By Dark Deeds (Blade and Rose Book 2)

by Miranda Honfleur

  “Valen,” he whispered.

  A massive shadow darkened over him as Valen knelt next to him in full heavy plate. “What?”

  He forced a grin as he winced. “Shut… up.”

  Valen snorted. “On second thought, just strap him to a horse and send him out to battle.”

  “What… he said.”

  Pons sighed and rose, dusting off his black mage coat.

  The warmth of healing finally began to fade. “I think that’s the last of them,” Cédric said, his brows drawn together. “He’s as healed as I can manage, but he needs about… oh, a week’s worth of rest.”

  Cédric let go of his hand, and a paladin armored it. Jon braced a palm on the ground and tried to rise. A canon of voices uttered objections, but he ignored them.

  What strength he’d had this morning was nowhere to be found, but he labored to a knee, took several fortifying breaths, then tried to stand.

  His feet planted firmly apart, he didn’t dare move until the world stopped spinning, then he raised a challenging brow at Pons. Standing.

  Valen moved next to him, his hand over his sword grip. “You know what a joke is, right?”

  “It’s a… Shut up.” Knitting his brows together, Jon stared out at the churning sea of battle. He needed to be out there, useful, not idling here making nannies of competent fighters.

  “Well,” Valen announced to the rest of them with an amused lilt, “if we were worried about his wit, it’s not exactly sharp, but that’s normal.”

  He jabbed an elbow at Valen, who evaded.

  But he wasn’t incapable. He hadn’t lost his balance. Progress.

  “Horse,” he said louder to his guards. “If I have to ask one more time… I’m going to order all of you to train with me… from dawn until dusk when we return to Courdeval.”

  A few guards shifted until one disappeared.

  “You can’t go out there,” Valen murmured from next to him. “It’s suicide.”

  “I can’t stand around here while they fight, while they die.” He would risk his two to three years for their countless lifetimes. Someone handed him his helm, and he put it on. “It’s my duty.”

  “Surviving is your duty, my brother. Ruling is your duty.”

  A guard led his horse before him, and Jon put an armored foot in a stirrup, and with all of his remaining strength, mounted. On his own power. “Then I’ll rule by example. No more sitting by while the world falls to ruin. For anyone.”

  Valen donned his own helm. “Then I’m coming with you.”

  A ripple of assent spread through those around him, and then everyone mounted up.

  In the thick of the fighting, the Farallan dragon banner waved in the wind, blood-spattered but present. The Porte-Oriflamme was at the front, face to face with the enemy.

  “Not Matryona,” Pons warned from next to him. “They say she’s immensely skilled, preternaturally agile—”

  “I know,” Jon grunted. “But someone has to try. Besides, I’ll have all of you to support me.”

  A faint smile. “Yes, impossibility loves company, Your Majesty.”

  As Varvara leaped at him, snarling, Leigh cast a repulsion shield before himself and destabilized it.

  It blasted her back, tossing her to the ground. Air heaved out of her mouth, but she rolled as a sword came down where her head had been.

  “No!” he shouted to the light-elf behind her. “She’s under my protection!” He wasn’t about to all the Stonehaven dark-elves die for their queen’s recklessness. And Varvara was their last hope.

  A blink of wide eyes before the light-elf found another target in the densely packed madness of the battlefield.

  Varvara scrambled to her feet and launched herself at him once more. When he pulled up a repulsion shield, she leaped aside, then sprang from his periphery.

  He moved his shield in time to stop her blade as she pinned him in the mud.

  “Your people don’t need to die, Varvara,” he bit out, holding the shield in the face of her wild-eyed determination. “You don’t want to do this!”

  “Yes”—she pushed harder—“I… do!” She roared, a maddened sound.

  He imbued the shield with greater focus. “Your duty ends at being ordered to die senselessly,” he shot back. “Save… your… people.”

  She shook her head, screaming her frustration as she broke away.

  Hooves thundered—a cavalry platoon charging from the side, through the dark-elves’ backline. Hooves trampled through bodies as a flourish of blades rent flesh and bone.

