by Lee French
Her dagger slammed through white mist and into the ground. The spirit crumbled and dissipated. For a moment, Claire stared at the ground, too confused and raw to feel the relief of being right. Then Enion wrapped his wings and neck around her, holding her close while she struggled to force all the pain of the past away. She wiped her nose and tugged half-heartedly at her dagger to free it from the dirt.
“You’re tired,” Enion said. “Need sleep.”
“Yeah.” Her dagger remained stuck. “This place plays dirty. And mean.” She scooped a handful of dirt and threw it, watching the dust fill the air and drift to the ground. “Can’t get much worse than having my dead father look at me like he wants to beat me with a baseball bat, though. Right?”
Enion rubbed his nose against her cheek. “Right.”
“How does that even have anything to do with being a Knight anyway?” Claire wiped her face one more time and gripped her dagger. This time, she wanted it free, so the ground released it. She wiped the blade on her leg and stuck it into its sheath.
“Yeah!”
She rubbed Enion’s nose. For some reason, she’d gotten a chipper cheerleader for a sprite. At the moment, she needed that. “Now what? We’re still here, so there must be more.”
Enion looked around. “More wall smashing?”
“Maybe.” Claire checked the dragon’s leg and found no sign of his injury, proving he also healed normally here. With a slow scan of the room, she noticed a shadowed alcove at the other end. “Is that a way out?”
She climbed onto Enion’s back, and he trotted to the shadow. Claire saw nothing but pitch black. The structure around it seemed like it could have a hallway beyond the darkness, or it could be a recessed wall.
“I guess courage would be plunging into it? Or maybe this is about strength of will. If I want it to be an exit hard enough, it will be.” She shrugged. “Let’s try that. Want it to be an exit, okay?”
Enion narrowed his eyes at the darkness and growled. “Out,” he growled at it.
Claire smiled. “Yeah, you stupid place. Take us out of here.” She patted Enion’s neck as he strode in. Complete darkness enveloped them. She saw nothing of the dragon’s metallic skin, not even a vague shimmer.
“Scary.”
“Yeah.” Claire shivered. This place wanted her off-balance and it succeeded, again and again. “Keep going.”
Enion sped to a trot, then a run. Claire felt his back muscles flex, then their bounding rhythm changed to the smooth soaring of flight. A light breeze ruffled her hair, letting her know they moved at high speed.
Claire flinched away from sudden, bright sunlight and screwed her eyes shut. Enion hissed and flipped in a wingover. Though Claire could tell she ought to fall off his back from the tug of gravity, she didn’t. She opened her eyes. If she stretched out her arms, she could almost touch the gray, stone cliff face they’d narrowly avoided crashing into.
Her dragon pushed off the wall with his claws. They rolled and he flew over a valley covered with green fields and vineyards. After watching the landscape zip past for a few seconds, Claire recognized it. She cranked around to see the cliff and the steep switchback path to the top. In Caius’s memory, preserved in the Palace library, a marble temple stood at the summit. She’d observed this specific memory only a few days ago.
“Why are we here? Go back to the cliff, Enion. Maybe I’m supposed to prove I’m a good little Knight by interfering in this memory and stopping Iulia from breaking the seal.”
He flipped over and flapped hard to return them to the cliff. As she suspected, Caius and Iulia sat at the top, the two Ancient Romans enjoying a picnic on a blanket. Caius’s sprite, a large white horse, stood to the side, grazing on tall grass. If Claire remembered right, Iulia, Claire’s ancient doppelganger and the Knights’ all-time supervillain, had already drugged Caius’s wine and now only waited for him to fall asleep so she could steal his sword.
“Yep. Dive, dragon. We have a seal to save.”
“Without seal breaking, no Enion.” He landed on the edge of the cliff and eyed her.
Claire blinked. “I guess that’s true. I hadn’t thought of that.” She watched Caius laugh at something. Iulia gazed at him. “But this is a test for a Knight, not time travel. I’ve got to do what a true and proper Knight would do, which is to prevent that fake Iulia from breaking that fake seal and never mind the consequences.”
