Of course she would. Someone to guide her as she learned to control her magic, someone to carefully help her find her strength—
“It has to be you,” Della said.
His eyes widened. “Me?” His mouth fell open.
Yes, he’d love to be a part of her life, to help her find the strength she needed. But he’d also torn open the Rift and unleashed hell on earth. While he and Ambriel traveled to Venetha Tramus and tried to reseal the Rift—
“Leigh and I are on a mission to reseal the Rift,” Ambriel offered in Old Emaurrian. “That may take us to dangerous places, but if he agrees, I will promise to watch over her, too.”
“Safe is wherever you are,” Della said with a sad smile. “As long as she’s with you, I know she’ll be safe, both from herself and everything else.”
Della didn’t believe her magic powerful enough to pull Ava back from the brink again if necessary.
And maybe it wasn’t.
His overcoat was practically threadbare from where he’d been rubbing the cloth over his thigh. Clearing his throat, he set it aside. “If you’re sure about this, Della, then I can try to—”
Smiling, Axelle held out her hand in the vowing clasp. “As long as you pledge to take Ava with you, keep her safe, and teach her to master her magic, then I pledge my loyalty and that of my Coven to the Crown.”
He glanced at Della with a raised eyebrow, and she nodded.
He bit his thumb and clasped Axelle’s arm, each imprinting blood on the other’s skin.
“As we agree, so let it be,” he said in unison with her three times.
The imprints burned into their skin.
He’d allied the Tremblays, the Forgerons, and the Beaufoys with the Crown.
He’d seen Ava for the first time in thirteen years.
And when he left here, she’d be coming with him.
Chapter 65
Rielle dispelled her earthsight as the Liberté sailed over the golden-gleaming turquoise waves. The huge, bright mass of anima had been distant but visible.
“See anything?” Liam called out to her.
“About three nautical miles,” she shouted back. They’d been sailing for two days after slavers had raided Takari, and while the Kamerish navy had intervened, two ships had still been able to flee the navy, bearing at least four hundred people.
Those two ships were sailing heavy, and Liam had loaded the Liberté light.
They would catch the slavers.
“Those slaver bastards won’t know what hit them,” Liam yelled out to her with a lilt.
Two elementalists, a werewolf, and a well-rested crew. They were in for a bad day.
Her gaze fixed on the distance, she looked for the tiny specks that were the ships’ sails, and breathed in deeply.
Marfa grabbed the rail next to her, shoving her mass of windswept black hair from her face. “Maestru, happy?”
Happy wasn’t something she could think about without wanting to scream into a pillow. Brennan had broken his promises to her, and while that hurt, what had hurt more was knowing that he hadn’t been willing to compromise on his dream, but hadn’t been able to tell her. She could never be what he needed, not truly, no matter how much she loved him. And she wouldn’t let her love interfere with what he needed to be happy.
She’d keep in touch with Olivia, and if her preserved blood didn’t work to grant Brennan control over his Wolf, she’d remove the sting of arcanir from her skin, pull on the bond, and see him before a full month could pass. But if it did, perhaps they needed this time apart to realize that what they each wanted couldn’t be found in each other… or that it had to be.
But for now, she was doing what she did best—working out in the field. She grinned at Marfa and nodded. “Yes, I’m happy. You?”
Marfa narrowed her eyes and sighed, then turned to her, pressing her lips together. “Maestru… My Lisandra… sister…” She pursed her lips for a contemplative moment. “She… lost. We can find?”
Marfa had a sister?
If she’d known Liam had been alive all these years, and hadn’t known where he was, she’d have gone mad. If Marfa had a sister, not knowing where that sister was after the Rift had to be painful.
Rielle nodded. “Yes, I’ll help you find your sister—I’ll do everything I can. I promise.”
With a slow grin, Marfa nodded, then looked back out at the sea.
“Hey!” Luca called out to them from the hatchway. “Your ship’s new healer suggests you eat something before we catch those bastards!”
“I’m fine,” she called back out to him, glancing back to see him pursing his lips at her and Marfa. Shooing him, she turned back to the rough chop of the waves.
She and Brennan still had much to discuss, and maybe more than she wanted to discuss, but for now, this was just fine.
* * *
As Jon strode into the palace with his guards while Olivia met with Leigh, a number of uneasy Immortals—a couple of light-elves and a dark-elf—lingered in the palace corridors. He turned over the turtle stone in his palm.
“Who are they?” he asked Eloi, who trotted alongside him with papers grasped in his lanky arms.
“Emissaries, Your Majesty,” Eloi said with a nervous tremor in his voice.