  A firebomb fell to the ground, and at the front, cloaked in red, Jon reined his horse aside as the blast exploded.

  Horses screamed. Riders tumbled from their saddles. Jon hit the ground and rolled as his horse scrambled for footing in the mud. It slipped to the ground, missing him by a mere foot as it fell.

  He drew his dagger to parry a strike, and angled back to where he’d lost his sword, engaging one enemy after another. One royal guard closed in, covering his flank, another nearby, while the rest of the cavalry platoon remained scattered.

  Varvara darted away, but Leigh cast an attraction spell, dragging her near, and a repulsion spell, pushing her away. With both active at low intensity, she was unable to move.

  “Release me!” she growled.

  “Save. Your. People,” he bit out, holding both spells. “If Matryona kills our king, that’s it! Your people will be slaughtered!”

  She cried out, a feral roar, straining with effort toward the newly arrived cavalry platoon.

  A dark-elf woman, pale blue with a crown of thick, white hair, hefted two axes and cut her way toward Jon.

  Matryona.

  Jon yanked his dagger free of a dark-elf swordswoman’s chest just as an axe came down from above.

  Jon rolled to the side as the axe barely missed him, and rolled again as another swing followed. Against her twin axes, his dagger would give him no chance at all. Useless.

  Faithkeeper lay over ten yards from him. Too far. His gaze darted to the dead light-elf beside him—and a glaive.

  His fingers closed around it, finding the flat of the pole that matched the position of the blade, and he sheathed his dagger.

  Matryona rushed him.

  He was on his feet. The point of the glaive thrust toward her chest, and she scrambled backward.

  He cut downward, but she bat aside the bladed tip with an axe and jumped to her feet. Fast. Incredibly fast.

  Eyes narrowed, she stood ready, and grinned. As she circled, he matched her steps, keeping more than the glaive’s seven-foot pole and eighteen-inch blade between them.

  She was faster than him, but the glaive’s pinpoint thrusts would give her less time to react than her axes’ swings would give him. And as long as he could keep the distance between them—

  With a swing of an axe, she cast the glaive’s blade aside and charged, but he pulled it back and thrust the point to her abdomen.

  She brought up her blade to parry, and he hooked the axe with the pole, yanking her off balance.

  With a snarl, she broke away, parrying the cut he directed at her side.

  She caught the pole with the crook of one axe. Wound up to throw the other.

  His hand released the glaive. He gestured.

  The axe flew.

  A repulsion shield blurred the space before him. The axe hit it and ricocheted back.

  Gods bless you, Olivia—

  Wide eyed, Matryona evaded, and he yanked back the glaive and thrust it through her shoulder.

  A sharp cry.

  Her arm closed around the pole where it met the blade, and she hissed, her grip so tight he could push no farther.

  “Magos,” she spat, and removed the blade even against his pushing.

  Strong. She was immensely strong.

  She forced him back, then she yanked the pole forward, and he staggered—

  A roar, and a paladin with a shield and long sword moved before him, slashing toward the arm pulli
ng the glaive. No helm—Raoul—

  Matryona released it and blocked with her remaining axe, leaving her side open.

  The single-combat rule—

  But Jon arced the glaive around and cut.

  A shallow wound as the pole met her axe. Raoul brought his sword up—

  Matryona leaped back, then swung her axe across his neck.

  His sword fell as his hand shot to his neck.

  “No!” Jon shouted. He caught Raoul as fierce, cried foreign words rent the air.

  A dark-elf woman yelling across the battlefield from next to Leigh, pointing her short sword at them.

  The dark-elves and light-elves alike froze.

  Leigh slowly dispelled the repulsion shield as Varvara stared down her queen. Both the light-elves and dark-elves had stopped fighting, and the paladin captain called a cease. They knew what this meant. They knew, and they would let single combat decide.

  As Varvara strode toward Matryona with her sword and shield, the space around them widened. Even Jon dragged an injured paladin backward, shouting for Cédric, while Matryona yanked one of her axes from the ground. With a flourish, she shook off the mixture of blood and mud coating its edge, and faced Varvara with both in hand.

