it means fighting the Divinity, wars, or stopping them. Us together, fighting side by side. Going to Laurentine or Tregarde when there’s a lull, spending long days and nights together, wrapped in each other, and not just there, but anywhere we are, anywhere we’re needed. Using our strengths to do what we can for those who have none.”

  She looked out at the Shining Sea, her eyes sparkling in the sunshine. That really was her dream. But while she was his dream, he only played a part in hers, a single fiber in something much bigger than him, than her, than any one person. His part in her life was small, claustrophobic, tight, when in his life, she was nearly everything to him.

  She didn’t want to live a life just for herself—the pirate attack on Laurentine a decade ago had stolen that desire from her. As a child, had she dreamed about someone having saved her family, everyone there, some force of greater good? And now, as an adult, she wanted to become it.

  No, she’d been living it, and wanted to continue living it.

  Her purpose wasn’t her own happiness, or his. But being happy enough while pursuing something else. Some sort of divine arithmetic, dangerous, and not her responsibility.

  But that was Rielle. In every innocent person’s suffering, she saw her own responsibility. There was a kindness in her, a goodness, that he wanted both to adore and to curse.

  When trouble found him, or her, the only thing he wanted to do was get them out of it. He didn’t like looking for trouble, and would have never wanted to come here, on his own, to look for it, but Father’s treason had made that choice for him. Rielle’s need for proof of the Divinity’s involvement in her family’s death… had also made that choice for him. If he wanted to live her life, he would always be running toward trouble, just like her.

  But she wasn’t his only priority in life, especially not with his son on the way. He couldn’t constantly be running toward trouble as a father, endangering himself, and maybe even rippling consequences to a child, his child, just to live her life and help her pursue that divine arithmetic. “I’m… not sure I can live that life either.”

  He loved her, loved her with every fiber of his being, loved her nearly two decades into the past and the rest of their lives into the future, loved her in flowery meadows outside of Laurentine and cramped ship cabins and in castles and sickness and sorrow and celebration, but all his love, all the love in the world, wasn’t going to bring her into the life he wished for her to live, and to keep her happy in it.

  The salt of her tears carried on the air, and he moved closer, hovered an arm around her before letting himself touch her, hold her. “Can’t we… find a life between the two, Rielle?”

  She looked at him, with the golden-dappled Shining Sea behind her, those summer eyes watering, tears sparkling on her pale eyelashes, and she touched his face, rested a gentle, loving palm on his cheek, and kissed him.

  He pulled her closer, held her tighter, so tight he could feel the swell of her breathing chest against him, and he didn’t care to hide anymore, let the tears come as he deepened the kiss, not close enough, not intimate enough, not touching her enough, breathing her in enough, never enough. Caught somewhere between an end and a beginning, he didn’t want to leave this moment, this minute with her, right now.

  The way she saw responsibility in every innocent person’s suffering—it wasn’t his way, but because it was hers, he could live it for her. Maybe not all the time, but at least sometimes, enough that they could both agree on, enough that it could fulfill her, and give her that part of her dream for the future that he couldn’t. To complete her happiness.

  “Three years,” she said against his lips, voice breaking, between kisses. “Promise you’ll give me three years while I set some things right,” she breathed, “and then let’s try starting a family.”

  His heart leapt, and he held his breath, just for a moment, as the grin stole onto his face. She’d made him the happiest man alive.

  “I promise, Rielle,” he whispered, taking her mouth despite the tears between them. “I won’t ever ask you to give up magic,” he said, “but after those three years, stay with me, on our lands. Stay most of the time, and go only when you’re needed. Can you promise me that?”

  “Only when I’m needed,” she rasped softly, nodding slightly, as if to convince herself.

  And whether she was a mage of the Divinity, a witch of the Covens, a heretic, a sage working for Jon—whatever, he’d do his all to stand with her when he could, support her in what she did, because it was her.

  He’d been ready to die for her before, and although with his son on the way, he could
n’t promise that, he could promise to stand by her in every other way.

  “It’s not exactly what you wanted,” he said, cupping her face as he pulled away, just to see her eyes. “Will you be happy?”

  She covered one of his hands with hers. “It’s not exactly what you wanted either,” she whispered, stroking his skin gingerly. “But we’ll be happy together, because we’re together, won’t we?”

  Those summer eyes, intent and watery, begged, pleaded for something from him, something he couldn’t name, couldn’t fathom, couldn’t give, so he pulled her close. “Come home with me, Rielle. Please.”

  She nodded against him, and for a while, he just held her, kept her in his arms on a rooftop, living a lifetime in one moment today before they’d each have to put their lives on the line tomorrow.

  Chapter 52

  In the predawn dimness, Brennan held Rielle closer. It was a miracle that she was back in his arms, in his bed, and he wouldn't let her go easily. Never again.

  She still breathed the soft rhythm of sleep, and he could lie here listening to it all day, all his life, and planned to.

  They'd spent a long night talking through the trials, and although she wasn't sure what format the final trial would take, the Grand Divinus wanted her defeated—and probably dead.

  So help him Nox, that wouldn't happen.

  In just a few minutes, he would get out of this bed and head to Divinity Castle, where he would hide in the inner courtyard until that mage arrived with those documents to extort Father. He would kill the mage, destroy the documents, and save the family. Right after, he could go to the Archives, look for the records that Rielle sought, and achieve both objectives.

  First, he had to tell her.

  He pulled her closer, leaned in close to her hair, and breathed her in, deep. Great Wolf, he didn't know what exactly it was about her—maybe it was the bond, or the fact that he drank her blood every month, or that he'd known her for nearly two decades—but he loved her, through and through, and this scent was lifeblood to him.

  Her pulse quickened, and she breathed in that first long, slow breath of the morning right before she got up. Today, she covered his arms with hers, stroked his knuckles, and smiled, laughing a little under her breath. "Are you breathing me in, Brennan Karandis Marcel?"