“Emissaries?” Their faces had been gaunt and creased, and that didn’t bode well. On the High Council’s recommendation, he had left the kingdom in the hands of Auguste, his cousin and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, while he’d been in Magehold, to work with their Immortal allies against their shared enemies. “Have they been assisted?”
Eloi swallowed. “Secretary Armel has… prioritized human subjects seeking aid, and Pons was the only voice dissenting, so the council allowed it.”
“He’s what?” Jon grunted, rubbing his chest. He’d left Auguste in charge with specific instructions, and the man had mismanaged the kingdom.
“He said we had to look to our own,” Eloi added.
“Where is he?” Jon bit out.
“In the throne room, sire.”
Jon changed course from his quarters to the throne room, clenching his fists. He’d been on a diplomatic mission for months, had told Auguste to provide the help they’d agreed on by treaty, ones he had signed, and he’d reverted back to this humans-first toxic posture.
Two footmen hastily opened the throne-room doors, and he didn’t slow as he entered, fixing his gaze on Auguste, who wore an elaborate green brocade doublet and stroked his pointed beard as he laughed with two courtiers.
Auguste looked in his direction, sobered, and bowed. “Your Majesty, you’ve returned. How was your—”
He grabbed Auguste by his elaborate green brocade doublet and punched him. “I trusted you with my kingdom, and you ruin everything the first chance you get?”
The courtiers gasped and took steps back, bowing as they whispered acknowledgments.
Eloi cleared his throat. “Your Majesty, should I call a meeting in the High Council chambers?”
The High Council had allowed Auguste to get away with ignoring the needs of their allies. Hissing out a breath, he glanced at the throne’s dais.
“No,” he said, climbing the twelve steps and planting himself in it. “Call the meeting here. I want every member of the High Council brought here within the hour, as well as our Ambassador to Vervewood and Emissary Ambriel Sunheart. And get me details on Sincuore’s trial.”
Eloi bowed, but as he departed, Jon called out, “And send the palace’s head gardener to me.” He wanted a Suguz pine planted in the palace gardens.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Eloi said as he bowed, and then he departed.
Auguste dabbed at his nose with trembling hands and whimpered.
“You’ll live,” Jon called out to him, turning over the turtle stone in his palm.
Auguste had let alliances and responsibilities falter, and the High Council had been too weak to stop it.
Olivia had vowed to save him, and both Samara’s treatment an
d diet was working. He didn’t know how much time he had, but he was here now, and no innocent person in Emaurria—human or Immortal—would suffer needlessly while he drew breath.
Chapter 66
Three Months Later
Brennan paced in the hallway, listening to every command, comment, and panted breath, trying to talk himself out of bursting through the door.
After three months meandering on the Shining Sea, he’d only arrived today, and had already been pacing this hallway for four hours. Kehani was in labor.
Tonight, he would see his son’s face.
Her voice cried out from the bedchamber again, and with trembling fingers he snatched the knob and threw the door open. Midwives huddled around her, while two healers argued in a corner. A master healer and her apprentice.
“It’s as though it’s arcanir, or a sigil—” the young man said, shaking his head. “I’m not sure what else we could try, Master.”
“We have to keep trying,” the master healer replied. “Perhaps after the child is born—”
Kehani cried out again, her voice breaking as it strained. The doctor beckoned to her assistants, and then—
His heart pounded, hammering against his chest like thunder as Kehani brought their son into the world.
“Ranth,” she whimpered, reaching her arms out weakly to the doctor holding him. “Give him to me…”
Ranth.
He had a full head of dark hair, and then in the doctor’s hold, he cried out, loud and strong, and Brennan couldn’t help the smile stretching across his face. He had a son.
He had a son.
Ranth.
The doctor demanded her implements from her assistants, and several people flitted about the room.
Healers cast their magic on Kehani, laying hands on her body.
“It’s not working,” the apprentice said, pale as he glanced at his master.
The master healer moved to his son, touched him gently. “The healing magic isn’t working on him either.”
Ranth was of his blood, and the curse remained unbroken. Until then, he would become a werewolf. Immune to all magic but sangremancy.
“She’s losing a lot of blood,” the doctor said. “I need —”
Kehani was immune to magic. Her blood and Ranth’s had mingled. Was she a werewolf?
No, her scent wasn’t right. There was a flurry of activity, of healers and apprentices, midwives and doctors and assistants, and as Kehani held out her arms, the light in her eyes fading, he gently accepted Ranth into his arms and held him close, trembling as he pressed his lips to Ranth’s forehead.