  She barked something at Varvara in Elvish while Leigh edged the open circle toward Jon.

  Varvara shouted back a long string of words, her face contorted in heartfelt anguish as she stared down her queen, but she took up a ready stance.

  She’d done it. She’d challenged her queen to single combat.

  Dark-elves filtered out of the crowd to ring the circle Matryona and Varvara were forming. Jon and an injured paladin were on the ground near its outer edge.

  “My life for Her will,” the injured paladin rasped, his hand and Jon’s pressed against his neck.

  “Don’t try to talk,” Jon murmured, pulling off his own helm. “Cédric!” His sharp eyes searched the field.

  “My… life.. for Her… will,” the paladin repeated.

  A deep line between his brows, Jon winced. “With honor and valor, you have served,” he replied, his voice breaking even as he said the words paladins had no doubt said for centuries.

  “Her… voice… calls me.”

  Jon shook his head. “Answer with pride… son of Terra,” he said quietly, hunched over the man.

  Leigh shouldered through the dark-elves toward them. “Stand aside,” he snapped at Jon, and knelt in the mud.

  He pressed fingertips to the man’s bloodied neck as the dark-elf circle closed before them. “Sundered flesh and shattered bone, / By Your Divine might, let it be sewn.”

  Anima poured from his body into the paladin, wove into healing magic, threading through his gash across his neck.

  The lines of the man’s face eased and his eyes closed as he went limp.

  “Will he live?” Jon fixed a pair of flinty eyes on him, unyielding, unsettling.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood. He’ll need to rest, and then we’ll see.”

  Jon nodded grimly and turned back to his comrade while another paladin led a horse near. Together, they hefted the unconscious man up onto it.

  A roar rose up from the dark-elves, and another, and another. Those with shields beat them, and those without struck blades to armor in rhythm. Raindrops fell, sparse and light, before a downpour began, dousing the battlefield in gray and wet.

  Leigh stood and angled between the heads of two dark-elves to peer into the circle they enclosed.

  Bleeding from a shoulder wound, Matryona beckoned to Varvara with two fingers off an axe handle.

  Her jaw clenched, Varvara advanced, shield raised and sword at the ready.

  Matryona brought an axe down, and Varvara blocked with her shield, cutting down with her sword.

  They clashed, each matching the other, a storm of blades and fury.

  Jon came up beside him, holding his mud-coated arcanir sword. “Her own soldier?” he hissed, palming his hair back from his face.

  “Captain,” Leigh corrected quietly over the rain, “and she’s our best chance.” Whoever won this single combat would set the course of this day—and years, decades, perhaps centuries to come.

  If Varvara won—peace could be at hand.

  If Matryona did… the ring of rallying dark-elves would turn on them and butcher their way through. He shuddered.

  Matryona beat aside Varvara’s blade and hooked her shield with the beard of her axe, then head-butted Varvara. Laughed as she staggered back and found her footing in the puddled ground. Snarled arrogant words.

  Ripples of whispers meandered through the crowd, while the rain beat the slippery ground into submission.

  Varvara, staring at her queen, heaving belabored breaths, lowered her bone-white brows. Darting from the mud, she charged. Blocked an axe cut. Parried another with her sword, then smashed the pommel into Matryona’s injured shoulder. A shout.

  Pure power, Varvara yanked it free. Thudded her foot into Matryona’s abdomen and sent her flying backward to splash into the sludge.

  In an instant, Varvara leaped onto her, kicked one axe away.

  Snarling, Matryona scrambled to a knee, slashed toward Varvara’s knees.

  A block with the shield.

  A swing of the short sword. A sharp cry.

  A grinning head thudded, rolled away. Matryona’s.

  Varvara didn’t move. As the body withered lifelessly to the ground, she didn’t move. Sword still. Shield up. Tears streaming down her cheeks. A muscle working in her jaw.

  Her knees plunged to the mud, and she stabbed her blade into it. An anguished howl rent the air, loud, deafening, hoarse—a lament and a relief, rage and unbearable grief.

