By Dark Deeds (Blade and Rose Book 2)

by Miranda Honfleur

  But he didn’t get to decide.

  If fortune favored her, there were still two camels at the oasis. She wouldn’t have to leave him. He wouldn’t have to be alone. She would take his body home to Emaurria, where he belonged, interred with the rest of the Marcels in the family crypt beneath Castle Tainn. He deserved no less.

  She struggled to rise, but could do no more than brace herself on an elbow before she collapsed again. The desert wind beat against her face and whipped her hair into her eyes.

  Couldn’t even rise. How would she get to the camels, let alone put Brennan on one? She wiped her eyes, streaking sand and grit into them. “Damn it!”

  The wind howled its deafening response.

  “Damn it!” she shouted, louder this time, and as the words tore through her, she gave into them, surrendered the fight, and screamed. She knotted the thiyawb she’d covered Brennan with, gripping it so fiercely her fingers ached. Hadn’t the sands taken enough from her? Her freedom, her dignity, her child. Not enough?

  Brennan…

  He’d loved her once. She’d hurt him. He’d hated her. But he’d never stopped caring. In his own twisted way, he’d still been full of passion. All her life, as long as she could remember, he’d been a force, a howling wind she couldn’t ignore, whether for good or ill.

  And now there’d be nothing. Not his love. Not his hate. Nothing at all.

  She rested her cheek on his abdomen, stretching her arms across him. Her palm pressed to his warm hip, heated by the desert sun.

  Warm…

  Sucking in a sharp breath, she raised her cheek and crawled higher to press her ear to his chest. An act of desperation. But she had to try.

  A thump.

  Trembling, she looked inward for the bond. Please, Divine, please. I’ll do anything. Please.

  A shudder rattled her, and she convulsed. Peering inward, the last of her anima had been claimed. None for her use, not even one last spell.

  The bond. It was there.

  The bond was there.

  He was there.

  Brennan.

  She gazed at his face. Color enlivened his features.

  “Brennan.” She grabbed him and shook him.

  Nothing.

  “Brennan!” She shook him again. “Brennan! Brennan!” she screamed, her voice thundering over the howl of the wind.

  Brennan shivered. Cold. So cold. He’d never felt so cold in his life.

  “Brennan!” Her voice echoed through the endless dark.

  Through the spiky grass, he staggered with his hands out until his palms found something solid. Rough. A tree? No scent. He could barely breathe, his entire body shaking. What was this place? Was he dead?

  He could feel everything here, but see nothing.

  And he heard her.

  “Brennan!” Her voice resonated through the darkness, quaking through the ground beneath him. A ripple splashed at his feet. Some sort of swamp. He swept his hands around him, catching the tips of the spiked grasses that came up to his thighs.

  Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere. He stared through the darkness, looking for something, anything but black.

  Nothing.

  He wrapped his arms around himself, rubbing them against the cold of this place, which bit so much deeper than the bone.

  Nothing.

  There was nothing here. Even his eyes, his Wolf’s eyes, couldn’t perceive a thing. The yawning hole of death, Nox’s Maw—was this it? Was this forever? The Lone?

  He shook, tremors consuming every inch of him, and not from the cold.

  “Brennan!” Her voice screamed so close, almost at his ear, and he reached all around him.

  Nothing.

  “Nothing!” he shouted, pressing his head between his hands. His breaths came short, shorter, and he fell to his knees in the water, gasping.

  The world was black. And that’s all there was.

  He closed his eyes.

  He didn’t want this world and its endless dark. He kept his eyes closed. Rielle. He imagined Rielle. She’d been five years old when he’d first seen her, twirling on the grassy cliffs outside Laurentine under the vast cerulean sky, a red rose in her golden curls.

  That silly child was to someday be his bride. Someday be the duchess of Maerleth Tainn. He’d laughed.

  “Are you laughing at me, Lord Brennan?” she called, still twirling.

  He looked at his parents, who were in deep discussion with Marquis Laurentine and his wife.