As he memorized Ranth’s face, breathed him in, his vision blurred, but he blinked the tears back. Ranth cooed, and that sound rippled into him like warmth, like a memory he’d only just made but somehow had always remembered.
He would know Ranth’s voice anywhere.
“Brennan,” Kehani whimpered, “bring him to me…”
Slowly, he moved to her, sat on the edge of the bed, and leaned in close enough that she could touch Ranth. Smiling weakly, she took his tiny hand in hers.
Even as his heart leapt, it was breaking.
Something was wrong, and none of the so-called knowledgeable people in this room knew the first thing to do about it.
Soon that flurry of activity quieted, and everyone in the room ringed the bed, watching Kehani, watching Ranth, and him, and he held her gaze for a moment as her lower lip quivered.
There was nothing any of these people could do, and she knew.
She gave a small nod.
“Clear the room,” he said, without looking away from her dark gaze.
“But my lord—” the apprentice stammered, and his master pulled him away.
One by one, they all filtered out of the room, leaving him alone with his family.
He had accidentally turned a werewolf once, a man he’d bit, a man whose blood he’d tasted, who’d tasted his, too. The man had taken fever, and had begun to turn when he’d killed him.
Kehani didn’t have time for the fever, but he didn’t care. He had to try.
Holding Ranth securely in his arms, he took Kehani’s hand and turned away from her. “Kehani, this is going to hurt, but it may save you.”
“Ranth…” she whispered weakly. She was fading fast, too fast.
Changing his teeth, he gingerly bit into her palm, and she flinched but didn’t cry out. He bit into his own and intertwined their fingers, his blood mingling with hers as he turned back to her and hoped.
Ranth fussed in his hold, just a little, and he whispered a soft hush by his ear, listening to Ranth’s pulse until he calmed. As Kehani’s heartbeat slowed and slowed, she watched Ranth with a thin smile.
Ranth needed his mother, and she was dying.
Kehani’s heartbeat slowed to a stop, that thin smile going slack as her eyes glazed over, her head going limp against her dark waves of hair on the pillows.
Brennan tightened the union of their intertwined fingers, hoping against hope that she’d revive, praying, but only silence answered.
And the soft breaths of Ranth in his arms.
He held him close, held him safe. Ranth had only drawn his first breaths, and he’d already lost his mother.
But you’ll never lose me. Ever.
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Court of Shadows, the third book in the Blade and Rose series. If you’d like to find out about new releases, you can sign up for my newsletter at www.mirandahonfleur.com. As a thank-you gift, you will receive “Winter Wren,” a prequel short story to the Blade and Rose series, featuring Rielle’s first meeting with a certain paladin.
If you enjoyed this book and would like to see more, please consider leaving a review—it really helps me as a new author to know whether people like my work and want to read more of it.
Rielle’s adventure continues in Queen of the Shining Sea, the fourth book in the Blade and Rose series, due to be released later this year. If you’re on my mailing list, keep an eye out for a sneak peek of the first chapter coming soon!
As always, there are people in my life without whom this book wouldn’t have been possible. My husband, Tony, has been a constant font of love and support without whom I couldn’t do any of this. And my mom has been my #1 fan, whose encouragement and excitement making writing an even greater joy for me.
I’d also like to thank my friends at Enclave—Ryan Muree, Katherine Bennet, and Emily Gorman—you all know this book wouldn’t be the same without you. Thank you for your friendship, your support, and your occasional but necessary ass kicking. Thanks also go to my critiques, Sue Seabury—I appreciate your thoughtful feedback!
And you, my readers. I couldn’t do this without you! I love hearing from you, so please feel free to drop me a line on: www.mirandahonfleur.com, Facebook, Twitter, and [email protected]. Thank you for reading!
About the Author
I’m a born-and-raised Chicagoan living in Indianapolis. I grew up on fantasy and science-fiction novels, spending nearly as much time in Valdemar, Pern, Tortall, Narnia, and Middle Earth as in reality. I write speculative fiction starring fierce heroines and daring heroes who make difficult choices along their great adventures and dark intrigues, all with generous doses of romance, action, and drama.
When I’m not snarking, writing, or reading my Kindle, I edit professionally, hang out and watch Netflix with my English-teacher husband, and play board games with my friends.
Reach me at:
www.mirandahonfleur.com
[email protected]
Also by Miranda Honfleur
Blade and Rose Series
“Winter Wren” (available on www.mirandahonfleur.com)
Blade & Rose (Book 1)
By Dark Deeds (Book 2)
Court of Shadows (Book 3)
Queen of the Shining Sea (Book 4)* Available October 2018
Enclave Boxed Sets
Of Beasts and Beauties* Available April 2018
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