  The ring of dark-elves chanted something in Elvish, beat their shields in time once, twice, three times. Then they, too, sank to their knees, set down their shields, and with bowed heads, held up their weapons in offering.

  Varvara bit out a somber phrase, then raised her head, her stormy gaze alighting upon the circle of dark-elves.

  Ambriel appeared at his side, his mouth a grim line of determination as rainwater streaked down his blood-spattered face. He glared at the spectacle, his expression as stony as the set of his shoulders.

  “What’d she say?” Leigh asked him softly.

  Ambriel eyed him peripherally. “ ‘Farewell, my queen.’ ”

  Chapter 68

  Olivia rested her cheek on Tor’s bare chest and breathed deeply, softly stroking his leg with her foot. Smiling, she followed the spirit-magic sigil tattoo on his abdomen in its winding pattern.

  He was a wonderful lover. Sensitive, perceptive, generous. In his arms, the war, the courier, the horrors of Spiritseve all felt a little more distant, a little more faded. “Want to go again?”

  He laughed, a low rumble in his chest. “Again? Woman, you’re insatiable.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “Oh, no, I’m quite satiable. I just want to be satisfied again… and again and again—”

  “Terra help me—”

  “—and again, until we sleep, because it is our only choice, since being so exhausted, we can no longer move—”

  “I’m fairly certain this is how I die—”

  “—so we can rest up and repeat the wonderful madness when we wake.” She curled closer.

  “All told, it’s not a bad way to go.”

  “Go? Nonsense. I’m a healer, remember?”

  He shook his head, grinning. “Again it is.”

  He rolled her over, pinning her to the bed, and dipped down to kiss her, his stubble brushing against her chin. Divine, yes, this was what she’d needed—his hands, his mouth, his mind-numbing pleasure. She arched her back off the bed as he trailed kisses down her neck, her breasts, her belly—

  A knock sounded from the hall.

  He paused.

  “Tor,” she said anxiously.

  Two more knocks.

  He sighed lengthily. “I’ll be right back,” he said, dropping a kiss below her navel before
rising and throwing on a robe. When she groaned, he added, “It could be important.”

  As much as she hated it, he was right. And if it was important, they could both be needed. She sat up and reached for her own red dressing gown, then put it on and fixed her hair. When she leaned against the large cherry-wood bedpost and looked in the mirror, she had a clear line of sight to the door.

  Tor opened it, and a man stepped inside, hooded and cloaked. A man with a narrow face. Shoulder-length hair. Deep-set eyes. Aquiline nose. And a birthmark on his jaw.

  Her heart stopped.

  The courier.

  Swallowing, she quickly looked away from the mirror, moved to the bedside table. She poured the last of the wine into her goblet.

  The door snicked shut.

  She casually glanced back to see Tor unrolling a message.

  On his way to the bedchamber, he read it, then set it down on his bedside table.

  “Was it important?” she asked, raising the goblet to her lips, trying to still the tremble in her lip, slow the racing of her heart.

  His arms encircled her waist. “Not compared to this.”

  What was that message? Who was it from? She held up her goblet. “I think… we’re out of wine.”

  He glanced at the decanter. “So we are.”

  With a sigh, he tugged at the bell pull by the bed, then returned to her, brushed her hair off her shoulder, and kissed her cheek before heading for the garderobe.

  She smiled, and just as he shut the door, she padded to his bedside table. Unrolled the message.

  “…to Maerleth Tainn for Ignis, and we’ll discuss it then.”

  Faolan Auvray Marcel? That was his courier?

  He’d been in contact with Gilles… A vastly rich, ambitious duke with royal blood.

  The Swordsman? The man who’d hired Gilles to kill the Faralles?

  And Tor—had Tor conspired with him?

  Not possible. He would’ve come forward, wouldn’t he? Tor loved Jon, had mentored him, raised him, known him since—

  Water splashing. She moved back to her side of the bed, set her goblet down, began to change clothes.

  The door opened. “Leaving so soon?”

  She paused as she pulled on her chemise. “I just remembered I was supposed to write to Parliament about the coronation. No doubt the light-elves will be attending.”