Enion had no brow to raise, but she got the feeling he did it anyway. “Knights are dumb.”
“No argument here. Onward, noble steed, to stop the witch and save the Knight.”
He shook his head and charged. Iulia saw them and dove to the side. Claire threw herself at Caius, rolling them both to the other side. While Enion rounded on Iulia, Claire took advantage of Caius’s drugged reflexes to steal the sword at his side. She jumped to her feet and ran for the cliff edge with the blade.
Compared to the last test, this was easy. Claire glanced back and saw Iulia squirm out of Enion’s grip. Startled into action by an unexpected, incoming witch, Claire threw the sword off the cliff edge. The steel blade flashed in the sunshine as it flipped end over end on its way down.
Iulia hit Claire from behind and knocked them both off the edge.
Chapter 3
Justin
“I’m sure Claire’s fine.” Justin sat at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes and flicking the skins into a bucket on the floor. His wife, Marie, stood at the kitchen counter, cutting carrots. He’d already taken their young daughters over to play with Grandpa. Today, he needed peace to mull over everything that had happened yesterday and last night.
“It sounds like she had a rough day and night, that’s all.” Marie dumped the carrot chunks into a pot on the stove. In another hour, they’d cart all this food to her parents’ house.
“She did.” Justin sighed and wished he felt comfortable telling his wife everything. Guilt weighed his shoulders down over things he’d thought while under the influence of a corrupted Phasm. His dead mentor’s ghost had revealed how much of his abusive father lurked inside him, waiting to be unleashed. Thank goodness he hadn’t acted on most of it.
“If I learned nothing else yesterday,” he said as he tossed a potato into its pot and picked up a new one, “it’s that she and her dragon can take care of themselves.”
“Jay, she’s sixteen. Remember what you were like at sixteen?”
“She’s a girl. Teenage girls aren’t as stupid as teenage boys.”
Marie grinned and stuck a carrot chunk in his mouth. “So true.”
He almost felt bad about deflecting the subject. Almost. Someone knocking on the door saved him from whatever else she might say.
Detective John Avery of the Portland Police stood at his front door in a gray suit and tan trenchcoat. “I finally found your home, no thanks to the Vancouver PD,” Avery said with a sigh. “We need to talk. It’s important.”
“I’ll be a few minutes,” Justin told Marie. He grabbed his emerald green cloak from the mud room to ward off the chill in the late November air.
Avery led him halfway up the path to the clearing for chopping firewood. Another thirty feet along this path, on the same property, lay Marie’s parents’ house. “I was able to smooth things over last time, Justin. Hell, it was mostly my fault you trashed the downtown police station. I know that. I took care of it. Wrongful arrest can clear up a lot of messes.” He crossed his arms and gave Justin a stern glare. “But this crap you pulled yesterday? There’s an animal services guy in critical condition at Providence, a cop who needed surgery, and another cop who had to stay overnight for observation. What the hell happened?”
Justin sat heavily on the stump in the center of the clearing and rubbed his eyes. He should’ve expected this, but it somehow came as a surprise. If anyone would understand, it would be Avery. He’d been a tainted Knight for a few years.
“Kurt died a few weeks ago. I ran into his Phasm.”
Avery narrowed his eyes, then he swor
e. “You were tainted. How long?”
“About a day and a half.”
“You caused a lot of damage in that short a time.”
“Thanks.” Justin scratched the back of his head. The subject made him want to curl up and hide in a hole. Knights didn’t do that, though. “Claire killed the Phasm.”
“That’s a blessing, I suppose.” Avery blew out a breath, the tension in his shoulders draining with it. “Where is she?”
“At the Palace, sleeping yesterday off.”
Avery nodded and picked up a rock. He tossed it into the woods and listened while it crashed and tumbled through damp leaves. “Tell anyone else about this?”
“No, I came straight home and slept like the dead.”