  “I’m talking to you!” Rielle shouted. She added a little hop to her twirl.

  “You caught me, Lady Favrielle.”

  “I know why you laughed!” she replied in a singsong voice.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Why is that?”

  “Because you’re afraid to look silly!”

  Another laugh exploded from his mouth before he could catch it. What a bold little child.

  “Mama says to face your fears. Face your fears, Lord Brennan!” she giggled. “Mama says it’s good!”

  Holding in a toothy grin, he cautiously strolled onto the grassy cliff. Was he actually considering this? Indulging the teasing of a twirling little girl?

  “Come on!”

  Great Wolf help him, he twirled.

  Now he imagined her as a young woman of nineteen at Tregarde three years ago, kissing him in the rooms he’d had prepared for her. He’d chosen every detail of her trip to Tregarde, telling himself it was all to humiliate her.

  But he’d known everything she liked. Every detail. And he’d imagined the joy it would all bring her. Maybe she’d finally love him. Maybe she’d never abandon him again.

  Her lips were warm, firm against him…

  And then the hurt flooded in.

  She couldn’t abandon him if he abandoned her first. With finality. So she’d never hope again. So he never could.

  I love you, but you hurt me. The words were impossible. His mouth couldn’t form them. They were strong, and he was too weak for them. Afraid.

  He couldn’t love her then.

  If he could take back that moment in the Tregarde kitchen, take her in his arms and tell her he loved her and he was sorry, throw out every last cackling guest and swear them to silence and respect upon pain of death—no matter her reply—if he could take it all back…

  He imagined her nestled in the crook of his arm at the oasis in the night. He should have told her then. Should have told her a hundred times. A thousand times, no matter her reply. “I love you.”

  Light assaulted his eyes. A field of white blinded him until a shadow shielded his face.

  Teardrops landed on his cheeks. He blinked. And found her face.

  The bluest sky on a clear day. Her eyes, red rimmed and watering. Sparkling tears fell from them, off fluttering blond lashes, sunshine radiant through the golden corona of her tangled hair, and she smiled. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

  “You’re alive,” she whispered.

  Alive.

  He looked up at her, trails of wetness soaking into his ears. Alive.

  He could breathe. Sucked in deep, quick, irregular breaths. The sand gave way beneath him.

  Sonbahar. He was in Sonbahar with Rielle. Alive.

  She beamed at him.

  The hisaad—they hadn’t—and she was—

  He wrapped his arms around her, letting happy laughter burst free, rolling with her in the hot sand, and she laughed with him. Great Wolf, she was all right. And he was alive to see it.

  “I’m not afraid to twirl,” he said, his voice a low rasp. He stopped flat on his back, Rielle lying in a heap atop him.

  “Hm?” She raised her head and met his eyes, her own bright as summer.

  He wouldn’t die without her knowing the truth, with the most important words he could ever speak bottled by fear in his chest. Not again. Not ever. “I love you.”

  She blinked, and her eyebrows rose. Soft pink bloomed in her cheeks. “I know,” she whispered, glancing away, a faint smile encha
nting her lips. “That’s probably not the answer you want to hear, but…”

  He drew a deep, slow breath. He hadn’t said it to elicit a response.

  But of all the things she could have said… “As long as it’s not ‘I hate you, Brennan. Please go die,’ which would be no worse answer than I deserve”—he watched her mouth fall open—“I can hear it.”

  She closed her mouth, but as she looked away and shook her head, a smile fought its way out.

  He loved her. And she knew. Whether she embraced his heart or broke it, she knew it.

  She lowered her head to his chest and hugged him. “Just please don’t ever die again. I don’t think I could bear it.”

  He wrapped his arms around her. “I’ll try not to.”

  Singed death intruded upon his nostrils, and after a time, he craned his neck to look around them. Burnt tufts of weeping lovegrass mingled with dead horses and hisaad bodies. They were still in the middle of the battlefield.