“I haven’t been back to the Palace yet.” Avery picked up another rock and tossed it. “But more importantly, you’re wanted for assault on a police officer. Because you’ve done a good job branding yourself publicly as a harmless lunatic, and because the officer in question is a friend of mine, I can fix that if you come down and admit to being drunk. A personal apology to the cop would help a great deal. In writing. On nice paper.
“The horse, though, is a problem. You’re her owner and she almost killed someone. Not my area of expertise, but you’ll at least have to hand her over. Odds are good they’ll want to destroy her. If you claim she’s run off, they’ll slap you with a negligence charge and hang aggravated assault around your neck. If they’re feeling tetchy, they’ll root around here to dig up whatever they can.”
Justin swore. Once again, the news came as no shock, but it still surprised him. Soft thumps on the damp earth made him turn to see Tariel stepping into view. Her white coat and mane seemed dingy and gray today, and her silvery hooves had lost their sheen.
“I never would have done that in my right mind,” she mumbled, her head hanging low.
Justin rubbed his face. If Tariel died, so did he, though he could sever their bond to avoid that fate. For six years, she’d been his friend, confidant, and partner. Between her and Marie, they kept him sane and grounded. Of course, the methods they used to put animals down wouldn’t work on a sprite, so he had no idea how this would actually play out. The uncertainty bothered him almost as much as the problem.
He looked up at Avery, hoping the detective had a brilliant plan. “There has to be something we can do.”
“If I had ideas, I’d tell you.” Avery picked up another rock and hurled it. “There’s no apology or probation options with a horse. Animals that attack people almost always get put down. Since you rode away on her, they won’t buy anything about a different mount.”
Justin sighed and nodded. “I need to sleep on this.”
Avery raised an eyebrow. “No, you need to come down to the station with me. If we go now, you can play up the drunk thing. Say you slept it off and realized you’d done something horrible, so you turned yourself in. Leave your sword behind. The longer you wait, the more guilty you look.”
“It’s Thanksgiving. I can’t just leave now.”
“The holiday makes it easier to get away with this. Go tell your wife you’re sorry and get in the car. We’ll figure out what to do about Tariel on the way.”
For this, Justin suspected he’d have to spend the next year apologizing to Marie. She deserved more from him than this fiasco. So did Claire. “Isn’t my residence outside their jurisdiction?”
“Yes. But the next time you need to ride into Portland, it’ll be on a horse Portland would like to have destroyed.” Avery laid a hand on Justin’s shoulder and squeezed it.
Justin frowned and grasped for some way to avoid this. Luck, swordsmanship, and play-acting had always gotten him out of tight situations before. This one seemed like it would stubbornly refuse to be sidestepped.
“Sever our bond,” Tariel said. She stayed too far away for him to touch and refused to look at him. “That will fix this.”
“No. There’s a better option. I know there is.” A bad idea popped into Justin’s head and he blurted it out to Avery. “We could just never go to Portland again. I mean, between you and Claire, you can handle whatever comes up on that side of the river. There aren’t any other Knights for at least fifty miles to the north. Maybe Tariel and I should spend more time worrying about that.”
“Are you kidding?” Avery huffed an empty, mirthless laugh. “Running away isn’t how Knights normally solve problems.”
Justin crossed his arms. “This isn’t running away, it’s…handling a delicate issue without directly addressing it.”
“Coward.”
“Look who’s talking,” Justin snapped. “I killed your Phasm weeks ago and you haven’t been back to the Palace yet. That’s worse than me shifting the region I take responsibility for. I don’t live in or work for Portland, unlike some people.” He gave Avery a pointed glare. “There’s nothing tying me there but duty and ancestry. I live in Vancouver. Across the river. In another state. Where the fire department thinks I’m great because I volunteer at their fundraisers. Portland wants to murder my sprite. Fine. I don’t need Portland. The Palace, on the other hand…” He raised his brow, daring Avery to deny anything he’d said.
Avery scowled and nudged a rock with his shoe. “You haven’t been back yet either,” he muttered.
“It’s been less than twenty-four hours for me. And it’s Thanksgiving.”
“But you’re worried about the same thing I am. That there’s a mark everyone will see.”
For several long beats, Justin tried to deny that to himself. He was tired. Yesterday nearly killed both him and Claire. He’d betrayed Drew, Claire, and Enion. Worse, he’d failed everyone. Knights remained stalwart defenders no matter what. And he hadn’t. None of that excused the fact he feared being ostracized at the Palace for it.
Justin sighed. “I am, yes. We’re both cowards.”
“I hesitate to point out the obvious solution.”
Glancing at Tariel, Justin nodded. Maybe if he visited the Palace, some other solution to his Portland problem would present itself. Offering his hand, Justin tried and failed to muster a smile. “Rip off the band-aid with me?”
After staring grimly at Justin’s hand for several beats, Avery gripped it. “Deal.”
The front door of the in-laws’ farmhouse creaked open and Drew stepped outside, his short red hair still damp from a shower. He pushed his black-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose then stopped three steps down the path to the cottage and stared at Justin. His gaze flicked from Justin to Avery to Tariel and back to Justin.
“Hi, Drew.” Wishing he could have escaped without seeing Drew today, Justin gestured at Avery to deflect the teen. “You probably don’t remember Detective Avery.”
Drew raised his eyebrows and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Sure I do. He beat the crap out of Claire. You beat him in a sword fight at the downtown Portland police station because he was trying to kidnap Claire again. He was tainted then, but not anymore. You saved the day and all that.” He scowled. “And now, everybody’s happy and best friends forever.”
Avery coughed. “I’m still amazed you beat me that day, Justin.”
“So am I,” Drew said.
Justin pursed his lips and tried not to get annoyed. The kid had every right to needle him, though he’d be happier if they could just have an ordinary fistfight to settle everything. “Claire isn’t back yet.”
“Good to know.” Drew’s head twitched. He curled his lip and pivoted on his heels. As he headed into the forest, the temperature plummeted and mist formed in his wake.
Avery waited until the boy disappeared into the trees. “He clearly hates me, but he’d like to murder you.”
“Thanks for pointing that out.” Justin stood and braced himself to go tell his wife he needed skip out on Thanksgiving. This could wait, but he knew if he waited one day, he’d wait another, then another, then a week, and it would keep waiting until something forced him. With luck, he’d only be gone half an hour.
Chapter 4
Claire
The fall stripped Iulia away with tinny shrieks as Claire plunged downward. Wind buoyed her arms and thundered against her ears. “I’m not going to panic,” she whispered, desperate for it to be true. After all, so long as she didn’t look down, she’d never see the ground. It might not even exist. If she hit, it probably wouldn’t hurt. Probably.
Above her, Enion leaped off the cliff and pumped his wings to reach her. Claire wanted him to get to her in time, so he would. Probably. This stupid place with it’s stupid rules and stupid test. The Palace wasn’t real and didn’t deserve the dignity of being mistaken for real. It wanted to play dirty. She clenched her fists and dared it to do its worst as she willed it to slow her fall. An Ordeal couldn’t beat her. The Knights couldn’t beat her. Caius couldn’t beat her.
Enion slipped under her and she threw her leg over his back. He pulled up and backwinged only a few feet from the ground to land heavily on the floor of a magnificent marble structure. Scalloped columns held up a grand, peaked roof with gold flourishes and painted bas-relief images of people and horses. For several seconds, Claire failed to notice anything else other than how close she’d come to hitting this expanse of white stone riddled with black veins. She had no idea if the fall would’ve killed her or not.
Angry growls drew her attention. Another silver dragon, glaring with an angry snarl and flared wings, faced them from the center of the huge open-air building. The display reminded Claire of a cat trying to ward off a rival.
“Aw, aren’t you cute,” Claire said, figuring she might as well try diplomacy. Every other Knight probably rushed to battle the evil dragon, but she knew better. Caius and his men had never once tried to befriend a dragon—they saw one and drew their swords. Had Enion been his current size when she first found him, Claire had no doubt Justin would have done the same.