  How much time had passed while he’d been… dead? He stroked Rielle’s skin—her arms were bare. He glanced down at her. She only wore a sleeveless chemise, pants, and boots, but the balaustine red of her thiyawb peeked out between them.

  She’d covered him with it. Somehow, the thought warmed him. “We need to get to Gazgan,” he whispered to her, smoothing her windswept hair.

  “I know,” she mumbled against his chest. “It’s just… I can barely move.”

  When he looked her over, she trembled. Anima withdrawal. He was healing slowly… And probably hampering her natural regeneration. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be. You’re alive.”

  He strained to sit up, and she shifted aside to let him. His head pounded. A splitting headache. He raised his fingertips to his temple and—the roughness of a scab there, where he’d been… stabbed. At times like this, he didn’t hate the curse.

  The ache in his shoulders was even worse, and he didn’t even want to know what they looked like.

  “Take it easy,” she said. “You look like you’ve been—”

  “Murdered?”

  She hissed. “Through hell.”

  He struggled to his feet and handed her the thiyawb. Blushing, she took it without meeting his eyes.

  His nakedness embarrassed her now. He suppressed a grin.

  Chaos littered the sand. Every shrub in the area but for the tamarisk had been reduced to cinders, along with some of their attackers. What had she faced without him? His gaze darted to her, curled up on the sand, clutching the thiyawb close. “Why didn’t you run away? Hide?”

  She shrugged.

  He took in the blackness surrounding them. There had to have been an abundance of fire. “Right,” he mused. “When you see fire, you run toward it. Of course.”

  She swatted him with the thiyawb, and he dodged, laughing. A little teasing might get her on her feet.

  She scrambled to rise, then faltered and caught herself. Quickly, he braced her.

  Her assessment had been unfortunately correct. She really could just barely move.

  As they made their way to the oasis, she sighed. “You’re back from the dead, and I need your help just to walk.”

  Because he was draining her through the bond. “I’m only on my feet because of you. It’s your last strength keeping me standing.”

  She opened her mouth, but then only nodded.

  They picked their way through the grasses to where their supplies lay. He eyed his clothes, but drenched in blood as he was, he couldn’t dress quite yet. He lowered her softly to the blanket, and when she was seated, he headed for the water.

  “Where are you going?” she called after him.

  He grinned. “I have sand in unspeakable places, Rielle. There’s no way I’m getting on a camel until that changes.”

  Her gasp only made him chuckle quietly to himself. He washed quickly, dressed, and then picked through the hisaad’s belongings. He gathered what he and Rielle might need, prepared the camels, and helped Rielle mount hers.

  Gazgan wasn’t far. They could make it there by morning, if they made good time.

  Brennan mounted his camel, and they headed northwest. If luck was on their side, they’d make it there and depart for Emaurria before word could arrive from Xir about Farrad’s killing. If no more hisaad pursued them.

  The heat bore down on them ruthlessly, and although she blinked sluggishly, he felt increasingly better, which meant she had more anima to spare. Her anima slowly brightened… But she’d need to find a resonance partner in Gazgan.

  He exhaled a long breath. The thought that he could never give her resonance had perched on his mind ever since she’d moved to the Tower. And of course she’d taken a mage as a lover. A mage could give her resonance.

  They weren’t a perfect fit. They never would be. But whatever she needed, she would have.

  Silent, she glanced his way from time to time, her eyebrows knitted together. Did she doubt he still lived? Did she think he would go limp, fall dead at any moment?

  When she glanced at him again, he turned to look at her, his eyes trained on her until she met them.

  “What?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, not wanting her to worry. “I’m more concerned about you.”

  She waved him off. “My anima is slowly brightening. It’s helping.”

  Even aside from her anima’s dimness, the scent of her blood carried on the wind; she still bled from losing the child. Xir, and the desert, had pushed her to her limits. “When we get to Gazgan, we’ll need to find you a resonance partner.” He lowered his gaze.

  “I thought all the mages in Sonbahar reported to the zahibshada?”

  “They do. Although Gazgan’s zahibshada maintains it as a free city—no slaves—if word has spread from Xir about a fugitive accused of killing a shafi, you won’t be spared.” He looked out at the horizon. “But Gazgan is a port city. Many foreigners come and go. And I don’t doubt some are mages.”

  “It’s a gamble.”

  “Your inability to use magic is a greater gamble. We’ll be careful. I’ll make sure whoever it is doesn’t report to the zahibshada.”

  She glared at him. “You mean… kill them?”

  If that’s what it would take. He shrugged.

  “Brennan—”

  “As a last resort,” he shot back. “We’ll see.”

  “Let’s not pick anyone who might need killing, okay? I don’t want any more deaths on my conscience. Enough people have died already.”

  “Who, Farrad?”

  She looked away.

  “Who cares if he’s dead?”

  When she turned to him again, tears welled in her eyes. Tears. For the man who’d kept her a slave? He steered his camel closer to her.

  She’d spent months at House Hazael. Whatever the man’s faults, she’d shared his bed. Killing a lover, no matter the motive or justification, couldn’t be easy. “If it’s complicated—”

  She swept a thiyawb-clad arm across her face. “He…” She took a deep breath. “He said that he, and not Ihsan, planned to free House Hazael’s slaves. He said Ihsan’s concerned with legacy. She doesn’t want to see the House diminished, while he can’t… couldn’t bear to see his daughter be a slave anymore. I… I may have done a horrible thing, worse than I’d even imagined.”

  Brennan swallowed. If that was true, she hadn’t just killed a good man, she’d mistakenly destroyed House Hazael’s slaves’ best chance at freedom.

  “He was good, and I…”

  “Didn’t know.”

  She turned to him, eyes wide, cloudy.

  “You wouldn’t have made the same decision if you’d known ahead of time, right?”

  She pressed her lips together, then slowly shook her head.

  “You were deceived, and you took your best chance at freedom. You can’t blame yourself for what you didn’t know.”

  “It’s still my responsibility. I have to do something about it. I will.”

  “Y
ou’re not exactly in any position to, right now.” He fixed his eyes on the distance. At the edge of the horizon, he could just make out scattered lights. They would be there within the hour.

  Her shoulders still slumping, she brushed a hand over her face and smoothed her hair away. “What?”

  He nodded toward the horizon. “I see it.”

  Her eyes shone in the fading light, fixed upon that distant sight, and slowly, a hesitant smile spread across her face. Her gaze brightened then, teary, as she beamed.

  An ache formed in his chest.

  Her human eyes couldn’t possibly see the city at this distance, so what was it she saw? Freedom? Home? An end to the nightmarish life she’d been forced to live in Sonbahar?

  The longer he watched her face, the more painful his ache became.

  Jon. She saw Jon.

  The look in her eyes was love, and she’d see him again at last.

  He lowered his gaze to his hands, where he held his camel’s reins. All he’d done since Courdeval had been for her benefit, undoubtedly, but for his own, too. Unable to accept her rejection, he’d been weak before. He’d hidden his soft vulnerability with sharp edges. Edges that had made her bleed.

  But he was strong now, strong enough to try to win her hand, to do whatever he needed to do for the woman he loved. True strength. He wanted to have it for her. And for himself. He would win her hand.

  He looked at her again. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she smiled at him, tucking wisps of her windswept golden hair away.

  And he smiled back at her.

  In the twilight, they arrived in town, and the salt was thick on the air. A bay breeze swept in, heartening after so long inland. Colorful buildings lined the coast, variegated warm shades of summer, and Great Wolf willing, there would be a vessel bound for Emaurria.

  Rielle wilted in the saddle next to him. The temptation of a soft bed was strong, but instead, he led them to the docks. The priority was getting home.

  A few ships sat in port—trade cogs, a few caravels, and a carrack. One of them had to be headed for Emaurria, even from this small port city. Someone would know.

  People still shuffled about the docks, and he paused next to some sailors loading a cog and asked after the dockmaster.